Yeah, you can see them pretty easily near lakes or rivers in Taipei.
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That’s a cow. You may need to get your prescription renewed. 
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Yup, I’ve seen them - I knew they were here. It’s more that I was just searching online for information about great blue herons, which I thought I’d seen in Taipei before, because some of the herons I’ve seen are huge, but apparently I was wrong. (Or maybe not? Most information has Great Blue Heron as just in the Americas; they’re not listed in A Field Guide to the Birds of Taiwan. But these pictures are supposedly great blue herons in Taipei. So perhaps I’m not wrong.) However, I suck at ID’ing birds!
Case in point was an early visit to Taipei, when I was still living in Tainan, and I saw a black-crowned night heron under a bridge and remarked to my wife “WTF is a penguin doing here?!” (Half-jokingly. But only half.)
(Image source here, and it makes me feel a bit better.)
Greatest bird disappointment remains discovering the sacred ibis is invasive. They look so cool! When I first saw them, I thought, “Wow, the wonderful exotic birds of the Far East!” And they’re just as friggin’ native as I am.
Very retroactive bird of a day back in December: a Formosan magpie flying around campus. Gorgeous birds. Ah, isn’t it great to see beautiful nature so nearby? Oh look, it’s caught a frog. And that frog is … screaming? … as the Formosan magpie kills it. A seriously disturbing noise. Doesn’t seem real - this dying frog is making sounds like when you slowly deflate a balloon by stretching out the opening. (Was this noise actually coming from the, er, deflation of an inflated frog?) And it’s still making the sounds. And still, twenty seconds later. Ah, the lovely peace of nature.
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Makes sense. Ducks and chickens taste horrible if you feed them a lot of fish.
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I have that book too. You can use it (heron, not the book, although that would be interesting) in a recipe for goose or pheasant.
Page 711: Pheasant stewed with Dried Fruits and Vinegar
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I just discovered that female falcons have eyelashes. Or patterning that looks like eyelashes.
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A pretty bird in any case. 
Minahs on my block. Lately an unwanted common magpie has been nosing around the block, but they are vigilant. Every day I hear their frenzied screeching and head to the balcony to watch them attacking it.
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Pics or it didn’t happen!
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Oops. Alternate spelling
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I wonder if it escaped the wrath of the hive…
I get the feeling he (or she) can fly a lot faster, so probably yeah.
But it’s carrying a big honeycomb, so I guess it depends on its species.
African or European?
A similar question was proposed in the well-known debate, (ref Arthur, French soldiers, et al, 932AD, in the publication “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), but unfortunately they never reached a definitive conclusion experimentally. So the question remains open and available for future research.
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Blue magpies are attacking students at CCU. So jealous. 
https://news.ebc.net.tw/news/living/259846?from=webrelated_e&utm_source=webrelated_e
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Saw one of those when coming out of the hospital after my shot. I consider it a good omen, as I have never seen one before up close.
It did not attack people but remained too close! Certainly not fearful of humans.
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