At about 9.15 this morning, I was half-way up Green Pigeon Lane on Po Toi heading towards the small upper reservoir when I heard a Pitta calling from the scrub close by.
I sat down to see if the bird would appear. After 10 minutes with no sign, I took out my MP3 player and played the Fairy Pitta call once. There was an instant response from the bird and it continued calling for about 5 minutes without much need for the MP3 recording. It slowly worked a semi-circle around me, no more than 30 feet away but I just saw the occasional glimpse of the bird itself.
After satisfying itself that I wasn’t a Pitta, it stopped calling or responding to the recording and 10 minutes later I left the area.
I assumed at the time it was a Fairy Pitta since that was the call it responded to. However, I now find that Blue-winged Pitta has a very similar call and the bird could be either.
Here are four recordings. The first two were made today on Po Toi. The first is the bird itself calling
http://www.geoffwelch46.com/PITTA1.mp3
The second is the bird instantly responding to my MP3 Fairy Pitta recording, which is the first and third of the calls, the second, fourth, fifth and sixth are the bird itself.
http://www.geoffwelch46.com/PITTAANSWER1.mp3
Here are commercial recordings, first of Fairy Pitta (Japan Bird Sounds) and the second of Blue-winged Pitta (Birds of Tropical Asia).
I leave it to you to decide.
http://www.geoffwelch46.com/FPITTA.mp3
http://www.geoffwelch46.com/BWPITTA.mp3
At about 11.30am, Aaron Lo and Jennifer Leung also went to look for the bird using my MP3 player. The bird responded on two separate occasions to the Fairy Pitta recording, in both cases coming as close as 20 feet but still without being seen.
So far the score is Pitta 3, Bird-watchers 0.
I hope the bird stays for the weekend and someone can make a score with a photo of the bird.
[
Last edited by wgeoff at 5/05/2011 17:50 ]
