Exploring Lantau (2 Viewers)

The Discovery Bay Rocks again hosted as Osprey on Friday evening, along with a new record count of 34 Little and Great Egrets and two Pacific Reef Egrets.

The Chinese Francolins have also continued in good voice here over the last few mornings.

Cheers
Mike

Even better yesterday. . .

A flock of 30-odd terns in the bay and 84 Little and Great Egrets - probably here for the big schools of small fish that seem to be all over the bay at the moment. The terns were too far away to be identifiable, but a friend has photographed both Black-naped and Roseate terns off the back of the local ferry. A trip beckons this weekend ...

Cheers
Mike

Delivering on the promise, I did take a ride on the Peng Chau (local ferry) kaito this morning to look for terns, especially hoping to add Roseate Tern to my Lantau List. I dipped on that but did have nice views of half a dozen adult and juvenile Black-naped Terns off the back of the ferry. I've post the best of my pix below. The tern's left foot is covering my flat, and you can a see behind the line of hills where the Chinese Francolins have ben calling.

I also had 94 Great and Little Egrets on the rocks opposite the kaito jetty and three each of Pacific Reef Egret and Black-crowned Night Heron.

On the way back to the flat I stopped in at the stream coming down from the DB reservoir, picking up a Common Kingfisher, a Grey Wagtail and a Peregrine carrying prey powered by over head.

And finally . . . introducing my new birding buddy Poncho.

Cheers
Mike

PS Another good bird popped up this afternoon - an adult Straited Heron flew across in front of the ferry just as it was leaving the dock this afternoon.

Your new buddy looks like a sweetheart.

Black-naped Terns are such sweet birds with unblemished white. Sorry about the Roseate Tern though, saw couple of pics in FB.
Poncho, the name sounds like an escapee from Guadalajara ;-). Happy Birding with your new buddy, Mike.

Many thanks gents.

Not sure whether Poncho is going to be a good birding dog . . . I wouldn't have seen today's Black-capped Kingfisher - a rare bird in summer in HK - unless I had walked him down to the beach this morning . . . but the blurry photo was all I got because he was after some chicken bones and was yanking on the lead.

Cheers,
Mike

A few more birds while out with the dog in Discovery Bay . . .

A Lesser Coucal and Hwamei calling in the scrub close to the reservoir on 17th and a Grey Wagtail on the stream below at the same spot as on 3rd August on 23rd.

This morning my first Asian Paradise Flycatcher of the autumn was in a line of trees near the North Plaza with a bunch of Japanese White-eyes, a couple of Chinese Bulbuls and an Oriental Magpie Robin.

Cheers
Mike

Dog-walking delivered again yesterday, with a Brown Shrike lurking between the playground and the lower pond in the park below my flat and I got my third view of Striated Heron this summer as one flew along the waterfront and into the small patch of mangroves next to the school.

My visit to Tai O was less productive (especially when compared with a year ago) - with not a hint of a migrant in the Shoalin Valley until a couple of Pacific Swifts, looking lean, long-winged and predatory, slashed across the hilltop with a gaggle of House Swifts. I did see four Pacific Reef Egrets perched on the shark net at Cheung Sha Beach from the bus and a few locally-breeding Black Drongos were enjoying the exposed perches.

The real highlight here was again seeing six or seven Chinese White Dolphins out in the bay, a couple of which came close enough for some so-so shots.

And finally . . . a single Roseate Tern was perched on the channel marker the ferry passed on its way out of the bay - fully justified my decision to bring my binoculars on the off-chance the rainstorms I dodged earlier in the day had brought something in. Even better, it was a Lantau tick.

Cheers
Mike

PS A piece of wonderful news of the Dolphins - the HK Government has just announced the designation of 1900 hectares of waters around Tai O and the Soko Islands as a marine reserve to protect Chinese White Dolphins. The announcement can be found here:

http://www.afcd.gov.hk/english/publications/publications_press/pr1930.html

A mortally hot and quiet morning at Tai O was saved by a flyover Common Greenshank giving its distinctive "tu . . .tu" call three or four times. The only other birds of note were four White-rumped Munias bombing along the ridge, three Barn Swallows and a Striated Heron on the tidal pond on the north side of Tai O.

The best thing about the Greenshank, which was my second flyover wader from the Shaolin Valley after a Marsh Sandpiper in the spring, was that it was my first on Lantau, bring my total to 192 spp.

Happily the Chinese White Dolphins were again on show from the ridge,with my best shot showing a very grey youngster.

The Black-crowned Night heron on the end is a very tame bird that hangs about in the Park - this was taken with my iPhone.

Cheers
Mike

The dolphin is a cracker, Mike. Fantastic timing.

Thanks Dev - lots of trial and error required as I'm shoot from a long way away.

Today I stayed in Discovery Bay and added Striated Heron to my birds from home list as I was scoping the mangrove patch by the school.

The real highlight was the same Black-crowned Night Heron I captured with my iPhone yesterday. Today the trusty SX50 allowed my to get some better shots of this amazingly approachable bird. It has obviously learned that people standing at the pond-edge are likely to have bread to throw to the fish and as I came down the steps it flew off the rock and landed at my feet!

The dog soon chased it off, but it stayed pretty close - especially when the dog became obsessed with the Red-eared Sliders in the water - and I was able to get a nice range of shots of this second summer bird.

In the evening I took the dog down to the beach near the North Plaza which delivered the Black-capped Kingfisher. No kingfishers today, but I did have a typically noisy pair of Hair-crested Drongos and four juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons emerging to feed in the stream as the shadows lengthened.

Cheers
Mike

Hope that the heron's strategy doesn't backfire on it (becoming too acclimated to people). Do you think the bird is going for the bread or the fish that the bread brings? Do you mind telling the features that make it a second year bird?

Looks like not only the heron but also the turtle wasn't too fazed by your dog! Maybe he knows youngsters just need a careful look at everything.

Hi Gretchen

First year birds are brown and streaky all over, so can be safely ruled out.

Adult birds have a sharp black cap and a black back and mantle, all the streaking from the breast is gone and the long pure white double plume emerges from the back of the nape.

This bird's cap is still rather mucky and the same is true of the wings, which become a beautiful uniform pearly grey in adult birds.

The only real threat to the heron would be a very quick dog - there's no hunting in such spots in HK thankfully!

Cheers
Mike

More reward for dog-walking this morning as a Forest Wagtail - just my second on Lantau - flipped up and showed beautifully for a minute or so by the pond in Central Park this morning. Best migrant so far in Discovery Bay!

I also had a new high count of eight juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons on the creek at the end of the bech yesterday evening.

Cheers
Mike

There were rainstorms on and off all day yesterday, but despite this birding at Tai O was desperately slow. I did pick up my second Siberian Blue Robin in three days - another skulking juv/female type - in the Shaolin Valley, but in three hours this was my only migrant (albeit my first for this site) until a party of five White-shouldered Starlings zipped into the upper reaches of a large tree just minutes before I left.

There were some other compensations - the dragonfly is one of the dusk hawkers - the Chinese White Dolphins were offshore to the southwest of the Heritage Hotel, and I got some nice close-ups of a male Common Kingfisher in the park at DB while dog-walking first thing this morning. The Soft-shelled Turtle being photobombed by the pink dragonfly was a nice extra bonus and brought back happy memories of the one that appeared in the pond next to my previous home in Lam Tsuen.

And just for Gretchen - a couple of pix to help with ageing of Black-crowned Night heron. The juveniles are streaky brown all over, while the adults are much smarter than the second years birds. the adult in this pic is till to develop the two long white plumes on the back of the neck, which can be seen well here, in the middle picture

Cheers
Mike

Re: aging of Black-crowned Nightheron - thanks! I've seen both juveniles and adults, but hadn't really paid attention to the second year until your earlier picture. Once you pointed out the features, I knew I should have noticed it didn't quite look like an adult. I hadn't really noted that herons could be aged as adolescents (which I guess that 2nd years are), but it makes sense since they go from such streaky young things to adults with such clean markings. So, are the white plumes permanent - I had sort of thought that they might be grown out seasonally in egrets?

These nightherons are fun since they're one of not-too-many birds I've seen on both continents I live on! Had very nice views of one at a heronry on the west coast, back in June - but didn't find his family among all the egret and cormorant nests.

Its been a while since I posted - partly because I'm fed up of the way my pix look when I resize them for posting. anyone with a better (free) solution than using the preview function on MacBook Pro?

Anyway . . . there have been a few odds and sods in Discovery Bay - a couple of Asian Brown Flycatchers, the first Dusky and Yellow-browed Warblers of the autumn, plus a Zitting Cisticola behind the school and heard but not seen Pale-legged/ Sakhalin Leaf Warbler. Black Drongos have bred successfully and a couple of Blue Rock Thrushes have arrived for the winter. I also had a record 22 House Swifts overhead this evening.

Last weekend was a landmark occasion for two reasons:


Milestone No. 1: I decided to become a filthy twitcher

I was instantly rewarded, securing a landmark Hong Kong tick, (which smells suspiciously like a nefarious plot by unknown forces to lure me away permanently onto the path to feckless twitcherdom). There is some back-story.

Our new dog is seriously affecting my weekend birding time. Since the Home Minister doesn’t do early mornings the job of accompanying Poncho on his morning constitutional falls squarely on my shoulders. Now I have no problem with this per se – I like being up and about early in the morning and we’ve had the odd good bird – with a fine Forest Wagtail that popped up a month ago heading the cast.

The problem is that I now typically end up leaving home to get to Tai O or Pui O much later than I would otherwise, and especially in the early autumn this means it’s baking hot and I’ve missed the first flurry of post-dawn movement - and the coolest weather.

On Saturday morning the same pattern was repeated and, after bringing the dog back and cooling down whilst having breakfast, I made a conscious decision not to head out to Tai O and instead to stay home and hope that the phone would ring with news of a mega bird that some other poor bugger had sweltered to find. . . twitching at its filthiest!

It turned out to be an excellent plan. Less than an hour later a Whatsapp message arrived with a stunning photo of Hong Kong's second White-browed Crake - the first, which was also a first for China, was found near Mai Po in 1991 - that had been found at Long Valley that morning. I was out the door in four minutes flat - which included a successful negotiation with a somewhat startled Home Minister!

The bus pulled away as I stepped out of the building. So, hating thought of a 20-minute wait for the next one, I ran after it, chasing it down at the next stop thankfully without provoking a coronary. After a train to Tsing Yi, a stop in M& S to grab some lunch (ginger beer and a four pack hot of cross buns – twitching junk food of the highest quality!), which I scarfed on the next bus and in the taxi, I made it to Long Valley and found the gaggle of photographers and hurried over to get a view down Richard Lewthwaite’s scope (the only scope present among 30-odd monster lenses– how times have changed) of the crake picking about in the reeds on the far bank of a shallow algae-scummed pond.

It showed pretty well over the next two hours, mostly in the thin cover of the reeds, but coming out into full view from time to time at a range of some 20-30 yards.

Milestone No. 2: not at all a bad way to secure my 450th Hong Kong tick!

Long Valley was its usual birdy self. Twenty-odd Black-winged Stilts took flight from nearby just before I arrived, two Fantail Snipe were preening on the edge of the pond and a Red-necked Phalarope dropped down four yards in front of the bank of birders, where it was almost completely ignored by the phalanx of crake-heads.

This bird continues what has been a very good year for HK ticks - starting with the Barred Cuckoo Dove, Blyth's Reed Warbler and Siberian Chiffchaff in January, continuing with the Pale-legged Leaf Warbler (my only self found tick - and the only one on Lantau) in April and Crow-billed Drongo three weeks ago, this was my sixth tick - and with the bulk of autumn yet to come . . .

And finally this morning . . . October 1 is a public holiday here, so feeling the need to purge the twitchiness, I walked the dog between 0545 and 0625 and caught the 6:35 bus out of DB, eventually arriving in Tai O a little before 0800. I headed straight for the Shaolin Valley, where a Greenish Warbler flashed the yellow lower mandible and started a run of five phylloscopus warblers for the day, including Arctic, Pale-legged/ Sakhalin Leaf , Dusky and Yellow-browed Warblers. I also had fleeting views of a vey skulky Black-browed Reed Warbler and much better views of a male Black-naped Oriole, a Hair-crested Drongo and three Black-winged Cuckooshrikes. There were also over 20 Black Drongos, an unidentified flyover bunting sp. and a Chinese Starling on the north side of the island.

So my return to the local patch grindstone turned out not too shabby at all - and I remain dead keen to keep at it . . . until the next mega pops up of course!

Cheers
Mike

Superb! I'd seen it had been found so was hoping one or two of you would connect!

cheers, M

I would guess that 60-odd people saw the bird Mark. It also showed for an hour yesterday.

HK has also had two Brahminy Kites in a week after none for 20-odd years- both only seen and photographed by one person!

Cheers
Mike

2 Brahminy Kites?