Butterfly in the Ming public park

Butterfly in the Ming public park

Huge black butterflies glide across the park for 8 months of the year. They've just come back and are all over campus!

Carp pool at Heilongtan, Kunming

We went to Heilongtan, a beautifully calm Daoist temple in the outskirts of Kunming. One thing they had was a carp pool. This in itself is barely worth mention - every tourist site in China worth its salt has a large pool of carp, and a sleeping person who will sell you a modestly sized bag of special fish food for a kuai or two. Anyway, there were loads here, and they were all very greedy fish. We decided to empty a whole bag into the pool, far away from where everyone else was feeding the fish, and film the results! Like chickens, fish are attracted to others who are eating, and seem to be able to detect it from quite far away - just look at the video!

Cute tricks with chicks

The chicks are growing! They love to sit by anything warm, as they're used to keeping hot beneath their mother. We've called them Soup and Curry. Chickens - even newly hatched baby chickens - peck at the ground constantly; as soon as one of them find something, the other runs over. So, if you tap on the floor lightly, like a beak pecking, they'll hear and run. (Press the play button in the bottom-left of the video to get it going quickly)




Once you've got their attention they won't let go!

Chicks

Yesterday, in Fuzi Miao, there was a lady with a polystyrene box filled up with baby chicks. We bought two (and got bulk discount!). They're barely bigger than eggs and need to be kept warm, and are only a few days old. And cute!