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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Dusky Thrush

     I had mistaken the bird on this page for a streak-breasted scimitar babbler, which is a brush and field bird. A reader was kind enough to inform me that it was a dusky thrush. I saw this bird well beyond the Guandu Bridge, just before you get to Danshui.

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For more information on the dusky thrush, click here.

Enoch is Baptized

     Our son Enoch was baptized on August 15, 2010, some eighteen years and three days after I arrived in Taiwan.  I didn't know until after the baptism that Enoch had been successfully inviting other kids to church and encouraging them to get baptized.  

     It was hard to get a photo of Enoch when he wasn't looking down at the baptism liturgy.  In the photo in which both Enoch and Pastor Kim Crutchfield are facing the camera, they aren't posing.  They just happened to look up at the same time.

      Now they descend into the pool.  I tried to get a photo of him with his head underwater, but the camera wouldn't click soon enough.

       Even for summer, the water can seem cold.

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