ENG-1947 — Page 181

Porcupines are resident both on Hong Kong island and on the mainland. A Bandicoot Rat has recently been recorded from both island and mainland. There are no other native rodents, largely because of the number of snakes to be found.

A shrew, closely related to the House Shrew of India, takes the place of house mice. Mice may occasionally be seen; they are not indigenous, nor are the different varieties of grey and black rats which are unfortunately only too common. Rats also

are numerous.

The most primitive mammal is the Scaly Anteater or Pangolin which is on both island and mainland; it lives on termites, ants, grubs, etc. This animal and the Otter are protected by law.

Of the marine animals little is known; whales, porpoises and dolphins may be seen by yachtsmen and occasionally from the mainland. A Dugong, the first recorded from the district for very many years, was caught near Hong Kong in 1940 or 1941 and brought to the island, photographed and stuffed. Two were captured on the west coast of Formosa in 1932 but there are apparently no records for the mainland.

Birds.

The Colony of Hong Kong is a good place for birds; in all approximately two hundred kinds have been identified and in a single day as many as sixty-nine different species have been recognized. There are many places in the world with a richer avifauna but two hundred should provide ample scope for most people. One reason why Hong Kong is such a good place is that the different seasons bring different birds and monotony is thus avoided. There are the resident species that remain with us the whole year; there are the winter visitors which arrive from the far north in the autumn and return thither in the spring; there are the summer visitors which arrive from Burma, India, Malaya and the Philippines in the spring and fly south again in the autumn, and there are the passage migrants. This last group contains those birds which fly over the Colony in spring on their way north and those which cross the Colony on their way south in the autumn. Some of these passage migrants stop in the Colony for a few days en route to rest their weary bodies or to fill their empty crops, and thus there is always the chance on a spring or autumn day of observing a bird new or rare to the Colony. Birds follow regular migration routes but the route followed on the spring migration is not necessarily the one followed in the reverse direction in the autumn. In Hong Kong this is another factor which adds to the variety and wealth of bird life, for a bird seen in spring on its migration north may not pass through the Colony on its way south in autumn when related or even quite different kinds take its place.

A few of the resident species and many of our winter visitors are closely related to the familiar and common English birds. Thrushes are represented in Hong Kong by the resident

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