kmike

Mid June is normally a desperate time to bebirding in southeast China. Any bird with any sense has fled north to cooler,less mosquito-infested climes, while typhoons lurk and the humidity loitersaround the 90% region.

However, temptation, in the form of a newlydiscovered breeding area for Swinhoe's Plover (a hot candidate for a split fromthe Kentish Plover group) and a nearby site for Purple Swamphen (a mega-rarebreeder in China) a couple of hundred clicks to the east of Hong Kong rearedits alluring head and
. . . Fridayevening I crossed the border to Shenzhen, jumped in a van and headed forHaifeng with Martin Hale,  Richard Lewthwaite, and Shenzhen-based birder Brian Jones,whose hundreds of hours of exploring the area had created the platform for thetrip.


Three hours, 200km and a filet-o-fish from the24hr MacDonald's at the truckstop later we arrived, and checked into the hotelwith the hardest beds and the finest array of in-room intimacy enhancementsknown to man.
Anyone for a"Convulsionary condom" that would "let heartthrob" and"make woman feel joyous immediately". The 5:30 start the next morningsuddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all!


The early start got us to the first stop -a beach with a pair of shagged out [B]Swinhoe's Plover[/B] holding territoryevery 150 metres or so.
For birdsin the height of the breeding season they were in a terrible state - deeplystressed, faded plumage, heavily bleached and worn coverts. According to Brian,who had been coming since March, the birds were just bringing off their secondbroods and were completely worn out. And watching the way they went about lifeit was hardly surprising.
Theywere anxiously shepherding chicks, fiercely chasing off interlopers andconstantly bobbing their heads up and down. Great to watch, but a terribleadvertisement for parenthood.


Despite this, the distinctive features thatseparate Swinhoe's from Kentish Plovers were evident - longer pale pink legs, alonger and deeper-based bill, white lores, a longer, paler wingbar and paleupperparts were common to all the adults.


The breeding habitat was a beach with arather shallow slope, backed by creeper-covered sand humps (dunes would be fartoo grand a word).
The sand wasgreyish and appeared to contain a good quantity of organic matter, while thetideline was littered with some sort of freshwater plant. As it decomposed thisprovided feeding for large numbers of flies that in turn provided food for theplovers.


By 0930 the best light for photography wasgone and we headed over to the mouth of a river at the northern end of thebeach.
This was interesting forthe presence of a sandbar that held some 150 Greater Crested, Little, Common(including alongipennis – with red legs and bill and adarker tibetana), Gull-billed and Whiskered Terns, as well as 20 CommonGreenshank, a Grey-tailed Tattler, two Grey Plovers and three CurlewSandpipers. However with Chinese Crested Ternsbreeding just 500km up the coast our big hope was of course to find one ofthese amongst the Greater Crested Terns. Despite the poor light and optimism(always a good combination for a bit of stringing) we were unable to identifyany candidates, and agreed to try again later.


In keeping with the time ofyear there were not many other birds around. The dominant species appeared tobe Long-tailed Shrikes, at least 30% of which were dark morph “fuscatus” birds, and largenumbers of egrets, especially Little and Cattle Egrets, while Chinese Francolins called from the hills above the beach.

More to come . . .

Mike K

kmike

The next major stop was a site Brian had heard about with a big egretry on the broad flood plain that extended several kilometers inland.  The egretry was of an impressive size, but very difficult to count as many of the birds were hidden under the foliage of the trees, safely protected from disturbance by a river that ran either side of the island on which they stood.  However the real target here were four magnificent Purple Swamphens, as rotund, overdressed and majestically dignified as a convention of cardinals. Altogether we saw one red-crowned adult and three black-billed pale-headed and casque-less juveniles. We were delighted to find them right away as we only had a vague idea where to look, but jammed right into them feeding peaceably in some emergent vegetation.

Personally this was a good claw-back as Richard and other friends had seen both the plover and the swamphen previously on Hainan on trips I had been unable to join. The swamphens were also my first China tick for more than a year, while the plover, if accepted as a full species, would be a lifer.  

There is a contentious issue. Swinhoe’s Plover differs in structure, plumage, vocalizations, migration strategies, habits and possibly moult strategy, and despite having overlapping distributions, remain reproductively distinct. Yet the geneticists can find no meaningful difference between Kentish and Swinhoe’s Plovers.  As a committed field birder who wouldn’t know a mitochondrial DNA if it bit me on the bum I rather enjoy the fact that Swinhoe’s appears to be inviting the cell pokers to relocate their microscopes in a snug dark spot, get out of the lab and do some real birding. Admittedly its still early days, but the gauntlet has been well and truly thrown down.

Having nailed the target birds by lunchtime on day one we retired to Lufeng and the much grander Vienna Hotel (complete with chaise longue and mirrored pillars in my room) to sleep off the midday heat. In the afternoon we explored another stretch of beach with several more families of Swinhoe’s Plover. Here we found a very tiny chick, thought to be about a day old, being guarded by its very nervous parents. For them safety clearly lay in the sparse grass of the sand dunes at the back of the beach, and the male in particular spent a good deal of time standing sentinel.  However the chick was far too excited about its world to stay still and after hiding for a bit, it would emerge and rush immediately down through the litter and flotsam towards the water, with its parents puttering nervously alongside.

It turned out they had good reason to be nervous. As the chick reached the lower part of the beach another pair of plovers appeared and tried, rather aggressively, to approach the chick, either to attack or abduct it. The parents leaped into action, charging at the interlopers and chasing them off.  These attacks continued several times, while the chick, apparently oblivious, motored back toward the dunes like a self-propelled dandelion.  Is this behaviour known in other species?

Out at sea a few Little Terns scooted by, and much further out five Bridled Terns brought the tern species count for the day to six. However the totally unexpected find was an all-dark and rather bedraggled shearwater sp. sitting on the sea about 50 metres offshore. While Short-tailed is the most likely (up to 33 have been recorded passing Hong Kong in April-May each year) it had a rather long, heavy tipped bill which at least required the question to be asked about whether Sooty Shearwater could be safely eliminated. The jury is still out. Sadly the bird looked to be in trouble, trying twice to fly off, but was unable to lift itself out of the water.

Cheers
Mike K