A good day for twitching and fishing

First treated to a real close up viewing of three kites and juvenile white bellied fish eagle at Man Kok Tsui today.   The birds were wheeling around over head for a good five minutes before drifting off downwind towards Peng Chau.   Then as we were sitting at the pier we sighted a very optimistic grey heron attempting to fish from a floating buoy in the middle of the bay plus a two kingfishers (white in colour) possibly pied kingfishers, that were being much more productive fishing from the shore line rocks.  

Typhoon Signal 10 and Eagles

A real bumpy night of wind and rain.   Trees down all over the shop in the morning.   The tide was surging too.   Luckily Man Kok Tsui seemed to weather the storm and the beach remained intact.   Last time the beach was trashed and covered in debris.   I suppose this time the winds must have been from another direction.   5 in the afternoon and not much happening but by midnight it was a very different place.

When Nuch and I took the boat round to Man Kok Tsui to check the house we counted six or seven kites soaring over the headlands.   As we looked closer we noticed the birds seemed to keep diving down onto a slightly larger bird with broader, wider and fingered wings and a distinctly rounded tail.  The bigger bird seems to be about 25% bigger than the kites.  The kites seemed to line up and take turns to mob the bird, occasionally locking talons and tumbling over and over before letting go.    Too far away to properly ID I guess it was a stranger to the shores that had been blown off course by the typhoon winds that had swept up from the Philippines.