Short visit to Mai Po

I had a few hours to spare late Sunday afternoon, so I dropped by Mai Po shortly. Today was another extremely hot day, with temperature going up to 37degrees in some places, I did not fancy walking far! Therefore I decided to bird mainly in the car.

One of the pond have now been transformed into a Cattail reed bed. It's not the most common form of reed we get in Hong Kong, and I am not sure who planted them there, but they sure have attracted some birds. Among them were a few Little Grebes, their breeding season is now over, their chicks are now big enough to look after themselves, but you still see the juvenile hanging about with adults. This particular juvenile was adult size but still have the juvenile head patterns.

Little Grebe adult

Little Grebe juvenile

Chinese Pond Herons are slowly moulting back into their modest looking non-breeding plumage, you see many in-between birds at the moment, this one still have some rufous coloured feathers on its head.

Chinese Pond Heron

Perhaps the most interesting birds there were a total of three Yellow Bitterns, two were seen flying about, while I found one perched on the Cattail's stalk by the edge of the pond, trying to blend in with it's surrounding. Bitterns do that by raising their head up high while straightening their necks, their streaky necks then acts as camouflage. If it wasn't for the two feet sticking out from the reeds I could have easily missed it. A funny looking bird indeed, you can just about imagine it muttering "you can't see me, you can't see me..." under it's breath.

Yellow Bittern