Sixty hectares of managed wetland on the border with Shenzhen, built as ecological compensation and much better than that sounds.
The Wetland Park was created as ecological mitigation for the new town built at Tin Shui Wai, which took a substantial area of fish ponds and marsh. It opened fully in 2006, covers about 61 hectares, and adjoins the Mai Po marshes on Deep Bay.
The result is much better than compensatory landscaping usually manages.
The setting
Deep Bay is on the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, one of the world’s major migratory bird routes. Around 60,000 waterbirds winter in the bay, including a large share of the global population of the black-faced spoonbill, which numbers only a few thousand and was close to extinction in the 1980s.
Across the water, half a kilometre away, is Shenzhen — a city of 17 million that was a fishing town in 1979. The contrast between the reed beds in front of you and the skyline behind them is the point of the view.
What to do
Three bird hides on boardwalks over the mudflats and ponds, with telescopes.
Mangrove boardwalk through the intertidal zone — Hong Kong has eight mangrove species and they are all here.
Butterfly garden, dragonfly ponds and a stream walk.
The visitor centre has good galleries on wetland ecology worldwide, an indoor swamp, and a theatre.
Pui Pui, a saltwater crocodile found in the Shan Pui River in 2003 and captured after months of failed attempts that became a national entertainment, lives here in a purpose-built enclosure and is the park’s most famous resident.
Birds to look for
In winter: black-faced spoonbill, Eurasian curlew, pied avocet, great cormorant, black-winged stilt, and a large range of waders.
Year-round: kingfishers, egrets, herons, and the Chinese pond heron.
Take binoculars if you have them; the hides have scopes but they are shared.
Mai Po
The adjoining Mai Po Nature Reserve is managed by WWF Hong Kong and is a Ramsar site of international importance. It is not freely open — visits require a permit and are usually on a guided tour booked well in advance, because it sits within the closed border area.
If birds are your reason for coming to Hong Kong, arrange Mai Po. Otherwise the Wetland Park covers it.
Practicalities
Ticketed and inexpensive. Closed Tuesdays except public holidays.
West Rail to Tin Shui Wai, then Light Rail 705 to Wetland Park — about an hour from Central.
Allow three hours. There is a café. Insect repellent is worth having from April onwards.
More Parks & Outdoors
Dragon's Back
An eight-kilometre ridge walk on Hong Kong Island with the sea on both sides, forty minutes from Central.
Kowloon Park
Thirteen hectares on the site of a Victorian barracks, with flamingos, a maze and Sunday afternoons that belong to Hong Kong's domestic workers.