The week started off very quiet, with the Swintail Snipe popping up on the Eastern Tangle and a flash of a Black Drongo from the bus on Tuesday morning being the highlights in a hot and disappointingly bird less period. Other birds included up to four Richard's Pipits, a Sooty-headed Bulbul on Tuesday, and a very distant Yellow Wagtail on the golf course.
It also looks like the alboides x leucopsis White Wagtail has scored again. It was acting very proprietorially around a potential nest sigh in the power substation on the Northern Edge, and had a besotted-looking leucopsis White Wagtail in tow.
Friday lunchtime was rather better as a magnificent male Eye-browed Thrush - just my second ever here - showed nicely on the Core Area, perching nicely for me to have got a great photo, if I hadn't been on the phone to Carrie and trying to lift my glasses and get the bins up with one hand or wishing I hadn't left the camera at home.
It was uncharacteristically forgiving for a thrush - unsuccessfully hiding itself in a leafy tree and allowing me better than half-decent views of a very dark face, crystal clear super and lower lore stripe, mainly yellow bill and a fine peachy tinge across the breast.
Most interesting was hearing it call. Rougher than the "seep" of Japanese and Grey-backed, but still with a hint of a whistle, and nothing like as harsh as Pale Thrush. I'd like to delude myself that I'd remember the call in future, but my retention of calls has generally been poor. Never mind - it was a great bird to inject a glimmer in interest into a disappointingly quiet two weeks.
And there was more to come -as I crossed to the Eastern Tangle a lucionensis Brown Shrike popped up on a meelia branch and contemplated me for a while before bouncing away, and just a few seconds later a beautifully marked Grey-streaked Flycatcher sallied out from a high branch and then hung about long enough to genuinely enjoyable rather than a "seen and gone" statistic.
I'm posting his from the transit lounge at Dubai, on my way to a conference in Jordan, so no heart attacks please if my next post looks unfeasibly overloaded with metas!
Cheers
Mike
