Jiffy and Flowers (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

For a place that many people tend to think of as a concrete jungle, Hong Kong actually has an incredible amount of green areas and biodiversity.  About three quarters of its approximately 1,100 square kilometers of land is rural, not urban -- and around 40 percent in total are in country parks and nature reserves.  Additionally, within them can be found more than 3,300 varieties of flowering plants, 240 species of butterflies and myriad more wild critters than is often realized!

So it was only natural that very early on into my hiking explorations of Hong Kong, I got to focusing on the flora and fauna around me rather than just scenic landscape views (however impresive these could be) -- this not least because, as it so happens, I actually started my hiking in the summer, when flowers are in bloom and all kind of critters are out and about.

Although there are people who think that the winter is the best time to hike in Hong Kong as the humidity levels as well as temperature is lower then, there are occasions when I do look forward for those brighter (and invariably warmer) days with blue skies, and seeeing more color to the landscape courtesy of many a beautiful wild flower and critter -- with my often being unable to resist taking snaps of even the common varieties (including the melastoma flowers in the third photo from the top of this blog entry).

Pretty butterflies atop blooming flowers are a combination this shutterbug finds particularly hard to resist trying to take photos of -- note the word "trying" there because butterflies are such fluttery creatures, with certain ones seeming to be in perpetual motion, even when they're checking out a flower or two!  Put another way: you usually only have a jiffy to try to take your shot(s) -- and thus will exult whenever a photo turns out looking like the one at the top of my entry this week for Sandi's and Gattina's Photo Hunts!! ;b