MKinHK
Mike Kilburn
Sad to hear your numbers are dropping Owen - very much hope its this year rather than a long-term trend. I worry especially about shorebirds and buntings at present. We're fighting a constant battle here too. the latest is a new "NGO" that is being funded by the developers to argue our wetland buffer area should be sacrificed to high density development - supposedly so as the guarantee the integrity of the Wetland Conservation Area. Thankfully San Tin fishponds are owned by two developers, but since the whole area is inside the WCA it is relatively safe at present.
Sunday was another clear sunny day with gentle easterlies and followed a week with reports of new arrivals at various sites. Unfortunately I had lost one battery and forgotten to charge the only remaining battery in my camera , so had to do without on what turned out to be an excellent day.
I kicked off with three Grey-headed Lapwings in the Main Drainage Channel along with the usual Black-winged Stilts and 20-odd Eurasian Teal but much lower numbers of Wood Sandpiper and other waders,although I did pick a solitary Spotted Redshank which was flushed by a jogger.
Less than a minute after entering the fishponds a Japanese Quail flew up from the side of the track and within 50 yards of that I had two brief flight views of a Barred Buttonquail . This bird showed uniformly chestnut-tinged brown wings without a hint of the curving yellow patch on the forewing of the Yellow-legged Buttonquail of 6th October.
I have just done a web search to look for photos or illustrations of button quails in flight. There is very little anywhere - with Birds of SE Asia showing the most. As they are so often only seen when flying away at high speed this might make a very useful project for someone with the photographic skills (and patience) or interest in looking at museum specimens.
This area around the gate and the two long fishponds where the Common Pochard and last week's Ferruginous Duck and Phalaropes had been hanging out (but were not on show today) was again full of interest. An Eastern Buzzard was my first of the autumn and there was the now usual mix of Oriental Reed, Black-browed Reed and Dusky Warblers in the emergent vegetation and the tall grass on the bund. My first good bird was a female Black-faced Bunting - my first of the autumn, which was followed a couple of minutes later by a small almost sandy-brown and streaky backed passerine the size of a Stejneger's Stonechat flushing out of the short grass and perching helpfully on a taller stem to reveal itself as Pallas's Reed Bunting! In addition to being noticeably small it had a distinctively soft-edged, round-headed jizz which was emphasised by the small pointed bill (which is a useful differentiator from the more bulbous-billed Common Reed Bunting. Other buntings show a more oval head shape and a more obvious neck. The lower half of a black bib identified it as a first winter male.
This is a species that almost never hangs around, and is found more often in mist nets than in the field, making it far from easy to connect. All of the twenty or so previous records come from the Northeast New Territories, including my first at Long Valley in 2014 and another I saw last winter at Tai Sang Wai - where an over-friendly dog enlivened proceedings and was eventually banished by the photographers (see pic), but this one was special as my first self-found individual. Other buntings in this highly productive area included four Yellow-breasted Buntings and the first of five Chestnut-eared Buntings including a cracking male.I also flushed a Richard's Pipit and an obviously rusty-rumped Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler from another bund nearby.
As I walked over to check out the northern edge of the site I was entertained by a steady passage of fifty-odd Red-rumped Swallows, forty Barn Swallows and at least 20 Pale Martins, most of which pushed straight on through. A larger dot in the sky behind became my first views this autumn of a fine adult Greater Spotted Eagle soaring over Lok Ma Chau reserve. Just below it a Eurasian Kestrel was hassling an Eastern Buzzard before the scrubby patch in the northeast corner delivered a fine juvenile Dark-sided Flycatcher, a couple of Yellow-browed and Dusky Warblers, a tikking bush warbler of some sort and most interesting a very interesting passerine which appeared to show a uniformly buff supercilium and underparts, and with the discovery last week of Hong Kong's first Buff-throated Warbler in a mist net at the Wetland Park the prospect of a monster bird should have occurred to me. However it also looked like some of the more buffed upRadde's Warblers I've seen,and given the lack of an obviously long and slender bill and long tail, the latter seems much more likely.
I was pleased to find three typically elegant female Pintails in one of the ponds, and in the same area, two more each of Yellow-breasted and Chestnut-eared Buntings, and even better a typically pale and gawky Black-headed Bunting which posed very nicely for pictures - feeding on seeds halfway up a grass sheaf. This is a bird that seems to find me with a pleasing regularity, and although it challenges juvenile Barred Warbler for awkwardness, I have a real soft spot for them. A fine male Daurian Redstart on my way out past San Tin lotus ponds was another new arrival, and the last of a new patch record of 78 species.
Cheers
Mike
Sunday was another clear sunny day with gentle easterlies and followed a week with reports of new arrivals at various sites. Unfortunately I had lost one battery and forgotten to charge the only remaining battery in my camera , so had to do without on what turned out to be an excellent day.
I kicked off with three Grey-headed Lapwings in the Main Drainage Channel along with the usual Black-winged Stilts and 20-odd Eurasian Teal but much lower numbers of Wood Sandpiper and other waders,although I did pick a solitary Spotted Redshank which was flushed by a jogger.
Less than a minute after entering the fishponds a Japanese Quail flew up from the side of the track and within 50 yards of that I had two brief flight views of a Barred Buttonquail . This bird showed uniformly chestnut-tinged brown wings without a hint of the curving yellow patch on the forewing of the Yellow-legged Buttonquail of 6th October.
I have just done a web search to look for photos or illustrations of button quails in flight. There is very little anywhere - with Birds of SE Asia showing the most. As they are so often only seen when flying away at high speed this might make a very useful project for someone with the photographic skills (and patience) or interest in looking at museum specimens.
This area around the gate and the two long fishponds where the Common Pochard and last week's Ferruginous Duck and Phalaropes had been hanging out (but were not on show today) was again full of interest. An Eastern Buzzard was my first of the autumn and there was the now usual mix of Oriental Reed, Black-browed Reed and Dusky Warblers in the emergent vegetation and the tall grass on the bund. My first good bird was a female Black-faced Bunting - my first of the autumn, which was followed a couple of minutes later by a small almost sandy-brown and streaky backed passerine the size of a Stejneger's Stonechat flushing out of the short grass and perching helpfully on a taller stem to reveal itself as Pallas's Reed Bunting! In addition to being noticeably small it had a distinctively soft-edged, round-headed jizz which was emphasised by the small pointed bill (which is a useful differentiator from the more bulbous-billed Common Reed Bunting. Other buntings show a more oval head shape and a more obvious neck. The lower half of a black bib identified it as a first winter male.
This is a species that almost never hangs around, and is found more often in mist nets than in the field, making it far from easy to connect. All of the twenty or so previous records come from the Northeast New Territories, including my first at Long Valley in 2014 and another I saw last winter at Tai Sang Wai - where an over-friendly dog enlivened proceedings and was eventually banished by the photographers (see pic), but this one was special as my first self-found individual. Other buntings in this highly productive area included four Yellow-breasted Buntings and the first of five Chestnut-eared Buntings including a cracking male.I also flushed a Richard's Pipit and an obviously rusty-rumped Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler from another bund nearby.
As I walked over to check out the northern edge of the site I was entertained by a steady passage of fifty-odd Red-rumped Swallows, forty Barn Swallows and at least 20 Pale Martins, most of which pushed straight on through. A larger dot in the sky behind became my first views this autumn of a fine adult Greater Spotted Eagle soaring over Lok Ma Chau reserve. Just below it a Eurasian Kestrel was hassling an Eastern Buzzard before the scrubby patch in the northeast corner delivered a fine juvenile Dark-sided Flycatcher, a couple of Yellow-browed and Dusky Warblers, a tikking bush warbler of some sort and most interesting a very interesting passerine which appeared to show a uniformly buff supercilium and underparts, and with the discovery last week of Hong Kong's first Buff-throated Warbler in a mist net at the Wetland Park the prospect of a monster bird should have occurred to me. However it also looked like some of the more buffed upRadde's Warblers I've seen,and given the lack of an obviously long and slender bill and long tail, the latter seems much more likely.
I was pleased to find three typically elegant female Pintails in one of the ponds, and in the same area, two more each of Yellow-breasted and Chestnut-eared Buntings, and even better a typically pale and gawky Black-headed Bunting which posed very nicely for pictures - feeding on seeds halfway up a grass sheaf. This is a bird that seems to find me with a pleasing regularity, and although it challenges juvenile Barred Warbler for awkwardness, I have a real soft spot for them. A fine male Daurian Redstart on my way out past San Tin lotus ponds was another new arrival, and the last of a new patch record of 78 species.
Cheers
Mike
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