Exploring Lantau (1 Viewer)

Saturday will be another day away from Lantau - but with good reason. I'll be joining the Jebsen Eagles Team in the WWF Hong Kong 2014 Big Bird Race - the world's longest-running bird race. Others - especially in the UK - started earlier, but none has been going so long or raised so much money as the Hong Kong event - since 1984!

There is potted history on the WWF website here, but even more important I'd love your sponsorship for this event in order to help WWF continue to manage WWF as a world class site for Black-faced Spoonbill, Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Nordmann's Greenshank and other highly sought after and wonderful birds. Should you be interested, please click on the link below.

https://apps.wwf.org.hk/eng/donation.php?apcode=14EVP002&pkcode=9042

Many thanks!
Mike

P.S. Normal service on Lantau will be resumed shortly!

Fresh from the Bird Race on Saturday - click here for a full report on the race - I headed down to Pui O on an early morning short leave ticket to resume my Lantau birding. I wasn't disappointed.

Even before arriving at Pui O I jammed a White's Thrush from the bus as it was passing a picnic site located right next to the road. This is the second in my series of "Thrushes from Buses" which began last winter with a fine Dusky Thrush seen several times from the bus to the airport. This bird turned out to be the precursor of a very good day for White's Thrush - at one stage I had three different individuals of this spectacular bird were visible on the grassland at the western edge of Pui O! By sitting close in under the hedge I also picked up at least four Grey-backed Thrushes and two Chinese Blackbirds, plus a lovely male Daurian Redstart and a dozen Silky Starlings and a pair of Black-collared Starlings feeding in a fruiting tree.

While I was lurking under the hedge a distinctive "chip" behind and above me was eventually tracked down and confirmed as a female Chinese Grosbeak. This led me to explore the stream where a Pale-legged / Sakhalin Leaf Warbler had just finished its morning ablutions and was busy drying itself off. The stream also held a couple of Red-flanked Bluetails and as I emerged from the woods a handsome Black-winged Cuckooshrike was busily hunting through the branches of the large trees by the pump house, a Pallas's Leaf Warbler provided an exercise in photographic humility as I struggled to get a decent shot of it, and a female Verditer added some colour the scene.

The Brown Shrike was again hunting in its favoured spot along the path to Private Parts, and most significantly there were four Buff-bellied Pipits picking over the wet turf in the buffalo fields with half a dozen Red-throated Pipits, a couple of Richard's Pipits and a dozen OBPs. These seem to be the first records for Lantau, except for rumours of a bird seen in the late 80s by a teenage Dylan and two seen on the airport golf course which, strictly-speaking, is on Chek Lap Kok Island and not part of Lantau.

MKinHK said:

Should you be interested, please click on the link below.

https://apps.wwf.org.hk/eng/donation.php?apcode=14EVP002&pkcode=9042

Many thanks!
Mike

Click to expand...

Donation made Mike. BTW your link to the Bird Race is missing, I'd like to read that.

Many thanks Kevin!

The report can be found here:

http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=2916586&postcount=8


Cheers
Mike

PS while I'm here - a proper record shot of the Buff-bellied Pipit.

The first day of the holiday I headed off to Tai O but instead of doing the valley headed south along the coast towards Yi O. The day started well with good numbers of Grey Herons (33), Little Egrets(35), Black-crowned Night Herons (10) and three or four Great Egrets in the mangroves in the early morning light.

The path to Yi O proved to be tougher as, after a very friendly male Japanese Thrush fed directly above me in a fruiting tree, every other thrush and rustle in the undergrowth seemed to be just out of sight behind a tangle. I did eventually pick up a couple of Grey-backed Thrushes and a White's Thrush - what a good winter it's been for this species - plus five Daurian Redstarts and a Red-flanked Bluetail.

In retrospect it was a bit better than that - I had brief views of an Emerald Dove flying away down the path and heard another giving its rather deep call, thee Mountain Tailorbirds called in different spots, a Mountain Bush Warbler showed briefly, but three different Manchurian/Japanese Bush Warblers did not, and a Red-billed Blue Magpie perched briefly in a pine 40 metres above me on the hillside.

After having Heuglin's Gulls from my watchpoint at the Magic Roundabout on two days during the week I was chuffed to find another flock of 96 Black-headed Gulls feeding in the flotsam trails a few hundred metres offshore. They winter in their thousands a short distance away in Deep Bay, but these were my first on Lantau, where they are very much a local rarity.

The reeds in Yi O brought my Dusky Warbler total up to seven, and also held a couple of Black-faced Buntings, a calling Siberian Rubythroat and seven Olive-backed Pipits.There were also five Chestnut Bulbuls in the fungi shui woodland here.

On the way back a White-throated Kingfisher perched on a pole out in the bay, a black-billed male Common Kingfisher in the river that comes down from Yi O waterfall and, best of all, a Black-capped Kingfisher feeding from the rocks just off the path made for a nice finale before my walk back to Tai O.

Cheers
Mike

PS a Collared Scops Owl was calling at Discovery Bay between 5:00 and 5:30 as I was getting up

Nice start to the holiday. I haven't really ever seen Black-crowned Herons in a group before. Is that typical (or typical winter behavior)? I have a mental image of types of herons/egrets that might be found in groups and those which will always be individuals, but maybe that just has to do with the size of the population... Are those youngsters with adults?

Nice 3 kingfisher outing and fun to see the pic of the kingfisher on the rocks too. Happy New Year!

Thanks Gretchen. The Night Herons certainly roost communally in Hong Kong . I've twice seen this group together shortly after dawn and once flying up into the trees where they roost. They brown ones are indeed the young birds.

Yesterday I went back to give the Shaolin Valley for the first time since the first week of January. I stopped to count the herons roosting in the mangroves. The Grey Herons and Little Egrets were gone, but there were now 12 Black-crowned Night Herons on the far corner of the marsh.

Looking across towards the Shaolin Valley from the jetty a quartet of Red-billed Blue Magpies were silhouetted in a bush high up on the slope above the valley.

The valley itself was quieter - three or four Grey-backed Thrushes, a White's Thrush, a philippensis Blue Rock Thrush and a Japanese Thrush topped the bill, with a couple of Chinese Grosbeaks and a quartet of Oriental Turtle Doves flushed away from an unseen threat.

Higher up the slope a Siberian Rubythroat coughed out its distinctive call, another Russet Bush Warbler began zee-bitting and a Bright-capped Cisticola perched high on a bare twig to call. Two Black-faced Buntings were less obliging and had to be winkled out of the deep grass.

The only other highlight was a couple of Chinese White Dolphins travelling north up the coast.

Cheers
Mike

There is a massive colony of BCN Herons that arrive at Shanghai Zoo to nest every year. I am talking about hundreds !

Congrats again on the Dolphins Mike !

Thanks for the comments on the Black-crowned Herons - I'll just have to look for chances to see them in more than singles!

Frogfish said:

There is a massive colony of BCN Herons that arrive at Shanghai Zoo to nest every year. I am talking about hundreds !

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Also, the currently dried lake in Nanhui. Night Herons show up jus right @ the time of dusk and perched oddly in those tiny water plants. Again, those are hundreds of night herons.

Congrats on the Black-headed Gull Mike. Back in India, i thought those were big birds then Pallas's Gulls showed up what big gulls are like. After arriving in Shanghai, i know what is a big gull looks like. o

Thanks Dev

I did some background reading. It seems like Black-headed Gulls away from Mai Po are a good indicator of sh*t in the water. There used to be thousands in the West Lamma Channel when Hk simply pumped its untreated crap into the sea there - and there was a nasty slick of crud in the water on the day the gulls showed up. Anyway a tick's a tick (Lantau tick) so I'll take it!


Today I went to Shui Hau - a very shallow bay with a mix of mudflat, mangroves and marshy coppices. It sounds like it should be heaving with birds, but although it delivered a few goodies today, it again felt like there should be much more, especially in the coppices.

To start with there were - 25 Oriental Turtle Doves at a roost in some stunted old trees were as many as I've seen together for a very long time. But the passerines were limited to a couple of Cinereous Tits, 15 Olive-backed Pipits and a gang of Masked Laughingthrushes. Where were the Bluetails and Rubythroats, thrushes buntings, warblers, snipe etc etc? Odd indeed.

As I emerged onto the shoreline a couple of Black-capped Kingfishers were a nice surprise - they have grown increasingly scarce in HK over the last 20 years, so seeing two at a ingle site was a real pleasure. I also picked up the first of what turned out to be 14 Kentish Plovers on the mudflats. I checked carefully to see if any could be strung into Swinhoe's Plover, but they were all too dark. The only other waders were a three Common Sandpipers scattered across the site.

The highlight of the day was finding a magnificent Bonelli's Eagle dismantling an egret on a sandbar at the mouth of the creek. I snapped a couple of poor long range shots but badly fluffed my approach and the eagle departed with its prey to the far side of the bay to finish its meal. Hong Kong supports three or four pairs of this fine eagle.

Other bits and pieces included a couple of Dusky Warblers and a female Daurian RedstartaGrey Heron and a couple of unsurprisingly nervous Little Egrets in and around the mangroves, and three Cattle Egrets watching a couple of male water buffalos locking horns in a pre-mating season trial of strength.

After 20 minutes of squelching around the pretty-much bird-free coppices I knocked Shui Hau on the head and headed for a much birdier Pui O.There were no fireworks here, but It was imply a pleasure to be in a site with a good range and good numbers of farmland species.

I always enjoy the Crested Mynas and Black-necked Starlings, accompanied today by a solitary Silky Starling, that loiter on and around the water buffalo and their attending Cattle Egrets, and today the first Barn Swallows - five elegantly long-tailed adults - flicked over the marsh as a first hint of spring. Hopefully they will do OK in the cold front that will arrive in force over the next couple of days.

Other Pui O stalwarts included four or five Magpie Robins, a couple of male Chinese Blackbirds, slimmer and longer tailed than the Crested Mynas, three taivana Yellow Wagtails and twice as many leucopsis White Wagtails, three Grey Herons, half a dozen each of Swintail and Fantail Snipe, a Black-billed Magpie and three or four pairs of Large-billed Crows. Two male Daurian Redstarts added some colour and the Brown Shrike remained loyal to the same small patch of back beach scrub in front of the casuarinas.

The best birds were the four Buff-bellied Pipits I'd seen back in January. they took some picking out as there were plenty of OBPs, a couple of rather vocal Richard's Pipits and at least one Red-throated Pipit that were also picking carefully through the wet grass. The only new bird - apart from the swallows - was an Asian Brown Flycatcher sallying out from perches at the edge of the marsh, but the real pleasure was in the general birdiness of one of Hong Kong's few remaining freshwater marsh/grassland habitats.

Cheers
Mike

After a week away for work in Malaysia I was happy to get back to the Lantau coalface both yesterday and this morning.

Yesterday Carrie and I went for an evening walk at Pui O. It was pretty grey and chilly but there was a Kentish Plover on the beach, three Common Sandpipers on the river and the Brown Shrike and half-a-dozen Barn Swallows were hunting the beachfront scrub.

That apart it was pretty quiet, with three Chinese Blackbirds and 104 Silky Starlings on the buffalo fields being the rather muted highlights.

This morning A late start got me to Tai O for 10am and as I crossed onto the island I immediately started seeing birds - with the first three of seven Pallas's Leaf Warblers in the big banyans above the market and a couple more by the fire station.

I tried a new way into the valley - clambering up the slope to the right of the Shaolin Centre and following the path in from there. This delivered another Pallas's Leaf Warbler and the first of two Bush Warbler sp. plus a very showy Wryneck and a Rufous-tailed Robin that popped up on a branch above my head, giving such an unusual view of its finely scalloped breast that I thought I was looking at something completely different until the penny dropped.

Top bird of the day was unquestionably the Common Rosefinch - grotty as ever, but my first, and possibly the first ever, on Lantau. Dull as its plumage was it did have the grace to twice perch long enough for a couple of hurried shots, and allow me to blot out the memory of the last time I had this bird in Lam Tsuen when it photo-bombed a shot of Chinese Blackbird and Bulbuls back in Lam Tsuen and I never realised it had been there until I later saw it in the photo.

There were a few of the usual suspects in the valley, with one particular Red-flanked Bluetail and a superb adult male Grey-backed Thrush showing superbly and allowing me to fire off a few more shots. A solitary Barn Swallow was my first here this year.

A postscript.

As I got onto the ferry to go to church that evening first one and then four Black-tailed Gulls made a surprising appearance at the Discovery Bay Pier

Cheers
Mike

Love the CM shot Mike - surrounded by all that red (s)he looks great !

I like it too Kevin, but elsewhere in HK (actually back in Lam Tsuen at Kadooie Farm) these flowers have been attracting Mrs Gould's Sunbirds!

http://www.hkbws.org.hk/BBS/viewthread.php?tid=20826

Cheers
Mike

A walk with my mother, who is visiting from the UK, at Pui O produced an ofdd mix of birds, but started well as the first Pacific Swift of the year flashed over heading north just as we entered the buffalo fields.

A fine collection of five Chinese Blackbirds called and shoed throughout the day and a Grey-backed Thrush and the first of three male and two female Daurian Redstarts was feeding on the edge of the marsh.

The highlight here was a flyover White-bellied Sea Eagle at the mouth of the river, but it was nice to see a good variety, albeit in reduced numbers, of the usual marshland winterers, headlined by a single Buff-bellied Pipit and at least four White-throated Kingfishers and a Common Kingfisher

Other good birds were a Pacific Reef Egret on the yellow floats of the shark net and a juvenile Black-headed Gull seen from the ferry heading back to Discovery Bay from Mui Wo, which was a nice follow-up to the four birds seen without bins around the DB ferry pier last Sunday.

Best of all was - at last - my first Lantau Collared Crow! Also seen from the kaito It was perched on a power line and just within reach of the trusty SX50 at max zoom.

The other pix are a new addition to my Pui O crab list - a blue swimmer - a delicacy throughout the S China Sea, a dog in happy control of life and a first contribution to a Lantau scarecrow collection. The crab reminds me that the one from Shui Hau a few weeks ago is a Soldier Crab Dotilla mycteroides

Cheers
Mike

The scarecrows of Lantau... should be interesting - the first specimen certainly is. Sounds like the birds did okay for your mother, certainly a great variety from redstarts to sea eagle. I've not seen a collared crow yet, and your picture makes me anxious to see them. I do really like corvids....

Lovely birds Mike, especially the Collared Crow, that's one good looking Corvid, good job by your SX50 ;-). Me and Kevin had good fun with the scarecrows in Yancheng. They did a pretty good job as the Cranes found the scarecrows very protective. So what's your next Lantau target?

This morning, after a couple of days of wondering I was able to confirm that the four Black-tailed Gulls seen from the Discovery Bay ferry 10 days ago are part of a flock of at least 30 that have been hanging out on the islets opposite Disney.

I've just used Google Earth measure the distance from my home to the nearest outcrop - its 2.5km! - and they are still identifiable by the black tail band on the adult and the pale saddle on the otherwise dark juveniles.

Cheers
Mike

The DB Islets' Black-tailed Gulls are still very much in residence - 30-odd were again seen here from the ferry both yesterday evening and today, along with another 20 or so Heuglins and Black-tailed Gulls scattered throughout the harbour.

These birds seem to be part of a generally good year for gulls away from Mai Po - with some 200 Black-tailed Gulls seen from the Macau Ferry south of Lantau on Saturday and another dozen Heuglins with a couple of Black-tailed also seen at lunchtime from the Magic Roundabout, plus few other odds and sods elsewhere in HK in such sites as Starling Inlet.

Yesterday I walked from home to the Trappist Haven Monastery and on to Silvermine Bay with my Mum - who yomped the full 8km without batting an eyelid! there were not many birds but we did see three Daurian Redstarts and a couple of Blue Whistling Thrushes as well as hearing lots of Fork-tailed Sunbirds around the monastery. I did also hear a couple of Asian Stubtails and a probable Japanese Thrush, but at this time of year things are pretty slow as we wait for the spring passage to kick off.

Cheers
Mike

Fell asleep on the bus on the way home last night, went four stops past and while waiting for the bus coming back a "chrieeek" . . . "chrieeek" unseen overhead signalled my first Savanna Nightjar on Lantau.

Cheers
Mike