Common Sandpiper

     As near as I can figure, this little feller is called a common sandpiper.  If anyone out there can identify it as something else (don't tell me that it's a giraffe, because I'll know it isn't), please let me know.

    I saw it walking across rocks and along the grass near the park next to Shuang Shi Creek.  At low tide, I see a lot of smaller, but otherwise similar, birds tramping about the mudflats nearby.

     In case you're wondering about the green net material, it was placed there to keep the rocks from being washed away.  The rocks were placed there to keep the soil from being washed away.

     For more information on the common sandpiper, click here.

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.