Readers’ wildlife photos

Today’s photos come from reader Todd Martin, with a variety of shots taken in Taiwan. Todd’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to the Republic of China (aka Isle Formosa or more commonly Taiwan) and realized I had enough photos for another Readers Wildlife Photos post. Taiwan is a populous country, but thanks to the mountainous terrain (which covers about 70% of the island) there is quite a bit of natural beauty and opportunities for hiking (assuming one can bear the hot, humid climate).

These first two photos are Formosan rock macaques (Macaca cyclopis). They seem peaceful and coo softly to one another when eating, but don’t let that fool you. They can be quite aggressive and there are signs warning people not to interact with them, which I deemed to be pretty solid advice.

In the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area we climbed the many stairs found on the Tashan Trail to the summit of Mount Data only to find the peak (and its purported views) enveloped in a thick fog. Fortunately, there were quite a few of these Formosan Laughing Thrushes (Trochalopteron morrisonianum) there to greet us, which we dubbed our ‘consolation bird’:

On the way back down we were thrilled to encounter this beautiful male Mikado Pheasant (Syrmaticus mikado). The birds are considered endangered, but the good news is that their numbers have increased from about 5,000 in 1986 to 10,000 today:

I’m not much of a birder, so I rarely know what I’m looking at until I have a chance to look it up later so I referred to these birds as ‘skinny egrets’. In actuality, they are Eastern Cattle Egrets (Ardea coromanda) and were pretty common in Taiwan and we often saw them poking about grassy areas looking for insects:

One final bird is this (not very good cell phone photo) of a Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). Their habitat is wetlands, but this sophisticated fellow was hanging out in front of the Taiwan National Museum.

I was pleased to get a photo of this Green Metalwing Damselfly (Neurobasis chinensis) because they’re pretty quick and don’t hold still for long. That is … until I got home and saw the full-sized image, which looks like something designed by H.R. Giger for a Ridley Scott movie:

This is a female Stag Beetle (I’m guessing Lucanus datunensis) that I only just avoided stepped on. Thank goodness for quick reflexes, I don’t think the resulting crunch would have been good for either of us:

As an island, Taiwan has a lot of coast to explore and on the south coast we happened upon this Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas). I could see this one under the water but had to wait about 10 minutes for it to surface to get this (albeit mediocre) photo:

The following are some reasonably interesting plants we encountered.

Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia):

Flossflower (Ageratum houstonianum) an invasive species:

Blue Lotus (Nymphaea nouchali):

Ferns (Polypodiopsida, though I’m afraid I don’t know specifically which ones):

Some sort of Morning Glory (Ipomoea):

 

Finally … I’ve seen tandem bicycles and bicycles equipped with kid seats, but this is the first time I’ve seen one with a perch. These lovely Rosy-faced Lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) were out for a spin along the coast and seemed pretty pleased to be doing so.