MKinHK
Mike Kilburn

New beginnings . . .
With Lam Tsuen now too far away to be my regular patch my next challenge is to find somewhere nearby to replace it.
Discovery Bay itself is not it. Its a town of about twenty thousand living in a mix of high rise and villas, with some parkland and native vegetation, but none of the quality forest/fung shui or open farmland that made Lam Tsuen so good.
Lantau Island is greatly under-birded. So, rather than settle on a single spot right away I've decided to explore a few sites over the coming weeks and months. This will require getting to grips with the transport connections as well as working out where the best areas are at different sites so this will be highly exploratory, with (hopefully) some exciting discoveries rather than the trawl round the known-to-be birdy haunts of Lam Tsuen.
1. Tai Ho to Mui Wo.
The parts I know best of Lantau are those where I conducted baseline surveys in the dim and distant past. One of these was for a road that was thankfully never built from Tai Ho Wan on the north side of Lantau to Mui Wo (or Silvermine Bay) on the other side.
Tai Ho Wan used to be a gentle inlet, but is now almost an inland sea - cut off from the sea proper by a six lane highway and two railway lines on a reclaimed causeway - except for a narrow channel underneath. Of the three small villages in the catchment Pak Mong is the closest to the road and the channel, and I got off the bus here at 8am.
The outer edge of the channel overlooking the sea held a Little Egret and a Common Sandpiper, but there was no hoped-for gull or any of the rarities that might have been on the water. The path along the edge of the inlet is well wooded and I had my first Grey-backed Thrush and heard a Red-flanked Bluetail in the undergrowth.
Just before the village a large area of fields was given over, much to my surprise, to pineapple cultivation, which hosted a Eastern Buzzard, the only male among six Daurian Redstarts throughout the day and both Dusky and Manchurian/Korean Bush Warblers (don't ask - more taxonomic revelations that serve only to add further confusion!). Grey Wagtail and Blue Whistling Thrush were in the boulder stream and a Red-billed Blue Magpie called a few times.
It was nice to hear a White-breasted Waterhen gurgling away and to see a few Crested Mynas and Black-necked Starlings and a Stejneger's Stonechat on the marshy ground outside Tai Ho village. The lower part of the village is famous for having a Chairman Mao hall complete with photos, statues and calligraphy in a shrine dedicated to the founder of the PRC. The woods here were rather quiet, although I did winkle out a couple more Grey-backed Thrushes, a Greater Coucal, Yellow-browed and Pallas' Leaf Warblers and some Scaly-breasted Munias.
The best birds of the day were an adult Striated Heron and a wintering brown-type Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler at the mouth of the Tai Ho stream and along the path to the yellow temple respectively. A female Black-faced Bunting was too curious to stay hidden in the grass and showed pretty well after a bit of pishing.
After that the climb out of the valley was rather quiet,with a just-about-possible, but very briefly seen, Brown-headed Thrush zipping across the path and another Korean/Manchurian Bush Warbler buzzing and showing rather well close to a pathside grave.
More to come . . .
Cheers
Mike
With Lam Tsuen now too far away to be my regular patch my next challenge is to find somewhere nearby to replace it.
Discovery Bay itself is not it. Its a town of about twenty thousand living in a mix of high rise and villas, with some parkland and native vegetation, but none of the quality forest/fung shui or open farmland that made Lam Tsuen so good.
Lantau Island is greatly under-birded. So, rather than settle on a single spot right away I've decided to explore a few sites over the coming weeks and months. This will require getting to grips with the transport connections as well as working out where the best areas are at different sites so this will be highly exploratory, with (hopefully) some exciting discoveries rather than the trawl round the known-to-be birdy haunts of Lam Tsuen.
1. Tai Ho to Mui Wo.
The parts I know best of Lantau are those where I conducted baseline surveys in the dim and distant past. One of these was for a road that was thankfully never built from Tai Ho Wan on the north side of Lantau to Mui Wo (or Silvermine Bay) on the other side.
Tai Ho Wan used to be a gentle inlet, but is now almost an inland sea - cut off from the sea proper by a six lane highway and two railway lines on a reclaimed causeway - except for a narrow channel underneath. Of the three small villages in the catchment Pak Mong is the closest to the road and the channel, and I got off the bus here at 8am.
The outer edge of the channel overlooking the sea held a Little Egret and a Common Sandpiper, but there was no hoped-for gull or any of the rarities that might have been on the water. The path along the edge of the inlet is well wooded and I had my first Grey-backed Thrush and heard a Red-flanked Bluetail in the undergrowth.
Just before the village a large area of fields was given over, much to my surprise, to pineapple cultivation, which hosted a Eastern Buzzard, the only male among six Daurian Redstarts throughout the day and both Dusky and Manchurian/Korean Bush Warblers (don't ask - more taxonomic revelations that serve only to add further confusion!). Grey Wagtail and Blue Whistling Thrush were in the boulder stream and a Red-billed Blue Magpie called a few times.
It was nice to hear a White-breasted Waterhen gurgling away and to see a few Crested Mynas and Black-necked Starlings and a Stejneger's Stonechat on the marshy ground outside Tai Ho village. The lower part of the village is famous for having a Chairman Mao hall complete with photos, statues and calligraphy in a shrine dedicated to the founder of the PRC. The woods here were rather quiet, although I did winkle out a couple more Grey-backed Thrushes, a Greater Coucal, Yellow-browed and Pallas' Leaf Warblers and some Scaly-breasted Munias.
The best birds of the day were an adult Striated Heron and a wintering brown-type Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warbler at the mouth of the Tai Ho stream and along the path to the yellow temple respectively. A female Black-faced Bunting was too curious to stay hidden in the grass and showed pretty well after a bit of pishing.
After that the climb out of the valley was rather quiet,with a just-about-possible, but very briefly seen, Brown-headed Thrush zipping across the path and another Korean/Manchurian Bush Warbler buzzing and showing rather well close to a pathside grave.
More to come . . .
Cheers
Mike