Exploring Lantau (2 Viewers)

The snipe look like Pintail/Swinhoe's based on head pattern and mantle/scapulars. I don't think you can say for sure which of these two species they are.

Your unidentified lizard is a Changeable Lizard (Calotes versicolor). They're common in Hong Kong but a bit unpredictable and often not easy to find.

Sorry I can't help with the snake. It doesn't look like one of the Hong Kong species and I don't know Chinese snakes well enough.

Last Saturday I visited Pui O and added a walk around the Chi Ma Wan Peninsula to Shap Long before a final stroll through Pui O before catching the bus back home.

It turned out to be a pretty good day with a nice spread of migrants. I started well with with a male Black-naped Oriole, and five Red Turtle Doves Eastern Crowned Warbler which absolutely shone in the sunlight as it picked its way through a low tree in the southern corner of the buffalo fields . A Kentish Plover was on the beach nearby and in the hedge by the campsite office a Black-browed Reed Warbler and an Oriental Reed Warbler in short order.

There marshy fields beind the campsite held a couple of Swintail Snipe, my first Wood Sandpiper and red-throated Pipits of the autumn, three more Kentish Plovers sitting out the high tide, ten Chinese Pond Herons and a couple of Eastern Yellow Wagtails.

I then started off round Chi Ma Wan and my only reward in the next three hours was a solitary leucogenys Ashy Drongo that turned out to be my first (and 215th species) on Lantau. I did pick up a Black-winged Cuckooshrike as I arrived at Shap Long. Five more Red Turtle Doves back at Pui O completed the haul for a decent couple of hours with a big bird less walk in the middle of it.

On Sunday I went back to Pui O in the hope of more migrants and picked up a lucionensis Brown Shrike and a more interesting cristatus Brown Shrike, but little else of major interest.


Cheers
Mike

Monday 9th October was a good day. A Bank Holiday Monday for the autumn grave-sweepeing festival is not a good time to be in the Shaolin Valleyat Tai o despite it being a prime time for migrants. At 0800 I was standing in Tung Chung trying to decide where on Lantau I should head off to when John Allcock's message describing a singing and calling Emei Leaf Warbler just above the temple on my beloved former patch at Ng Tung Chai popped up on the birders' Whatsapp group, and an airport bus heading in the right direction hove into view.

Some 40 minutes later I was marching up the familiar hill, passing the orchard, the temple and entering the beautifully forested inner valley. I encountered a half-decent bird wave which included a range of birds I never see on Lantau - Blue-winged Minla, Yellow-cheeked Tit, a nice bunch of Grey-chinned Minivets, Rufous-capped Babblers, Mountain Tailorbird and vocal but invisible Lesser Shortwings. I also had a nice male Verditer Flycatcherand a classic Arctic Warbler, but nothing more pulse-racing.

After they moved off I slowly walked another couple of hundred yards further up the trail thoroughly enjoying reacquainting myself with my old patch. After some twenty minutes a couple of Chestnut Bulbuls and a noisy gang of Velvet-fronted Nuthatches marked the start of another bird wave and this time I heard the distinctive buzzing song and had pretty good eye-level views of a rather small Blyth's type phylloscopus warbler - the Emei Leaf Warbler!

At one stage it called while looking straight at me showing the bright yellow lower mandible superbly. I only had a brief look at the upper parts, but noted two distinct wing-bars and and a broad rather diffuse greyish stripe up the nape and rear crown. In addition to the bird's helpfully near-constant calling and singing I was easily able to follow it and added some good views of grey-washed underparts, with yellow-tinged undertail coverts and a narrow central belly stripe of the same colour. More curious was a rusty discolouration on the neck, which showed up pretty well on two of the three photos I was able to fire off before it disappeared.

This was a major claw-back as I had never found time to twitch bird that appeared at Pak Sha O in a distant NE corner of the New Territories and showed on and off for a week or so a couple of winters ago. I had always hoped to find Hong Kong's first Emei Leaf Warbler myself when living in the valley, but it was still a real pleasure to finally catch up with it here and add one more species to my Lam Tsuen list.

Formerly thought to be an endemic breeder on Emei Shan and one or two other mountains in central Sichuan, it was discovered some twenty years ago to be breeding in Ba Bao Shan in the Nanling mountains of northern Guangdong and southern Hunan provinces. Ever since it has been eagerly anticipated as a wintering bird in Hong Kong. However they are extremely difficult to identify and when silent there are no reliable morphological characteristics for safely separating them from the other warblers in this very difficult group. However with a singing bird - the first one was found the same way - identification is straightforward, especially if the bird is recorded and the sonograms match -so a huge thank you to John for being tuned in to the song and properly equipped to nail recordings of both song and call! It goes without saying that I'm also greatly appreciative of the bird itself for being a noisy little bugger - so many Blyth's-type Leaf Warblers in winter and autumn are pretty silent. I can only wonder how many times I may have seen Emei Leaf Warbler before without knowing it!

On the way back down the hill I enjoyed excellent views of a growling party of Red-billed Lieothrix before walking round for a foray into my other familiar forest haunt at Tai Om. Once again my march up the hill into the forest was rewarded, this time with a group of ten or so Grey-chinned Minivets, a female Blue-winged Leafbird and an Amur (formerly Asian) Paradise Flycatcher to add to the Japanese Para I'd had on Lantau a few days earlier.

The butterfly in the final photo is a Baron (Euthalia aconthea). The stream at Ng Tung Chai is, if anything, more beautiful than the forest and after seeing the bird I took some time out to sit my one of my favourite pools and this green-tonged marvel dropped in for a drink.

Cheers
Mike

A good day indeed! Nice shot of the Leiothrix. A real head scratcher for me when I spotted one back in April, 2015 when I was first getting started up here in Panjin. Certainly an escaped cage bird that I had to have Tom's help on in order to ID. Never considered anything that far out of range.

Sounds like a great outing out on the old patch - interesting how different the bird populations are! Glad you caught the leaf warbler. Like the green tongue too - would not have seen that without your picture.

Many thanks Owen and Gretchen

This weekend was hot and unseasonably humid after the passing of two typhoons last week and with the winds southwesterly and heading up migrants I had high hopes for Tai O on Saturday. It started well with a soaring Crested Goshawk as the bus descended out of the clouds on Lantau Peak, a juvenile White-bellied Sea Eagle flew alongside the bus as it went past Shui Hau, and a Besra was displaying vocally above the ridge on the left hand side of the road as I entered the Tai o valley.

An initial trawl through the mangrove -lined former salt pans produced three or four each of Dusky Warbler and Black-browed Reed Warbler and the usual scattering of Great Egrets with an occasional Grey Heron and Little Egret. There were also five Richard's Pipits on the football pitch.

The star of the Shaolin Valley was a fine male Black-naped Monarch. Always one of my favourite flycatchers, this one was typically hyperactive and noisy and the usual wonderful combination of rich power-blue head, breast and back against a velvet-black collar and top-knot.

The valley was otherwise rather quiet, with the supporting cast coming from a couple of Asian Brown Flycatchers, a rather soft-spoken Dusky Warbler that had me dreaming about Yellow-streaked Flycatchers and a Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler that I barely saw but caught calling with the camera's video function. It will be interesting to see if I can do anything with it to pull out a specific identity, especially after all the interest with two birds turning up in Europe in the last week.

On Sunday I had another foray away from the patch to explore Long Valley. A Black-headed Bunting has been knocking about for the last fortnight or so along with a good supporting cast, and this terrific site always has the potential to turn up something special.

Always birdy, the valley welcomed me with a hepatic Plaintive Cuckoo and a shallow pond holding a dozen Black-winged Stilts, a pair of Avocets, half-a-dozen Wood Sandpipers and a jumble of Fan-tailed Snipe. Red-throated Pipits, a Little Ringed Plover, two leucopsis and a dozen ocularis White Wagtails, a few Chinese Pond Herons, a Black Drongo, two Stejneger's Stonechat and the usual Spotted Doves, Black-necked Starlings and Crested Mynas provided the usual backdrop.

The bunting action happens around the rice fields, which are specially planted for the purpose by the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. I kicked off today with a couple of Yellow-breasted Buntings including a fine male that was still sporting the brown breast band of breeding plumage, and a Chestnut-eared Bunting. I then latched on to the fast-disappearing tail end of a larger sandy-brown bird as it disappeared to the easternmost corner of the valley showing just a hint of a large dark eye, and perched tantalisingly on top of a lychee tree. I trundled over to see it and predictably enough it disappeared when my head was turned. My meagre compensation was the first of five flyover Common Mynas and a bunch of Great Egrets, a few Black-winged Stilts, a Common Kingfisher and a Green Sandpiper in the drainage channel.

I headed back to discover, predictably enough, that some other birders had just seen the bunting, but my searched delivered nothing better than flocks of White-rumped and Scaly-breasted Munias and Tree Sparrows feeding on the rice. While I was waiting, a scan to the horizon all round pulled out a Kestrel over Crest Hill and over towards Deep Bay a soaring aquila Eagle that was really too far away to do anything with except speculate.

Bumping into John Holmes turned out to be the secret ingredient, and as we gave the rice fields a final pass, John said: "there it is", and there it was . . . It flew up and perched on one of the trees behind the paddy. For some reason I like Black-headed Bunting - particularly the juveniles that turn up in autumn in Hong Kong. They are ungainly and scruffy, with no feature that could be described as beautiful. At least for those that I have seen, the identification has never been especially tricky, but somehow I enjoy them every time I see one - and this one was no exception.

Afterwards, as we wandered out, we picked up a few Black-browed Reed Warblers in a big patch of high grass as we tried unsuccessfully to dig out a different bunting that was determined not to show itself.

Cheers
Mike

Brilliant stuff, Mike. Including the Emei Leaf Warbler and the Black-naped Monarch. I saw the news that the super typhoon did a number in HK, hope your family is alright.

Thanks Dev

The second typhoon was much less of an event than the first which produced some impressive flooding - google "Starbucks uncle" - and we had a full day off work and no serious damage.

Cheers
Mike

A good day on Saturday at Pui O and especially Tai O was followed by a quieter day at Tai O on Sunday.

An early bus to Pui O got me started with a Black-browed Reed Warbler and a few Dusky Warblers in the fringes of the buffalo fields plus a promising-lookingflock of starlings that disappeared over the horizon before I could do anything with them. The highlights here were two Eastern Buzzards,my first of the autumn, being mobbed by a couple of Large-billed Crows.

Also interesting was the remaining fragments of a dismembered Grey Heron - I can only think that a Bonelli's Eagle or an Eagle Owl would be big enough to take one. I also added a photo of the darkest Spotted Dove I've ever seen in HK. Any thoughts about this bird would be appreciated.

Moving on to Tai O things started slowly, but several trawls of the Shaolin Valley eventually produced a fine haul of male and female Black-naped Monarch - different from last week's cracking male, male and female Blue-and-white Flycatchers, an Asian Brown Flycatcher and a tantalisingly probable Red-breasted Flycatcher, which I initially heard call once - the drawn-out rattle which separates it from the zippier buzz of Taiga Flycatcher - and then had one second views of the bird, tail cocked, and showing more than a hint of a pale base to the bill . . . hmmm.

There was more quality in the shape of a very bright Eastern Crowned Warbler and two Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers and most interesting of all a drongo that landed in deep cover an on the partial views available appeared to show black and white undertail coverts and a metallic crown, which is a good starting point for Crow-billed Drongo. There has only been one previous record in HK, some I definitely needed better views than that . . .

These maybe birds did inspire a return visit yesterday, but this delivered little - a Yellow-browed Warbler, an Asian Brown Flycatcher an unidentified bunting sp. and something ticking and scratching from deep cover just as an infuriatingly noisy hiking group spent ten minutes stopping for photos. There were again two Pale-legegd /Sakhalin Leaf Warblers and a sadly deceased Black-browed Reed Warbler.

Also of interest was a metre-long black snake - presumably Common Rat Snake as I could see no pale markings on the back of the neck - that slid away off a grave I had just walked past.

Cheers
Mike

Last Sunday I was back at Tai O and was pleased to see two female Daurian Redstarts and a male Japanese Thrush and a confiding Rufous-tailed Robin - one of my favourite winter birds - had arrived in the Shaolin Valley. I also spent a good deal of time chasing around a Taiga Flycatcher to see if I could confirm it wan't Red-breasted, and eventually (sadly) succeeded.

Other bits and pieces included a couple of Yellow-browed Warblers, which have been scarce this autumn and a Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler which allowed close approach but no pic.

Eclipsing all of these was a fine Amur Falcon which came in high over the ridge from the north and soared away inland. I have been expecting Amurs here every autumn and previously had several Hobbies, so it was great to plug an obvious gap. It has been an excellent year for Amurs across Hong Kong, so the expectation of getting a Tai O bird felt like "if not this year, then when?". It's just my second record on Lantau, and I still need it for the Magic Roundabout . . .

I did however see eight Amur Falcons on another raid on Long Valley last weekend. A very odd-looking Common Reed Bunting of one of the tiny-billed East Asian races had been found the day before and since they are almost never found outside mist nets in reed beds I still need this for my HK list. Still being the operative word. I t was apparently seen first thing on Sunday morning, but there was no sign after I arrived for what turned out to be a terrific morning. While searching for the Bunting I saw and was delighted to photograph both of the Black-headed Buntings that have been here for a little while now, as well as picking up two Eurasian Skylarks, a Chestnut-eared, two Little and six or seven Yellow-breasted Buntings.

The first of the Amurs - a magnificent male that came in head-on and low from the East pretended for a while to be a Feral Pigeon, but the whip of the silver-grey primaries and its contained purposeful speed kept me looking until it started soaring a few hundred metres away and showed the superb white underwing coverts to perfection as it circled up and eventually away to the west - what a stunner! The other birds were all higher, but watching them also put us onto at least five Oriental Honey Buzzards which were also drifting slowly westwards. Other raptors seen that morning (most not seen by me) included 5 more Amurs, Hobby, Kestrel, 19 Eastern Buzzards 2 Crested Serpent Eagles and 2 Japanese and one Eurasian Sparrowhawk, 2 Black Kites and a Great Spotted Eagle.

Other good birds seen that day (again not seen by me, but exemplifying the enduring quality of Long Valley include a Bull-headed Shrike which amazingly was in the same tiny reedbed as the Black-headed Buntings, Baillon's Crake, Chestnut bittern 2 Pallas's Grasshopper Warblers,Pale Martin and Red-rumped Swallow, oriental and Black-browed Reed Warbler and 4 Chinese Blackbirds. Not bad for 26 hectares of wet agriculture!

if only I lived closer . . .

Cheers
Mike

Tai O provided a couple of flashes of magic yesterday - first up was being checked out by male Eye-browed and Japanese Thrushes, both alert upright and in perfect plumage - and standing a metre apart on the same branch about 20 metres from where I stood gaping!

The other moment was when a Rufous-tailed Robin stood side-on on top of a tangle branches, furiously twitching its tail before turning head-on to expose the beautiful fine russet scalloping on the belly below a pure white throat as it called and called.

This was an otherwise pleasant morning, with three or four Daurian Redstarts and Yellow-browed Warblers, a Pallas's Leaf Warbler, a dozen Silky Starlings, a noisy pair of Red-billed Blue Magpies, a couple of Grey-backed Thrushes (one of which posed nicely), two Chestnut Bulubuls, and a nice male Red-flanked Bluetail.

________

The weekend before I abandoned Lantau -and with good excuse - the allure of two Siberian Cranes which had been found at Mai Po the day before was too tempting to resist, so I went over and enjoyed wonderful views of an adult and a gingery juvenile feeding together in a reed-filled pond on the southern edge of the reserve.

These were just the second record for Hong Kong after the first - a juvenile - appeared for a day back in 2002. Mai Po was full of birds I rarely see these days - masses of Pintail on the geiwai ponds - Dusky and Yellow-browed Warblers calling everywhere, plus three or four Black-browed reed Warblers and a scattering of the ever charismatic Black-faced Spoonbills plus Greater Spotted and Imperial Eagles and a few Collared Crows, for whom Mai Po is an important global stronghold.

Cheers
Mike

Great Grey-backed Thrush, Mike! And Siberian Cranes....sigh....someday...

I have once again been wandering off the beaten track over the last ten days or so, but since its been amazingly productive I'm more than happy to have indulged myself.

First up, the discovery of Hong Kong's second Buff-breasted Sandpiper on a fishpond at San Tin in the far northern part of Hong Kong on Tuesday 21st December had me getting up at 5:30 to twitch it before work the next morning. This was one of those twitches that is only possible with the help of good mates.

The early birds were on site by 0630 - long before I could get there - and, after a tense of hour "no news", found it just as I had given up hope and was calling off my ride in to the ponds having travelled for over an hour to be in position just n case it was found. Thankfully the positive news Whatsapp message came through just before Geoff hung up, so I jumped in scurried down the bund, complete with suit and briefcase, only to hear that the bird had flown. Dave Diskin (and his scope) walked me over to where he'd found it earlier and after a tense couple of minutes scanning he picked it out and gave me a look down his scope - allowing me my first wader tick in Hong Kong in a very long time! After a very hurried 30-second view I scurried off back towards the other birder and was fortunate enough to get a lift back to the railway from Graham Talbot, without which I would never have made my 0915 meeting!

This was hardly doing justice to a bird of this quality, so on Christmas Eve I headed back to San Tin for a proper look. This time the bird behaved much better - walking around the bottom of the drained fishpond within 20-30 metres of the assembled gathering of birders. What it hadn't dome was learn how to feed in such a habitat without getting all mucky, and its legs and bill were permanently covered in globs of mud. It was nonetheless an entrancing bird - the first I've seen since getting on on Davidstow Airfield in Cornwall in the late 1980s!

Other birds enjoying the drained pond were over 20 Temminck's Stints, a Long-toed Stint I tried long and hard to string as Least Sandpiper and a few Little Ringed Plovers and Eastern Yellow Wagtails and ocularis White Wagtails. In fact the whole area was heaving with birds - flocks of Silky, White-cheeked and Black-necked Starlings, Crested and Common Mynas, Spotted Doves, a couple of dozen Collared Doves in their Hong Kong stronghold, fifty-odd Red-rumped Swallows and a Pale Martin among a couple of hundred Barn Swallows, half a dozen Black Drongos and three or four Stejneger's Stonechats.

As I walked out through the ponds I flushed an interesting looking pipit. A Water Pipit had been found here a couple of weeks earlier, but I never got anything more than the most horrible shot of a bird that is far from easy to separate from Buff-bellied Pipit. In his article on separating the two Terry Townshend notes a contrast between a brownish back and grey crown and nape - which is about the only discernible feature, but it would take a braver soul than I to call this bird on that feature alone.

Next up was a stand of tall grass in one of the main ditches running through the site to the Shenzhen River, where the ticking emerging promised more than the expected Dusky Warblers. I was not surprised when one bird proved to be a Black-browed Reed Warbler, which winters in small numbers, but I was delighted when the other bird creeping between the reed steams turned out to be a sneaky backed , streaky-crowned Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler with pleasingly obvious white tips to the tail. This species is very rare in winter in Hong Kong. Indeed the last one I'd seen had been one in this exact ditch when I dipped a Blunt-winged Warbler here in the mid 1990s. I've never had a sniff at another since then.

I was however impressed with the general birdiness of the site - I've not even mentioned the large numbers of egrets and other waders - Wood and Green Sandpipers, Avocets and Black-winged Stilts, Collared Crows and raptors including Imperial Eagle and Eastern Buzzard and loads of Great Cormorants - and decided to come back to give it a more thorough search as soon as an opportunity emerged.

Cheers
Mike

Inspired by my previous visit returned to San Tin on 28th December for a general look round but was distracted, even before getting out of the cab, by a group of 15 Red-rumped Swallows hawking over the top end of the San Tin Main Drainage Channel.

This is the same channel that was full of waders (and a herd of goats) as I walked out on my earlier visit, and I got distracted as I found a slipway into the channel and slowly edged my way down it until I was very close to a fine mix of feeding waders which included Marsh, Wood, Green and Common Sandpipers, Greenshank and Spotted Redshank, Avocet and Black-winged Stilt, Fantail Snipe, Little-ringed Plover and a couple of Grey-headed Lapwings.

Its unusual to get so close to waders on Lantau so I spent a couple of hours here thoroughly enjoying the close views and learning more about my camera's capabilities. In addition to the waders were a few Eurasian Teal in the water, and single Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Stejneger's Stonechat, Daurian Redstart, and a Taiga Flycatcher feeding in the banks and the nearby trees.

It was not unit very late in the morning that I finally got to the fishponds and turned left along a promising-looking track along the edge of a fishpond. I immediately flushed a pale-looking warbler with a square-ended tail from the weeds. It popped up onto a weed on the other side of the path and as it turned its head to look at me it profoundly shocked me by showing the "milky tea" plumage tones and distinctively pale lores of a Booted or Sykes's Warbler - which total HK three records between them!

Unlike my frustrating failure to grab pictures of the Black-throated Thrush I found at the airport a couple of weeks earlier I was able to get some shots as the bird stayed in the area for the remainder of my visit and on two subsequent visits AND lots of others were able to connect as well. I also heard the call several times and was able to make good comparisons with the calls published on Xeno Canto.

The upshot of all this is that the bird initially looked good for Sykes's based on the lack of a pale supercilium behind the eye and the all-pale lower mandible and the very short primary projection. However its structure, which was certainly rather short-billed, round-headed and not especially long-tailed was more indicative of Booted. The call a short single textured "zhrrrt" is also a good match for Booted Warbler. Any thoughts on the contradictory features and how to reconcile them would be most welcome.

Cheers
Mike

Here's a few pix of the waders from that same morning.

Cheers
Mike

Hey, great shots of the waders, Mike! Looks like your getting a lot out of the camera.

They look a lot happier spending the winter where it is warm than they would be here. We're having out tenth snow day of the season today.

Many thanks Owen - it's been up to a scary 27 centigrade here today and the smog cloud from further north has drifted over HK making it pretty horrible to be out today.

Thankfully yesterday was distinctly different - a lovely blue sky and a fresh easterly breeze made for a wonderful day out - once more at San Tin to see if I could relocate the Booted Warbler. I couldn't, but I heard from another birder where the three Greater White-fronted Geese had been hanging for the last couple of weeks. As I wandered over I checked out the stand of reeds where I'd seen Black-browed Reed Warbler and Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler the week before and heard an interesting accro-sounding song.

However the easterly wind that was keeping the sky blue was preventing me from getting an accurate fix on the location by constantly swishing and blowing the reeds - frustrating indeed! While making a hopeless attempt at playing back accro songs from Xeno Canto I looked up to see the three Greater White-fronted Geese flying directly towards me and over my head! I got the briefest of views as they disappeared in the direction of Mai Po.

But they obviously have a strong affinity for the ponds at this corner of San Tin because some ten minutes later I saw them flying back from Mai Po, tried to land, but were scared off by something and circled the whole area again, twice flying close and giving wonderful views, including the white fore-crowns and dark bands on the breasts of the adult birds. Happily they decided it was now safe to land and having watched them settle on a bund I walked over to watch them.

I had heard that they were pretty tame, and so they proved. After watching some of the fishpond operators passing within 50 or so metres I found a shaded spot a bit further away and feasted my eyes on birds which are notoriously shy in many parts of the world - mostly because they are a valued food species. Initially two of the birds slept, while one of the adults remained alert on sentry duty, neck erect and looking around from time to time. There was a real need as while I watched them both Eastern Imperial and Greater Spotted Eagles passed overhead. I also throughly enjoyed several fly-bys from a party of three Pied Kingfishers - a bird I haven't seen for at least a year as they don't occur on Lantau.

I eventually had my fill and, with an offer of a lift back to the main road from some other birders, I reluctantly left them to it and headed home.

Last night, while out walking the dogs I was delighted to hear my first Slaty-legged Crake on Lantau along with a Large Hawk Cuckoo and a small chorus of the highly restricted range endemic Romer's Tree Frog.

Today I made my first return to Tai O and Pui O since November last year. It was a quiet day for migrants, although an absolutely stunning male Black-naped Monarch with the largest top knot (the original "man bun") I've ever seen kicked it off well.

The other highlight was another Lantau tick (no 223) - a Hill Myna - which had joined the forty-strong flock of Crested Mynas that were feeding in the valley. Sadly its highly unlikely to be a wild bird as they are a popular cage bird and have been trapped into oblivion in most part of China and it remains in category III (Escapes) of the Hong Kong list. Other birds of interest included a female Japanese Sparrowhawk that was harassed by a Hair-crested Drongo into landing for a brief second within 20 metres of me, 18 Silky Starlings and more than 40 Large-billed Crows that had gathered to enjoy the food left over on the graves from the Ching Ming grave sweeping festival.

I heard what may have been a Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler but never got close enough, and the only other warbler here was a Yellow-browed Warbler that was constantly breaking into song.

Pui O was also quiet, with just a Swintail Snipe, two taivana Yellow Wagtails, a Dusky Warbler and one each of Red-throated and Richard's Pipits to add some interest along with the Cattle Egrets walking around the Water Buffalo in full summer plumage.

I found another day roost of Cattle, Little, Intermediate and Great Egrets in th mangroves by the river mouth, where three Common Sandpipers were also waiting for the tide to drop.

Cheers
Mike

A few more birds from my dog-walking over the weekend. Nothing spectacular, but some nice shots of adult and juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons and the always entertaining Crested Myna.

The only migrants were a Common Kingfisher, a Black Drongo and a Black Drongo.

Also of interest was one of the feral Red-eared Sliders laying eggs.

Cheers
Mike

Today I decided that the likelihood of finding migrants on a perfect day for passage - light SE winds just keep everything moving - was slim, and instead decided to head up Sunset Peak on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year!

My target was to improve my photos and video of Chinese Grassbird from couple of visits last summer. It seems they hate sunshine and didn't offer even a single call the whole time I was up in their preferred habitat - some vertical 400 metres above where my walk started! At least the views were spectacular.

There was compensation in the form of half a dozen Pacific Swifts zipping around the summit, a couple of flyby Olive-backed Pipits, soaring Besra, Crested Serpent Eagle and several Black Kites, singing Large Hawk Cuckoo, Hwamei, and Chinese Francolin, a female Blue Rock Thrush, a couple of Yellow-bellied Prinias lurking in the grass bird stakeout, and best of all a wonderful Upland Pipit that allowed a close enough approach that I was able to video it's distinctive song and grab some pictures as it gave me the once-over.

They are really odd birds - with a distinctively thick neck and deeper-based bill sloping straight off the fore crown, making them somewhat reminiscent of Wrynecks. Anyway, this was the last of Hong Kong's three mountain specialists that I had not photographed or recorded singing, so all in all a day well spent.

Unfortunately this all came at a cost - sunburned arms that look like they've been spit-roasted and a mild heatstroke. No major harm done - and certainly nothing that a couple of cold showers, a gallon of chilled aloe vera, and my wife's "pretty girly scent" tallow (I kid you not!) can't fix.

Cheers
Mike