Quaggy and Something red (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

I don't know whether it's the case with other participants in Sandi's Photo Hunt (or, for that matter, Gattina's) but I have to say that this week's theme word of quaggy was one whose definition I had to look up in a dictionary.  But once I realized that at least one of its synonyms was marshy, I was set!

This is because Hong Kong -- yes, Asia's World City! -- is home to the Mai Po Marshes, an approximately 393 hectare nature reserve that's part of the roughly 1,500 hectare Inner Deep Bay area in the northwest New Territories officially designated as a RAMSAR site.  And as it just so happens, I paid a visit to the Mai Po Nature Reserve earlier this year, during which I took a number of cool snaps!

The main attraction that day for the two friends I went to Mai Po with and myself were the birds.  And although it may not look it in the first photo (which was taken from one of the bird hides that we spent time in that day), we actually did end up seeing a pretty good number of avian creatures -- including the grey heron walking about in a quaggy area of the nature reserve -in this blog entry's middle photo.

On the other hand, I have to say that the day of our Mai Po excursion was a fairly gray one overall (though it also did yield glimpses of beautiful blue sky).  So much so that when I couldn't find any reds in the photos I took that afternoon!  So for Gattina's part of the meme, I went instead to the collection of photos I have from the nearby Hong Kong Wetland Park that includes a 60 hectare wetland reserve -- and also exhibits on wetland ecology that allow people to see up close what kind of plants and living things are to be found under water in the quaggy marshlands that, yep, turn out to include something(s) red rather than the more expected green and brown! :b