Port Klang Views #5 - Up The Mouth Of Klang River.

There are brightly colored buoy to mark shallow water of the heavily silted River Klang which opened out to the sea off Port Klang slightly further down from this point. Bagan Hailam or Hailam Village is in the background. The storm clouds continued to darken and the wind was picking up.

This is how the Hailam folks lived, wooden houses in stilts among mangrove trees. However, amenities are quite basic and hygienic conditions are lacking.

We headed towards the bridge that connects the mainland to Tanjong Harapan and North Port over the Klang River. I had fished there before as a kid and usually caught nothing except puffer fish. Still it was fun in those days with no computer games. I cycled all the way from Port Klang because all I could afford is pedal power. And I did not even have a fishing rods, just line and a hook and dead prawns stolen from the dining table.

Along the way, we saw this white stork taking off in a graceful flight.

Then we saw more of its friends, some fishing among the mud, some perching on the trees. These two were gliding down to join in the fun. These storks are not from this part of the world. They are migratory birds that flew here during the winter months. Soon they will once again disappear back to where they came from. And we will miss them.

We saw this boat abandoned in the middle of the river. It must have been anchored there for some time. Wonder who owned it and why did they left it there to rot. Why don't they just scrape it? At least something can be salvaged from it.

There were more docking bays for boats.

Construction cranes criss-crossing the sky.

We did not reach as far as the bridge. Just before it, we turned back and headed back to Port Klang. As we turned away from there, I noticed an interesting sight. Two crows were trailing a sea hawk as if attacking it. They then did aerial acrobatics with sometimes the hawk in front and something behind. This went on for some times. I was not sure if they were playing or who is attacking whom.

It would have been interesting to see the conclusion of their aerial dance and to see if this was indeed a play or an attack. If any bird is the aggressor, the crows look more like the aggressor than the hawk!

One of the reason I said that was because much later in the trip, I saw a crow actually chasing a much bigger stork. These Port Klang crows are a real terror! Klang and Port Klang are quite badly infested with these noisy but clever birds. However, because of their numbers and dirty habits of picking at rubbish, they are pretty much a nuisance. The local authorities have tried various methods but none has proved really effective against these smart birds that can sense danger, evaluate traps and loudly warned each other. If one bird is injured, all the other crows will fly around in circle above the injured bird but always out of range of the pellet guns. I had seen them taunt hunters by diving at them and then swerving away just beyond the gun's range. The hunters knowing this always work in pair with one hidden away but the crows will soon get wise to any ruse. You can fool them some of the time but you cannot fool them all the times.

To be continued...