It's been a real pleasure to find this site Gretchen . . . and even more to be finding birds of the quality that I have been seeing . . . and again saw today!
It started predictably enough with a Chinese Blackbird from the bus this morning, and the two female chats - Stejneger's Stonechat and Daurian Redstart and four Olive-backed Pipits on the grassy patch, plus my first view of the Long-tailed Shrike - nicely fluffed up against the cold - for several weeks.
As I walked up to the crash barrier I saw a rather slender and upright thrush on the grass some forty metres away. Thinking it would be Eye-browed I got the bins on it and was somewhat nonplussed by the slightly washed-out rufous orange breast and head. Then the penny dropped - a stonking adult male NAUMANN'S THRUSH!. This is an absolutely massive bird for me - a self-found Hong Kong tick, on the Magic Roundabout, just the second since 1990 and the thirteenth ever, and even better, a claw-back from one I dipped at Lok Ma Chau two years ago!
Absolutely delighted, I watched it feeding on the grass for a few minutes in full view - another big bonus as most thrushes grot about nervously in the leaf litter in deep cover and flush out, giving the dodgiest of arse-end views.
My delight deepened as I realised it was just too classic a bird to have any hint of the hybrid about it.
The head and breast were beautifully washed orange-rufous which extended from the lower breast up the neck and throat and onto the sides of the neck, where it merged smoothly into the slightly colder brown of the upperparts. From the side the long supercilium looked the same colour, but a paler straw yellow from head-on. It had a brown eyestripe through the eye and connecting with the nape and down onto the ear coverts.
The crown nape and back was a less orangy brown, while the rump and tail was distinctively rufous - looking all rufous in flight, but with a couple of darker brown central rectrices and the same diffuse darker tones across the tip when on the deck. The dark tertials showed distinctive narrow rufous fringes, while the folded primaries looked all-dark, contrasting with the brighter orange-rufous of the rump and uppertail.
Most importantly the spotting on the flanks was a consistent rufous orange against a pale belly, becoming denser on the rear flanks and merging nicely into the orange-rufous rump.
It was wonderful to watch it feeding to within 25 metres of me, first on the grass, and then rooting vigorously through the leaf litter in front of the recently-pruned bushes. It twice flew in the twenty minutes I watched it, but each time returned within a couple of minutes, obviously deciding that however poor, this was still the best available habitat.
A real red-letter day, but with two more working days to go I'm reluctant to call time just yet on a glorious end to the year on my truly Magic Roundabout!
Cheers
Mike