Last Saturday a visit to San Tin with my neighbour heralded the return of the spoonbills - one of my favourite things about winter birding in Hong Kong. The globally threatened Black-faced Spoonbill predominates here, but the first bird to come past us was a first winter Eurasian Spoonbill that circled over with intent to drop onto the drained pond we were standing next to. Seven Black-faced Spoonbills appeared soon after and dropped onto the pond where several Black-winged Stilts foraged in the shallows and eight Temminck's Stints lurked on the edges.
Other new arrivals for the winter included an adult Great Spotted Eagle, a fine male Daurian Redstart, and less demonic, but nonetheless welcome a female Black-faced Bunting. A solitary Yellow-breasted Bunting, two Little Buntings, a Bluethroat added to the regular passage of Dusky, Oriental and Black-browed Reed Warblers and I was disappointed not hear but secure confirmatory views of a suspected Manchurian Reed Warbler that gave it's distinctive harsh call before disappearing without trace into a pondside tangle.
I was pleased to still find a juvenile
Yellow Bittern this late in the year and equally so that 30-odd
Whiskered Terns were still enjoying the fishponds, many in well marked juvenile plumage.
Yesterday I was briefly back at San Tin, but only for 40-odd minutes between two attempts to twitch Hong Kong's first Chinese Grey Shrike. The bird had appeared in another area of fishponds close to the Mai Po access road on Tuesday, but being away in Chicago I once again joined the ranks of the "Weekday Worriers" (
see this post for a definition) as I retuned early on Friday morning and could not go until the next morning.
I arrived just as the bird flew off high towards Mai Po, as it had done on several previous mornings, and after 90 minutes of fruitless searching in the fishponds just outside the reserve I gave it up as a bad job and was kindly dropped at San Tin by Graham Talbot. The short forty minutes I was there provided a fine reminder of just how rich San Tin is, as I saw an amazing 58 species before receiving a WhatsApp message that the shrike had returned and hurrying back to the Mai Po access road.Best among these were a small influx of
Marsh Sandpipers and
Eurasian Teals and a solitary
Grey Wagtail round the back of the San Tin Flood Relief Pond.
My second effort was better rewarded as I pitched up to immediately see the
Chinese Grey Shrike perched on an overhead wire just where John Holmes had sent a follow-up WhatsApp to say it would be. And what cracker it was - a beautiful white and pearl grey beauty with a slim black mask, all-dark bill and diagnostically long tail. Unfortunately, owing to the wind blowing the flank feathers up I could not see the pattern on the folded wing, but when it was inevitably flushed as a phalanx of photographers crept ever-closer the extensive white in the wing added further confirmation that this was not one of the other larger grey-tailed shrikes that could conceivably occur here. John's excellent photos (posted here with his permission) of the bird in flight show every detail one could wish for.
In closing respect is due to Chris Campion, who resisted the call of the shrike and smashed the San Tin patch record of 91 - scoring an excellent 97 species both on Saturday and today. The ton surely beckons . . .
Cheers
Mike