A baking hot morning with the specific intention of catching the peak week of Manchurian Reed Warbler passage started excellently with a smoky-brown
Himalayan Swiftlet that lingered onsite long enough for my failure at photographing birds in flight to drive me to distraction. These silent wisps - I've only seen two others in the last 25+ years of birding here - generally rocket past at high speed. This one was foraging above a fishpond that had attracted a dozen
Barn Swallows in company with a
House Swift and from time to time came low enough to allow decent shots - at least for someone with more competence.
I was nonetheless delighted with a second patch tick in seven days after Sunday's
Ruddy Turnstones, one of which had obviously decided that the attraction of decomposing maggoty fish and whatever feeds off stale soggy bread made for a palatable range of dining options. UK birders of my generation are familiar with the disgusting eating habits of Turnstones, which famously include discarded condoms, so I guess this one was not really pushing the boundaries. I managed one fewer species of wader, failing to find Common Redshank or Long-toed Stint, but in compensation I did fluke a flyover
Pied Avocet, while the number of
Common Sandpipers had if anything increased.
The second major highlight was finding my third and almost certainly fourth Manchurian Reed Warbler on the patch. An enjoyably circuitous route (
a paper on the diet of Brown Wood Owl in Hong Kong that referenced
a paper I wrote on BWO's status in Hong Kong (p 210) that was in the same issue of the Hong Kong Bird Report as an article about passage/ trapping dates for reed and bush warblers(p 234) revealed that the first week of September was a great time to be looking for Manchurian Reed Warbler, because they are peaking, while the somewhat similar and far more abundant Black-browed Reed Warbler is yet to arrive. An even more hopeless pic, but there are better shots of last year's bird
here and
here.
As I reached one of the less actively managed ponds a gingery acro flipped up and very helpfully perched on the top of a reed stem, giving me a nice clear view of the meagre black shadow (rather than the broad bold stripe of Black-browed) above a broad white supercilium and the long-ish tailed short-winged jizz all help to identify it as
Manchurian Reed Warbler. While it did call it only gave a very soft contact call rather than the nasal buzz of Manchurian or the harder rattle of Black-browed. I was disappointed that my camera setting had changed and I could not get it to focus on the bird, which disappeared as I fumbled into manual focus, so the single shot below was the best I could manage. After looking at me a couple of times It crossed the corner of the pond and popped up in scope view, but again not for long enough for me to get on it. However I was surprised to see a second gingery butt flip up and over it giving the same contact call before disappearing into the grass, never to be seen again.
The same pond also held a tawny-striped juvenile
Yellow Bittern and looks like it has the potential for a lurking Pheasant-tailed Jacana or Watercock as the season progresses. I was actually surprised not to see
Oriental Reed Warbler here and only had one all morning. The general area continued to hold a dozen or so
Eastern Yellow Wagtails and a
Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler came up from the edge of the next pond and flew a short way down the track in front of me.
By this stage the heat was getting to me, my water was gone and I headed straight back for the shade along the access road, where a family party of
Azure-winged Magpies giggled above me as I put away the scope and camera and headed into San Tin village in search of a very long, very cool drink.
Cheers
Mike