HKBWS WY

Our Senior Member Mr Michael Chalmers has prepared a checklist of birds for Beas River Country Club where the Olympic Equestrian events are held. Thank you so much.

HKBWS

Location and Habitat
Beas River Country Club occupies an area of around 20ha in the low-lying part of the Central Northern New Territories adjacent to Fanling Golf Course. The grounds are laid out as paddocks and gardens with a mixture of mature exotic and native trees and two small lakes.

Hong Kong’s Birds
Although Hong Kong has only a small area of around 1,000 square kilometres, it has a wide variety of habitats from sea coast and marshes to forests and wild hill tops. It is also located on the migration route along the coast of South China and near the boundary of the Oriental and Palearctic regions. As a result, nearly 500 species of wild birds have been recorded in Hong Kong, with around half at the internationally important Mai Po Marshes located about 7km west of Beas River [for information on visits and access, please contact WWF Hong Kong at 2526-1011 or 3193-7702].

Beas River’s Birds
A total of 70 species has been seen within the grounds of Beas River Country Club, with a further 15 in the adjacent parts of Fanling Golf Course and the nearby hills used for trekking/hacking trails. The tabulated checklist below gives the English and scientific names and the status of each species in Hong Kong using the following key:-
R = Resident
SV = Summer visitor
WV = Winter Visitor
PM = Passage Migrant
This is followed by the frequency of occurrence at Beas River described as either:-
C= Common
F = Frequent
O = Occasional
R = Rare.

Common & Regular Birds at Beas River
Brief notes are given below for the 29 species [18 common and 11 frequent] which are most likely to be seen during the course of a full year. During summer, the combined number is reduced to the 22 common and frequent residents and summer visitors, and these are highlighted by the suffix s following their checklist number. Lengths in cm are given as a guide to relative size. To facilitate cross-referencing, the page numbers in Viney, Phillipps & Lam [VPL], the recommended local field guide [see References], are given at the end of each species note.

Please click the attached file for the full list of birds.

[ Last edited by BWA at 1/08/2008 04:12 ]