seasonal changes

Noticed a couple of things over the last few days that may indicate a change in the seasons.

Firstly, i heard a bat noise - a loud high pitched tone - i haven't heard one for a while (a few months) and assume they must be migratory and have just returned.

Secondly, i saw the first fireflies of the season last night. There seems to be two kinds here - an autumn one (larger, with a green light) - and the spring ones (yellow light).

I did see a few fireflies in the last week as well. I haven't heard the bats so much, but I have noticed more gecko activity and other insect presence in the hut recently, including a centipede that had the misfortune of finding himself in my wife's hair the other morning. I don't know if centipedes have hearing, but if so, he certainly lost his via my wife's scream just before I squished him.

We have found that these things, for some reason, like to hang out on the clothes we throw somewhere overnight.

One other sign that spring is coming is that I'm back at work. Damn. The good news is that spring semester is always a happier one. I like spring on a university campus.

The thing that i thought was a bat actually isn't a bat - it's a bird. Like a cross between a small hawk and an owl. I got a pretty close look at one tonight - they usually come out on dusk and stay active for an hour or so after dark. They have a high pitched, single note call, which made me think it was a bat. Now that i have seen one at close range at night, i realize that i have seen them during the day as well. They have a kind of eratic style of flying and usually stay close to the ground and won't fly far if disturbed during the day time, but at night they are our patrolling the airways, presumably looking for insects. Their color is grey, black and white. I assume they are permanent residents, but they only seem to make the call at certain times of the year. Anyway, they are out in full force tonight.

I'm not sure if I've heard those but it sounds like what I saw the other day when we were looking at some property in your neck of the woods. They would be on the ground and would take off flying very close to the ground when I approached. They'd fly ten or fifteen meters then go back into the brush. And there were a lot of them! I mean I must have startled at least eight or nine in a fairly small area, but not all at once. They wouldn't move, and I wouldn't see them, until I was maybe two meters away from them. From my description it might sound like I saw some sort of pigeon or pheasant, but it was neither of those.

I'm not sure if I've heard what you're hearing, but we do hear what I've always assumed was an owl, though I haven't heard it in a few nights. I'd really like to get a pair of binoculars because I'm constantly seeing new birds

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Yeah, that's them, exactly as you described. I think i probably mistook them for doves the first few times, but now i have realized they are actually reasonably common. And yes, in pretty big groups. However, they seem to be nocturnal, and at night their behaviour is quite different. fairly sure now that they're called savanna nightjars. There's an interesting story on them in the Taipei Times - apparently they were considered to be on the verge of extinction - now they're a safety hazard at airports. Also says their call can reach 90 decibells - people have started complaining, which is a bit rich in noisy old Taiwan:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/01/18/2003463775

Here's a link to a video that includes their mating sound - you can check and see if you've heard it.
http://ibc.lynxeds.com/video/savanna-nightjar-caprimulgus-affinis/one-perched-rock-dry-...

Fascinating. My first thought when I read your initial posting was that these were Savanna Nightjars according to your description, but I then figured they weren't because these birds make a series of calls, not just isolated bursts. They call as they're flying. I was living in Pingtung when they arrived en masse, and they made quite a stir. One year they didn't exist, the next they were everywhere and at night they were really, really noisy. (They came out at dusk and were noisy for about two hours.) As the Taipei Times article you cite points out, they were somewhat of a disturbance, but, to me, a welcome one. They were hard to see at night, but eventually I got good at spotting them. The trick is to look ahead of where the sound is coming from, sort of like fighter jets.

Their call though is a series of short bursts of high pitched calls, not just one sound... or at least it's a series of calls a few seconds apart. If that was a nightjar you've been hearing, I'm certain we haven't heard them here because I would have recognized it. It's very distinctive.

The nightjar call is a bit like a nighthawk I've heard in the US. It's sort of like a chirping sound. You might be in an area where this bird is moving into. That would explain why we haven't heard or seen it here. As I said, it appeared in Pingtung City literally overnight. And why is that?

There has been a lot of seasonal activity in the last couple of weeks. Apart from the nightjars, there has been:
1. large brown hornets reappeared (the ones that don't seem to be dangerous) plus the odd tu fong and hu tou fong
2. started seeing (dead) snakes on the road up to my place
3. first lightning (though way up the north coast)
4. green Japanese pigeons have returned
5. bamboo chicken has started calling again
6. common deciduous trees blossoming (light purple flower)
7. occasional southerly - though dong bei ji is still the prevalent wind

I was certainly noticing more seasonal changes before this current cold spell, the most noticeable being a general increase in insect and reptile activity, particularly geckos and whatever those enormous, house-dwelling spiders are. I'm curious to see if our 'house' will be infested with those horned lizards when the warm weather hits because I found some fairly large eggs a few months ago. They're not snake eggs. I'm sure of that because I picked one up, wondering what it was, and after I mistakenly broke it a little creature jumped out and looked around in a dumbfounded manner. He definitely wasn't a gecko. He was either one of the smallish horned, dinosaur guys or one of the long (they get well over a foot here) striped fellows.

Regardless, here's a rundown from this neck of the woods on your observations:

1. large brown hornets reappeared (the ones that don't seem to be dangerous) plus the odd tu fong and hu tou fong

I'm not sure if this is the type we've been seeing or not. At least one type has reappeared here, and it's the same guy coming back every day. He hides out on the outside of our house.

2. started seeing (dead) snakes on the road up to my place

We saw a few of those over the winter, but we've seen no snakes, dead or alive, for a few weeks. I almost think one of not-our dogs got bitten by a non-poisonous snake recently though.

3. first lightning (though way up the north coast)

Yea, that was cool.

4. green Japanese pigeons have returned

Nope, haven't seen those, but we are hearing the nightjars more now, though I don't think that's a seasonal thing.

5. bamboo chicken has started calling again

I'm not even sure what they sound like.

6. common deciduous trees blossoming (light purple flower)

I think that's called a 'ku3 ling2'. They're beautiful, and I was told recently that some Taiwanese don't like to plant them because their name sounds too much like 'ke3 lian2'.

7. occasional southerly - though dong bei ji is still the prevalent wind

I'm absolutely blown away, pun entirely intended, by these changing winds. It's something I just never experienced on the west coast. I can literally see the winds shift from south to north or visa versa in the course of thirty minutes. Amazing.

Yeah, i forgot those big-assed spiders (huntsmen, i presume). They are supposedly harmless, and i have heard they eat cockroaches. There's also a story that they are dead relatives coming back for a visit. Whatever, you are right about them suddenly coming back onto the scene in the last couple of weeks - found a nest of them in my shed and there's another one living in the bathroom.

A couple of times i remember going down to the chookshed at night and (I think it's the same one) but you can actually see their eyes light up (as you probably know, spiders can have up to 6 or 7 eyes) - and there were a lot! Can't remember what time of year it was though when i saw that.

As for the nightjars, they seem strangely quiet tonight - not sure what's up with that coz they've been making a racket every night all night for the past few weeks. They've possibly moved onto somewhere else, or maybe they've all found mates.

I still maintain that their call qualifies as a 'seasonal' thing (we could exchange some invective about it if you like, a-la Forumosa). It is a mating call apparently rather than a territorial one, and i am assuming this is 'mating season', and i did record hearing them at virtually the exact same time in the last two years.

The common ring-necked pheasant was coming onto my property around this time as well and standing on a rock and making his call - also not a particarly pleasant sound, especially if you're not a natural early riser, but unfortunately he hasn't been back the last two years. I can still hear them occasionally, but not close-by. That mu dzao (or is it mung dzao - i hear different names for it), that very fast growing weed that's common here , can grow to about 3 metres tall and form an impenetrable forest if let go, and is a scourge to farmers - especially lazy ones like me who never properly address it - that weed is actually great habitat for several species of birds, especially ground nesters - as it gives them good protection from cats and dogs which inturn gives a few of the native carnivores that can penetrate it a bit of a hunting ground as well.

I'd say we're experiencing a seasonal change right now with this rain! Is this how the spring rains act here? Strong southernly wind, intermittent rain, etc. In Pingtung,it's more of a stationary drizzle punctuated by some steady rains. Interesting. Wish my porch was facing north.

I've heard people say that 'the rain never comes from the south', which is obviously not true coz it was coming from there today, though it was pretty light here - less than 2ml total throughout the day. I was away for most of the mei yu last year so i will be interested to see how it unfolds - technically, it shouldn't start until late April, so i am not quite sure what this is.

We had quite a bit of rain here. I'm guessing we're at the high end of the map below, getting at least 35-40mm, but it felt more like the 70+mm that Chenggong apparently got. We got some heavy showers in the late afternoon.

It was a wet day to be sure.

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Interesting that it was only a Taidong thing. Unfortunately, we still missed out here - nothing like what you got and no where near enough to fill the tanks - weird, coz w're only about 5km apart as the crow the flies.

You gotta get yourself a rain guage.

I'm not sure if this qualifies, but the crews were out today cutting back the trees in anticipation of typhoon season.

It definitely qualifies as does all animal or plant behaviour. We usually get a passing typhoon in May, so that's only a bit over a month away.

Had a weird thing happen with the mosquitoes on Fri night. Somehow they seemed to sense that a dong bei was coming coz the house exploded with mosquitoes a couple of hours before the wind change arrived - never seen so many inside - and no doors or windows left open. Assume they'd picked up something in the air that triggered the sheltering and feeding frenzy instincts.

Btw, that was a pretty decent wind. On my own Beaufort scale it was at the level where the deck chairs get blown off the the porch, and flip flops go missing.

We had a large pot outside with a heavy steel lid on it. The wind blew the lid off and took it a few meters into the weeds. Come to think of it we didn't see the cat for a day or two after that wind.

I heard what was unmistakably a wild pig tonight. I don't know if it was related to seasonal mating or getting caught in a trap, but I'd never heard it before.

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seasonal changes (General)