With the summer activity programmes over, it's up to parents to find ways to keep their children occupied at weekends. The Worldwide Fund for Nature's public tour of the Mai Po marshes is an educational outing for young and old.
Operating year-round at weekends and public holidays, the three-hour guided tours (in both English and Cantonese) offer a rare view of Hong Kong's most important wetland reserve, a designated restricted access area. The Mai Po marshes and Inner Deep Bay are a haven for migratory birds, with more than 55,000 waterbirds spending winter there each year.
The tour takes visitors through a variety of wildlife habitats. First are Hong Kong's last traces of the traditionally operated shrimp ponds (called gei wai), which use the fresh water from the Shenzhen River estuary to rear fish and shrimps.
The guide explains how the different eco-systems work. The strand of inter-tidal Kandelia mangroves has seedlings with buttress roots which can anchor in moving water. The 46-hectare reed bed is also home to mud skippers and fiddler crabs, which can be spotted when the tide is out.
Participants then enter the three-storey bird-watching tower to look at the seasonal migratory birds using binoculars. If you are lucky, you may see endangered species such as the Saunders' gull and black-faced spoonbill; the latter has a quarter of its total population in Hong Kong.
Next is a tour of the reserve's waterfowl collection. Numerous waterbirds, such as the Greylay goose and mandarin ducks, swim leisurely in the huge ponds. You can also visit the wildlife education centre to see videos detailing the history and wildlife in the reserve.