Sunday Morning Trip To Jingmian Reservoir (鏡面水庫)

This morning I didn't wake up until 6am, as I had dismissed my 4am alarm because it had interrupted some dream or other. I showered, dressed, had coffee and grabbed my kit before heading off out the door sometime before 7am. The plan was to get to somewhere I had never been before - the back end of Mingjing reservoir where the feeder river enters. On the way there, whilst driving through Zuozhen district I spotted an eagle perched on a dead tree overlooking several rows of banana trees and I immediately pulled over to take pictures...

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much closer than that - the bird took off before I could get to the other side of the banana trees up the hill.

When I arrived at the back of the little reservoir just after 8.30am I had well and truly missed the dawn, but the light was still good enough provided I kept it behind me and used a high F-stop. You can see the little river in the foreground of the picture - it was reduced to no more than a dried-up stream...

I drove up a little farmer's road on the higher ground to the north (to the right of that image above), in order to find a view looking south-westward around the reservoir's natural bend toward the upstream face of the dam. Unfortunately, the undergrowth was so dense that this was the best I could do...

Returning to the river's entry point into the reservoir to the east, I picked my way down the embankment to get a clearer view of just how low the water level in the river really was. There was also a lot of garbage along the south-eastern bank that seemed to have been dumped one piece at a time over several years. During the rainy season in the late summer months, the point at which I was standing to take the picture below would probably be submerged...

I did attempt to cross the river by jumping, but I found that there was too much moisture in the mud and I began to sink so, not having any sandals handy, I scrapped that idea and headed back around onto the main road (provincial highway 3) to revisit the reservoir's dam from the downstream side where the water treatment facilities are also located...

Much of the undergrowth that had previously occupied the area in front of the dam has long since been cut down. However, I didn't climb the hill to the dam to find out if they had also cut away those trees hindering access to the dam itself...

Looking up at the reservoir's unusually steep spillway...

And looking back from the spillway to the little bay and its' spillover exit underneath the bridge off to the left...

Upon leaving Mingjing reservoir, I stopped briefly by a sign post and discovered that I had been using the wrong name all along. Apparently the correct name is Jingmian reservoir (鏡面水庫).

I decided to head to Nanhua reservoir to see if I could spot any more eagles and to take some opportunistic shots before heading home. On the approach up the hill I noticed a smallish bird of prey float away behind a tree out of the corner of my eye. I rounded the bend in the hill, pulled over and scanned the fruit trees for the bird but couldn't find it. Then, just as I was about to jump back on the bike, I found it...

It was a little Sparrowhawk, as I confirmed when I zoomed in some of my shots to see the brown and white "jail stripes" across its' breast.

This is the first time I've ever caught a sparrowhawk in a series of close up shots...

The sparrowhawk seemed content to perch there and not move, but I decided to move on. No sooner had I gone 50 yards or less up the road when I found myself stopping again and turning around - I had noticed an odd shaped wooden post on top of an ivy-covered branch sticking up from the hillside of the adjacent fruit farm. Except I had the sneeky suspicion that it wasn't an "odd shaped wooden post" at all, and I was right...

Another of the crested serpent eagles. However, I was still too far away to get a really good shot so I went a little further down the road and briefly lobbed myself over the farmer's gate onto the path directly below the branch on which the eagle was perched. At first he didn't notice me because he was distracted by something off to his left...

But then he turned right around and glared directly at me...

I stood still and let him be, whilst I fired away with the camera. I had set the 250mm to automatic focus after being disappointed with some of my manual focus shots of the eagle at the back of Baihe reservoir on Friday. However, this was an object reminder of why I began to prefer shooting in manual in the first place - even though I aimed my focusing spot on the head of the eagle, the camera focused in on the branches just in front of the eagle rather than the eagle itself. Yes, this was why I long ago told myself to prefer manual focus for eagle shots...

I got a few photographs of him before he decided he'd had enough...

After he took off, he didn't stray far, choosing instead to soar on the thermals directly over the fruit farm...

I let him be and headed off along the main road to take pictures from the "scenic spot" along the rim of the southern hills overlooking Nanhua reservoir. I have previously taken much better shots from this point, but the key is to get here at dawn, and not, as I did this morning, get here at 10.30am...

Still, the light wasn't too bad even if the haze in the distance began to obscure the mountains furthest from view.