Walking on the Sai Kung waterfront can be dispiriting. So few birds. Last time I saw just one crested mynah and a couple of sparrows. No starlings, no herons, no swallows, not even a pigeon. “The Book of Birds” by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris further disheartens. The new book warns of “a great thinning of the skies . . . dawns and springs are quieter; the air emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is falling silent.” The book balances the joy and wonder of birdlife with the savage loss of species taking place across the natural world today. Almost 50 per cent of bird species are in decline.
Sixty years ago “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson warned of the powerful, negative effect humans have on the natural world. Our pesticides, our pollution, our utter thoughtlessness.
The school and car park occupy prime sites along the Sai Kung waterfront
Aggressive rewilding could be an answer. Tear down the Jockey Club golf carpark hogging the most scenic location in Sai Kung, move it a few hundred yards inland to the waste ground, demolish the Lee Siu Yam School and give its hundreds of kids a beautiful new modern school with vast playgrounds on the same waste land. Rewild the cleared area, plant scattered flower gardens, build winding paths through what will become when nature has done her thing a vast leafy garden with birds singing. Maybe the bees will come back.
If we don’t do these things . . .
Will we no longer see the brilliant plumage of a kingfisher diving into the waters of Sai Kung, will we no longer listen to the dawn chorus in the trees, will we no longer admire the long-tailed red-billed blue magpie?
“Hope is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all”
Emily Dickinson
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