In the New Year I made a brief trip to Hong Kong to visit family. Photography therefore wasn't the focus, but during my stay on nearby Lamma Island, a gracious neighbour granted me access to his garden to photograph some of his backyard bird visitors. At first glance his "garden" seemed unremarkable - a shadowy tangle of thicket with a derelict barn and water tank, reclaimed by the surrounding jungle. And yet it possesses one thing which no other neighbouring garden has and which makes it one of the best places to see Hong Kong's rarest birds.
Every morning and evening, the sound of water running from the water tank's faucet into a small manmade pond attracts forest birds from all over Lamma Island to drink and bathe. I spent 2 evenings in a camouflaged tent filming some of the shyer and rarer visitors such as rubythroats, rufous-tailed robins and bush-warblers.
In such dim conditions, photography was out of the question, so I ramped my camera's ISO up to 6000 and switched into filming mode. The camera was a little shaky, a combination of my tripod balancing on two legs within the cramped hide whilst I constantly swatted mosquitos away from my ears - so the video below is the best of a few hours' vigil in the hide.
