Places and Trails across Hong Kong
Utilise urban parks equitably, mitigate Hong Kong’s climate hazards now
Hong Kong will face more intense heat, flood, storm surges and biodiversity depletion under climate change. Healing Parks, an advocacy group, says that urban parks can help to mitigate these hazards – but current park design guidelines fail to consider climate resilience. If the government remains inactive, it would harm…
Wang Chau, Basalt Island and Bluff Island
The Ung Kong group of islands is a cluster of three islands – Wang Chau, Basalt Island and Bluff Island, lying off the southeast tip of the Sai Kung Peninsula. They’re made of the same tuff that occurs from the southeastern peninsula to the Ninepin Group, and developed in the…
Activities in Hong Kong outdoors
Taking Hong Kong landscape photos come rain or shine
Even if you don’t travel outside Hong Kong, your photos have to be much the same, week after week, day after day after day. Shooting from the same spot, it’s possible to take highly contrasting photos, such as by heading out at different times of day, and making…
Cycling From Tai Po Market to Tai Mei Tuk on Rented Bikes
One of the best ways of getting some outdoor exercise is to get on a bicycle, and ride away some of those coronavirus claustrophobia blues. Hong Kong hardly abounds with good routes for relaxing cycling, but there is an especially fine one in the northeast New Territories, from…
Hong Kong’s Wonderful Wildlife
I had a whatsapp message from Nick Florent this afternoon, a bird on the beach, on Cheung Chau; there was a photo too – a red-footed booby! This seabird is rare in Hong Kong, and even then seen pretty much only over waters well south of Hong Kong…
I’ve seen various social media posts and even a couple of media articles about large numbers of Red-base Jezebels Delias pasithoe in Hong Kong recently. It seems people especially notice them during cold spells, when many of these butterflies are grounded by the chill, maybe dying – though…
Weather including tropical cyclones
“Typhoon to Hong Kong Soon” Makes Great Clickbait
Article about a “possible typhoon” that turned out to be barely a feeble storm While Hong Kong is sometimes hit by typhoons, predicting them in advance is tricky. Yet this doesn’t stop social media and even mainstream media posts that latch on to occasional results of computer forecast…
Lightning-packed Supercell over Cheung Chau, Hong Kong
Yesterday evening (30 April 2024), weather monitoring imagery showed an intense rainstorm/thunderstorm area – a “supercell” approaching Hong Kong from the west. Radar image from www.windy.com ABUNDANT lightning recorded by HK Observatory I went from my home to the public pier at the nearby Cheung Chau typhoon shelter,…
Hong Kong conservation
The Sustainable Lantau Office (SLO) of the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) proposed to “develop sustainable leisure and recreation in Cheung Sha and Shek Pik, ecologically and naturally education-based facilities in Shui Hau and Pui O (i.e. the South Lantau Eco-creational Corridor (the Proposal))…together with ancillary facilities such…
If you’re among the privileged few with access to the inner sanctum of Deep Bay in northwest Hong Kong – a viewing hide at the seaward edge of the mangroves, you can experience one of the finest bird spectacles in east Asia. Black-faced Spoonbills, Pied Avocets and other…
If you’re unfamiliar with the Deep Bay wetland shared by Hong Kong and Shenzhen, you might wonder about the significance of the expanse of fish ponds in the area of north Hong Kong that will be the site of a major new development, the Northern Metropolis – as…