Hello 2013

I finally got a chance to take photos of birds again this morning. Woke up to the second day of 2013 with the brilliant song of Chinese Hwamei (Leucodioptron canorum) coming from outside the window. I poked my head out to see where the birds are and saw 2 of them hopping on the ground inside the bush below. I've never got a chance to photograph them nicely before, so I hurried to get my camera ready and waited for them to come out into the open. In the end, I managed to get few quite-acceptable shots of them before they moved away further inside the bush. I turned to my computer and minding my business until around 10 o'clock when I heard the song of it again. This time to my surprise, they were perching up on the tree just by my window! So here we go, a series of photos of this alien species and happy new year!

Chinese Hwamei (the Taiwanese subspecies has recently become a full species)

Interesting to see the dirty white patch in the centre of its belly

What a nice pair of spectacles it has

And here's the first series of shots that I took earlier in the morning when they were still feeding in the bush. The light was really poor since they were always staying in the shades, so I had to push ISO up to 800 which is not something that I like to do, but the images still look pretty fine though.

They looked a bit more plumpy than usual, probably because of the coldness?

In its natural habitat

Now venturing out into the smoking area!

Interesting to see it's picking up some kind of berry or probably seed

This tiny Japanese White-eye totally stole the scene! The Hwamei is feeding on the leafy ground behind.