Exploring Lantau (1 Viewer)

Many thanks John.

According to Wikipedia this family of plants is used as an arrow poison in Africa, but also as a heart stimulant in western medicine.

I had a quieter day today in much the same areas. The highlight was a singing Rufous-tailed Robin I didn't see and eight Yellow-browed Warblers I also didn't see. I did also have a Crested Goshawk (which I digibinned) , a Common Kingfisher and an unidentified flyover thrush sp. and a light brown snake that disappeared before I got a decent look at it.

Gretchen I've included an update on the mushrooms - all but gone I'm afraid.

Cheers
Mike

Yesterday looked very promising for a Tai O - a village with mangroves and a headland protruding into the Pearl River Delta from the western end of Lantau.

Despite giving all the sheltered spots a good going over I came up with a very meagre tally of Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler heard calling, YBW heard calling, a single Asian Brown Flycatcher and a distant Hobby.

All week long I've been wondering about trying some of the other villages along this coast, but never quite found the energy. Well John went today down to Fan Lau on the southwestern point and had a monster day including Hong Kong's second record of Zappey's Flycatcher - a bird I've been looking for all week!

Gripped, gutted, but no-one to blame but myself!

Cheers
Mike

Yeah, it was a great day yesterday Mike. I have argued for a couple of years now that Fan Lau has real potential - the far southwestern tip of Hong Kong. And yesterday was the day it really delivered.

I'm looking into the Zappey's Flycatcher and whether it was actually an intermedia Blue-and-white. But with that aside, highlights were: 4 Blue-and-white flycatchers, 5 Narcissus Flycatchers, 1 Mugimaki Flycatcher, 5 Asian Brown Flycatchers, 2 Siberian Blue Robins (both male), 14 Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers (a record count for HK, 3 singing birds were certainly Pale-legged), 1 Northern Boobook, 1 Oriental Dollarbird, 6 Grey-faced Buzzards, 1 male Brambling, 1 Tristram's Bunting, 2 Chestnut-eared Buntings, 3 Little Buntings, 54 White-shouldered Starlings (mostly at Tai O - I'm surprised you missed them yesterday), 2 Red-billed Starlings, 7 Ashy Minivets, Chestnut-winged Cuckoo, Oriental Cuckoo, 2 Plaintive Cuckoos, 6 Japanese Thrushes, etc, etc. Plus more of the commoner migrants.

And as if the migrants hadn't been enough, as I was waiting for the bus at Shek Pik there was an Eagle Owl calling on the nearby hillside.

My flight is booked John !

Following in John's footsteps from last weekend I decided to take on the 20km walk to Fan Lau. It was well worth it.

The first part of the walk is along a water catchment from Shek Pik Reservoir. although my main aim was to get to Fan Lau as quickly as possible I still picked up my first Dollarbird, Japanese Thrush, Japanese Sparrowhawk and Grey-faced Buzzard of the year, plus a male Blue-and-white Flycatcher the first of ten Yellow-browed Warblers and a Dusky Warbler. Just before dropping down into Fan Lau a rather worn-looking Eurasian Kestrel floated over and landed on a pylon.

Things started slowly in Fan Lau itself - a village built below a headland with an eighteenth century fort. On the headland trees which probably would be dripping with migrants in adverse weather were completely empty, and my only birds in the first hour here were a couple of Pacific Swifts and a Red-rumped Swallow in with the Barn Swallows.

Back in the village a couple of Little Buntings were an encouarging sign of life, quickly followed by a Chestnut-winged Cuckoo that zipped away. It replied to my mimicking of its call, but I was surprised that it did not dive in for a closer look.

The fields in front of the store where I had a bowl of noodles held a Cattle Egret in breeding plumage, several White-shouldered Starlings, and overhead a Grey-faced Buzzard circled low and called a few times - my best views of this species for more than a decade. It was joined by an Eastern Buzzard and a very high Peregrine . The large trees behind the village held an early Grey-streaked Flycatcher, plus Asian Brown and Blue-and-white Flycatchers , plus the first of two Oriental Cuckoos, and a fine flock of a dozen Ashy Minivets feeding cheerfully in a grove next to a temple.

The walk back to Tai O was also productive. A fine male Narcissus Flycatcher showed well in a pathside tangle just as I was leaving the village and after flushing two flycatchers I didn't get onto the next was my second female owstoni/elisae flycatcher of the spring. This one had a couple of distinctive wingbars, which the bird at the Magic Roundabout did not have.

Amazingly this was followed by another, somewhat duller bird some 20 minutes later, that did not have any wingbars. Neither were as bright or uniformly yellow below as pix of birds from Thailand (especially Phuket), where elisae is known to winter suggesting to me that these might be owstoni. There is so much confusion in this group that even birds labelled as nominate Narcissus may not be that species, leaving me wishing that some enterprising photogrpher or ringer would visit the breeding territories of these three species and sort them out.

The birds thinned out a bit after reaching Yi O which is undergoing major surgery - trashing that is being branded as "rehabilitation of agricultural land". I did still pick up a couple more Little Buntings and a singing Rufous-tailed Robin.

The last hurrah was a female Blue Rock Thrush perched on the roof of a village house at the southernmost end of the Tai O mangroves.

Cheers
Mike

Not bad Mike, some nice goodies there!

I can feel a 'shopping trip' to HK coming on ........

A perfectly engineered trip to Pui O "to buy beetroot" allowed me to add Oriental Plover to the list for an superb three days on Lantau on a non-birding Sunday afternoon.

Having failed to check BirdLine overnight I only discovered it had been found yesterday this morning . . . on a day I'd promised to spend with Carrie.

Step 1: persuade Carrie that a 30 minute ferry ride and lunch in Mui Wo was the perfect way to spend a lazy Sunday.

Step 2: as lunch came to an end to oh-so-casually suggest that we drop by Pui O for some organic beetroot.

Step 3: The bus duly deposited us in Pui O and a "walk to see the buffalo" delivered the goods as the now waterlogged buffalo fields held a fine variety of waders including eight Wood Sandpipers, four Pacific Golden Plovers, two Long-toed Stints, two Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and, closest to the path, a wonderfully tame and effortlessly elegant female Oriental Plover. Result!

Step 4: So twenty minutes later we got back on the bus and headed happily off to church, Carrie with her beetroot (she managed to beat down the granny selling them from HK$40 to HK$35), me with the crowning glory of a great weekend's birding.

Cheers
Mike

Ha ha - congrats Mike. Perfect weekend.

johnallcock said:

]Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers [/B](a record count for HK, 3 singing birds were certainly Pale-legged),

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Hi John. Do you often/ever get singing Sakhalin's in HK on passage too?

Wish I was in HK now.

Other priorities now Larry! Congratulations to both of you!

Cheers
Mike

Nice Sunday. Looks like the "guardian of the beetroot" shouldn't be after any birds - that's the largest bell I've seen on a cat!

MKinHK said:

A perfectly engineered trip to Pui O "to buy beetroot" allowed me to add Oriental Plover to the list for an superb three days on Lantau on a non-birding Sunday afternoon.

Having failed to check BirdLine overnight I only discovered it had been found yesterday this morning . . . on a day I'd promised to spend with Carrie.

Step 1: persuade Carrie that a 30 minute ferry ride and lunch in Mui Wo was the perfect way to spend a lazy Sunday.

Step 2: as lunch came to an end to oh-so-casually suggest that we drop by Pui O for some organic beetroot.

Step 3: The bus duly deposited us in Pui O and a "walk to see the buffalo" delivered the goods as the now waterlogged buffalo fields held a fine variety of waders including eight Wood Sandpipers, four Pacific Golden Plovers, two Long-toed Stints, two Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and, closest to the path, a wonderfully tame and effortlessly elegant female Oriental Plover. Result!

Step 4: So twenty minutes later we got back on the bus and headed happily off to church, Carrie with her beetroot (she managed to beat down the granny selling them from HK$40 to HK$35), me with the crowning glory of a great weekend's birding.

Cheers
Mike

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Great birding Mike. The raptors from your earlier posts makes me jealous. Oriental Plovers have added more oil to the fire. Eagerly waiting for the rest of the season to growl in front my computer.

MKinHK said:

Other priorities now Larry! Congratulations to both of you!
Cheers
Mike

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Thanks Mike. Still nice to bird through you guys in HK though!

And hope the move is treating you well Gretchen

Larry Wheatland said:

Hi John. Do you often/ever get singing Sakhalin's in HK on passage too?

Wish I was in HK now.

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Larry, I've never heard either of them singing before. Both occur in HK on passage, but usually need to be treated as either/or unless trapped.

johnallcock said:

Larry, I've never heard either of them singing before. Both occur in HK on passage, but usually need to be treated as either/or unless trapped.

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Great to have heard those singing birds then :t:. Any idea what the ratio is for identifiable trapped birds?

A gentle walk without bins at Pui O this afternoon reveled a decent crop of late spring migrants. First up was a fine flock of some 65 Yellow Wagtails among the Cattle Egrets in the buffalo fields, and whilst walking along the beach - at long last - my first Large Hawk Cuckoos of the year called to each other from the wooded hills behind.

Other good birds included a single Greater Sandplover, twenty-odd smaller waders which were too distant to do without bins and on the way back to the bus stop three Black Drongos and a Brown Shrike.

One other bird - an Indian Cuckoo was calling in Discovery Bay on Thursday night.

Cheers
Mike

It's hard to miss the Indian Cuckoo when it's calling. High time for the wagtails, don't miss your bins next time.

An afternoon at Tai O with Carrie (and my bins this time) delivered some birds as the wind rose and shifted into the NE and the low cloud brought in a few showers.

On the path up to the dolphin watchpoint a couple of Chinese Goshawks flushed out but instead of circling overhead disappeared deeper into cover and first an Oriental Turtle Dove and then a fine male Red Turtle Dove came up from the deck and hurtled away. Other birds here included a couple of Hair-crested Drongos and a Black Drongo chased off a Large-billed Crow.

The real action started up on the watchpoint as a cloud of 20-odd House Swifts drifted down and began feeding over the ridge, along with a bunch of Barn Swallows. Among them were my first Pale Martin of the year, acouple of Pacific Swifts, fine-tailed and whip-winged and, best of all, a hulking White-throated Needletail, which hunted all round us for 20 wonderful minutes.

These views allowed me to clearly see the distinct white throat patch and supercilium that separates White-throated from Silver-backed Needletail, as well as the iconic white horseshoe on the vent and pale back against the otherwise dark upperparts.

I have only once before enjoyed protracted eye-level views of hunting needletails, so to see this bird from all angles, first against the wooded hillside, then out over the sea, and even a couple of breath-taking passes as it zipped straight at me along the ridge not much more than a metre away will leave an indelible and very precious memory.

Cheers
Mike

Congrats on the Needletail, Mike. Sounds wonderful.