Birds in the rain

This afternoon I was sitting in the 師大 Shida library, looking out of the big first-floor windows at the rain pouring determinedly onto Heping Road, and at a number of birds taking advantage of the breadfruit trees’ dinner-plate-sized leaves to stay almost dry in the continuing deluge. White-eyes were bouncing gracefully from branch to branch (I’m not at all sure that ‘bounce’ and graceful’ can usually be combined, but if anyone can manage it, my money is on the white-eye).

A pair of the more substantial Spotted-neck Doves 珠頸斑鳩 also stopped by for a brief visit and a shake of damp feathers. These are rather elegant, sporting subtle russet and grey feathers across most of their bodies, and then setting things off with a delicate collar of white polka dots on a near-black ground. They’re also more slender in build than their more familiar city pigeon relatives, and somehow look more calmly melancholy and less frenetically dedicated to eating and other worldly pleasures. Unfortunately my painting makes this one look rather ill-tempered, but what can you do? 어떻게 !

Guandu 關渡 to Danshui 淡水

Today I returned to Guandu 關渡, pottered from the MRT station over to the embankment and viewpoints bordering the wetland area, and then ambled along the riverbank up to Danshui 淡水, where I ate lunch and had a coffee at the former Shell compound, now a rather marvellous cultural and arts centre. It was a grand walk, especially considering the weather (thunderstorms forecast, but sun and breezes delivered). Almost the first thing I noticed when I arrived at the riverbank in front of Guandu’s enormous temple was a kingfisher (hurrah!), perched on one of the narrow fishing boats lined up at the water’s edge. You probably can’t make it out in this photo, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

You might be able to see the winter heron scratching itself atop one of the mooring poles, though – they are normally very composed, so catching one in the middle of its grooming routine feels a little cheeky.

On the other side of the pier the mudflats begin, merging into the mangrove belt that extends through Hongshulin 紅樹林 and beyond. This is a fascinating and confusing section of riverbank. At first glance the muddy shore appears to be strewn with small pebbles, each poised by a wee hole, but then suddenly, perhaps prompted by the approach of an egret or careless passerby, a whole beach worth of pebbles ups and dashes about, as if in coordinated motion. Each of the animated pebbles turns out to be a fiddler crab (Uca arcuata, according to a helpful information board), with one pinkish claw dwarfing the other.

There are also dozens of mudskippers, rather marvellous fish that wriggle out of the water and appear to collaborate with the crabs in their muddy dance. Unfortunately I haven’t yet caught any on camera (I’m not certain that the brown lump just above the fiddler crab might not be a mudskipper, but I remain far from certain that it is, too).The mud is held in place by a long thicket of mangroves (Kandelia obovata, apparently), which produce long green seed pods that actually grow in place and only drop into the water (or mud, depending on the tides) below when ready to migrate and plant themselves.

The embankment running along the divide between the mangroves and the Guandu wetland reserve makes up part of the riverbank cycle route, and also leads to two hides from which one can look across the nature reserve.

The southeast viewing area is the larger of the two, and includes a beautiful long curved hide, a shelter overlooking one of the large ponds, and a thick tangle of woodland and lianas.

The southwest area is smaller, but has a similar hide and a viewing platform overlooking  the entire southern edge of the nature park. Today this area was studded liberally with egrets, grey and winter herons, and ibis, with swallows doing their aerobatics and bulbuls doing their best to drown out bursts of firecrackers and music from the temple and occasional distant thunderclaps. I really really really need to buy mosquito repellent, though.

After enjoying the views here (periodically lowering binoculars to swat and curse) I bought an incredibly cold watermelon juice and shambled north past the Guandu bridge and along to the mangrove reserve at Hongshulin. This has a long elevated boardwalk for pedestrians, snaking among the leaves and offering great fiddler crab and mudskipper spotting opportunities (but not today, as the tide was coming in). The treetops are dominated by bulbuls and white-eyes, and the banks by egrets.

Beyond this stretch the riverbank is less glamorous, but was livened up enmormously today by the rather substantial pig ambling casually along the cycle path and apparently enjoying the company of a black labrador-ish hound.

There was also an unusually large lizard, which gave me a hard stare before grudgingly retreating into the long grass, and a fine beetle sunning itself on the fence, to ensure that I was suitably entertained.

Just before reaching Danshui proper, the path runs along the front of a military base (no photos or binocular there), and then arrives at what used to be a Shell depot, now an attractive brick-and-timber complex, part of a university campus, with a very pleasant, if eccentric, place to have a cheap coffee.

Beyond this is a wonderfully (or alarmingly, depending on your point of view) dilapidated, slowly disintegrating complex of precarious wooden buildings on somewhat friable stilts. Last time I passed through it was playing host to around a dozen irritable-looking night herons, but today was very quiet.

After that, there was little left but to eat some niurou zaomian 牛肉燥麵 and take the MRT back to the hostel.

Even More Yangmingshan (sorry)

Trips up to the northern hills on the 260 bus (simple and convenient from Taipei Main Station, especially if you can turn out early enough to catch the speedy and near empty 7am service) have now turned into a regular Sunday diversion for me, so I’m boring you all with the same old stuff once again.
Last Sunday the forecast was very promising (and I had bought new, sticky-soled hiking shoes), so I got up very early and ambled off towards the station, admiring the clarity of a springlike sunrise below high stretched wisps of cirrus cloud, and surprising myself by catching the 7am bus.

New shoes (and damp, mossy stones)

By a quarter to eight I was wandering up the Sidewalk Trail again, but by that time I had discovered the peculiarity of Yangmingshan’s climate –  a great raft of winter cloud, while retreating dutifully from sunny Taipei, had become marooned low on Qixing Shan, and, dragged across the flank of this mountain was slowly releasing its ballast of vapour as a fine drizzle, seeming to condense on every leaf, saturating mossy trunks and stones, and dripping from branch and twig, ultimately, it seemed, onto my hat, and, if foolishly revealed, my camera.
The base of this mist monster stood at about 600m, and it reached its thickest and most impenetrable between Zhuzihu and Xiaoyoukeng, where the park road crosses valley and hiking trail on a huge, and at that time almost invisible, concrete span.

Thick fog near Xiaoyoukeng

The majority of the next stretch ran high around the northern side of Qixing Shan, starting in thick, dripping forest, but eventually emerging as stony lane carved into steeply sloped swathes of arrow bamboo. This undulated gently along the contours, and I was cosily contained in a rug of thick grey white fog, insulated, for the most part, from roads and all other signs of external reality.

Shiny damp stones wind through the arrow bamboo

Beautifully misty hillside near Xiaoyoukeng

A pair of rich brown bamboo partridges paused on the path to give me hard stares before disappearing between close-packed stalks – apparently little else can cope in arrow bamboo groves, but they seemed perfectly at ease.
Suddenly, almost unaccountably, the cloud curtain was gone, a whole valley uncovered without warning, with a rapidity that made me gasp. The thickly wooded walls were in places tinged with golden sunlight, while shreds of cloud slowly stretched into long trails before tearing free of the foliage. Strangely, although this scene was undeniably beautiful, and I had been hoping for the weather to clear, the emotion provoked by this was a lurching feeling of sudden nakedness, as my world was adjusted, in a heartbeat and without warning, to include a huge vista of jagged green valley.

Hills emerging from the cloud near Xiaoyoukeng

 

Hills emerging from the cloud near Xiaoyoukeng

As I proceeded clouds slid across the landscape in shreds and billows, revealing and hiding great sections of landscape every few minutes.

Hills emerging from the cloud near Xiaoyoukeng

I had decided to return to the Miaopu trailhead and visitor centre via Qixing Park rather than attempting once again to find the southern section of the loop as described by Richard Saunders.
Qixing Park delivered stunning views across the city and beyond, but was very busy. This route also, fortunately or otherwise, led to my scaling the East Peak of Qixing Shan, which, while worth doing (I suppose), was fairly terrifying, in that I have long nourished a phobia around all aspects of heights and slippery or uneven surfaces. Almost all climbing and descending in Yangmingshan is accomplished by means of huge flights of stone steps of impressively careful construction, but understandably the topmost sections of the Qixing Shan paths are both very steep and somewhat rough.
This was exacerbated, terrifyingly, by the huge volume of walkers, which turned the paths into crawling two-way human highways.

Traffic jam on Qixing Shan

This had the effect of forcing me to maintain a constant speed without pausing or giving in to the waves of mild panic that arose at every slight slip or misstep, so that was probably a good thing, in the long run, and character-building, etc., but at the time felt rather unbearable, and I was hugely grateful when I reached the trailhead and the visitor centre.
This discomfort was by no means mitigated by the fact that many Taiwanese hikers (mainly but not exclusively those in later middle age) carry small radios or MP3 players which constantly warble tinnily, often, in hilly places, also buzzing as the radio signal waxes and wanes. This is an interesting point of cultural difference, which, in this case, with the huge number of people walking and chatting, made little practical difference to my walk, but which often, in a thickly forested section of path where the air is filled with a combination of rustling branches or creaking bamboo, dripping leaves and birdsong, seems to me a misguided manner in which to enjoy the beauty of this national park.

Today’s weather was much the same as the initial stages of last week’s expedition, but the walk, largely due to the fading stages of a head cold, was much shorter – I merely reconnoitred the link trail from the Miaopu trailhead along the southern flanks of Qixing Shan over to Lengshuikeng. While not granting walkers the spectacular views available from Qixing Park, this paved route across thickly forested hillsides has considerable advantages over last week’s path (it isn’t all steps, for one thing).

Cloudy forest, Yangmingshan

Today, in thick cloud and constant thin drizzle, the forest was beautiful, with dark, saturated branches and mossy boulders, and rain-slicked bright leaves in the foreground greying, like an infinitely complex array of theatre flats, into the cloud-white near-distance. It was wet but worth it, and I have now finally closed the final stage of my loop walk. Unfortunately the photos are not great, as the weather was so damp I had to more-or-less whip out my camera, focus approximately, shoot and stuff it back into the bag before it got really wet. Sorry! The only ones that came out were the close-up shots of mossy stones back near the visitor centre, so here’s one as an apology.

Mossy stone-scape, Yangmingshan

First expedition to Yangmingshan 陽明山

This is a very ebarrassing post, as it reveals that, until today, I had never managed to get myself to Yangmingshan 陽明山, the national park that sits very conveniently just to the north of Taipei. Today, armed with the knowledge that I have a whole week to get my various bits and pieces of homework done, I took the MRT to Zhishan芝山, and wandered north up Zhongshan Road 中山路 to the Tianmu Old Road 天母古道.

This climbs, via many many many well-laid steps, up to the Yangmingshan boundary, and is tiring but marvellous. For a while it follows a great black water pipe laid by the Japanese in 1928. The gentle roar of water from this lent the walk an added touch of atmosphere. The sun even came out for a bit, and the views from the top were rather good despite the cloud and mist. The monkeys didn’t come out, though. Numerous notices warn visitors not to do anything stupid (feeding, attacking, attempting to hide food from, etc.), but it seems they generally emerge at dawn and dusk.

From the top of the Tianmu Old Road signs direct one to the Yangmingshan Visitor Centre, although this turns out to be some distance away, up Shamao Road, and past various strongly sulphurous vents and drains – even the drains by the roadside smell like a noisome combination of elderly boiled egg and rotten onion. This culminated about halfway along the road in a steaming stream, which looked very impressive, but hasn’t been captured too well here.

The visitor centre is a little way from the Yangmingshan bus station, but pedestrians can follow the winding ‘sidewalk path’, which is very pleasant, and features lots of interesting, if sometimes rather patronising, information boards. From the visitor centre, which has a large set of educational displays, a small bookshop/cafe and toilets, I wandered vaguely off to the Maopu trailhead and set off in the direction of Qixing (or Seven Stars) Mountain 七星山. This path is about 80% steps, rising about 600m, and I chickened out of following it to the peak, partly due to the misty dampness, and partly out of sheer weariness at the damnable steps. The route was, however, very impressively atmospheric, and I will be back!

榕樹 Banyan trees

榕樹, or Ficus Microcarpa, or the Small-Leaved Banyan, which is also known, going by the various signs around Taipei, as the India Laurel Fig, is a big favourite of mine.

While I’m sure I must have seen a great many of these in India, they have recently become particularly associated in my mind with Taipei, where they seem to make up a significant proportion of the city’s trees.

Being banyans, they enthusiatically send out wispy beards of roots from the lower branches, hunting for fresh soil.

These are dark brown at their source, fading through rich ruddy shades to a delicate pale yellow at the tip. once they find the ground, though, and start to draw up precious water, they thicken and the bark gradually fades to an elephant grey.

Unfortunately for the city planners, by this point they are probably wrapped tightly around fenceposts and dislodging bricks and mortar as they grow.