Hi all,
I am a temporary resident on Lamma island. My wife and I live on Hung shing yea beach. I walk up to the hills in the sok kwu wan direction and then off to the left up the side of those small mountains that have vague tracks.

I am a total beginner in hiking up mountains, or in my case hills... I spent a few hours walking up and down different hills and as i get to the peaks I notice the eagles fly closer to me and scare me away . Will they attack ?

any thoughts would be helpfull as I enjoy the workout that climbing the hills gives me...

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Age is mind over matter, if you dont mind, it doesn't matter

The birds are black kites - they do look rather fine as they swoop around looking for bits of rubbish, but so far nobody has been carried off and devoured. (Seriously, they pose no threat to humans - it's much more dangerous living on the beach, I would have thought).

You can see some fine pictures of black kites in flight on the flora and fauna forum on this website.

Hahahaha, that's a first even for these forums with over 50,000 messages so far!

I love hiking in the hills, trying to reach all the highest hilltops of all of Lamma Island (almost completed), but I've never been worried so far about our Black-eared Kites or other birds attacking me. Getting close to them on hilltops is one of the many joys of getting up there in the first place.

Has anybody on Lamma ever been "attacked" by a bird on a hill, or anywhere else for that matter?

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A former member, whose name is best unmentioned, told a chilling tale of being threatened by these birds as he was swimming in the pond in the old quarry.

I believe he was also stalked by a yeti on Mt Stenhouse, but that's another story.

hahahahahahah

I'm no expert, but if the kites nest at ground level (as in, on the side of a hill) is it not possible they may swoop down on hikers to protect eggs/young? Although I will agree that the worst you'd come away would be a scratch or two.

I've heard about a certain lammarite who got attacked by cetipedes a few years ago... I even thought his name was lamma-gung :p

I've not suffered any physical attack, but have been chased off the tiny Island (Luk Chau) by stray dogs when I tried to land my kayak there for lunch.

He's not the only one. I've been woken up in the middle of the night by a sharp pain in the chest, to find a centipede had crawled into bed and given me a jab.

Centipedes and mosquitos are the greatest risks here. Dogs are sometimes threatening, but rarely actually take a bite.

Ouch, Alan. There really is no way of stopping those buggers from getting into your house.

BTW, I need to en-bigganate the font size on my monitor. Somehow I thought Lamma Gung said



Turns out he wanted to know if we've been attacked by birds anywhere else ... Well, I've always been telling my friends, "mosquito is the state-bird of Lamma..."

I wouldn't be too complacent about those birds. Shortly after Anonymous Guy's shots a few days ago, this black kite suddently had a change of mood and I was lucky enough to get a quick shot with my mobile phone as it snatched two unfortunate fishermen from the harbor.

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I did not have sex with that woman!

ok hahahah funny guys, thanks for the response and knowing that, I wont worry about the birds...

I just noticed that many of them would come my way as I reached the peak, and thought they were protecting chicks etc...

I will try again soon, and take my chances

thanks all

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Age is mind over matter, if you dont mind, it doesn't matter