Common Magpie

     It has taken me many years to get close enough to a common magpie to take a picture of one.  In years past, I'd see them in fields, about thirty meters or so from me.  They never would let me get close enough to take more than a blurry picture of one.

     By this year, I realized that the common magpie, a migratory bird, appears only in winter.  I also noticed that the only ones I'd seen in the Taipei area were along a certain stretch of biking trail in  the Shuang Hsi Creek Park.

     Over the past couple of years or so, large birds in that area have lost most of their fear of humans.  Today (February 3, 2012), I saw a little egret and a black-crowned night heron waiting near a couple of fishermen.  I soon saw why.  When one of the fishermen caught a fish that was too little for him to eat, he threw it aside,  Both birds raced to get it, and the night heron won the race and the fish.

         The common magpie is a member of the crow family (corvidae), and their Latin name is pica pica.      For more information on the common magpie, click here.

Taipei International Flora Expo

From late fall of 2010 until late spring of 2011, the city of Taipei is hosting the International Flora Expo.  Since we already paid for it with our tax dollars, we didn't feel like paying for it again with the NT$200 (around US$6) admission fees.  We decided to enjoy what we could see without the extra charges, including what we can see over the gate.

     Here's some of what we saw:

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     The photos in this part are from a sneak preview of the Flora Exhibition when it first opened for a trial run.  It wasn't intended for the general public (the average taxpayers), but the taxpayers didn't know that and went in anyway.  

     I'm sure you noticed that I like seashells.  I have a collection of over 200 different ones, mainly from Taiwan. 

     The ones below are arrangements of flora submitted by people from various places in Taiwan.  At the time I took these pictures, submissions from other countries had not yet arrived.

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Gray Heron

      It has been more than a little difficult to get close enough to a gray heron to get a clear photo of one.  I've seen them in rice paddies, mangrove swamps, and along mudflats.
     The one on this page was going for a stroll near along mudflats near the Guandu ferry.

     Here are two more photos of a gray heron.  The first is a zoom of the second.  I photographed that bird near Shuang Shi Creek, about a half mile west of the place that the creek empties into the Danshui River.

     I finally got a clear photo of a gray heron on February 2, 2012.  Along the biking trail, about a mile or two from Danshui, I came across an irrigation pond that sometimes plays host to black-crowned night herons, egrets, and an occasional gray heron.  

     For more information on gray herons, click here.

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