wgeoff

Third Week in August

This is my first week staying on Po Toi since early June.

The paths are all visible, thanks to some path cutting done in June and July, which is much better than last year when they were impassable until the end of September. But if you venture down the smaller paths, keep a good lookout for spiders. They are huge but often invisible against a dark background.

More birds around than I expected. I was hoping to say, bird of the week was an Orange-headed Thrush seen on Thursday, but examination of the photos shows it to be cage-damaged. So the best wild birds were 3 Pale/Sand Martins which flew in off the sea on Tuesday evening and a Yellow Wagtail on the south coast rocks on Thursday. Both these species are very early according to Avifauna.
Also 3 Little Terns and a Caspian Tern seen offshore.

Here photos of the Thrush and the Wagtail



Early autumn on Po Toi is the time to see juvenile and adult birds which are dispersing after nesting somewhere else in the area, probably not on Po Toi. In that category this week were Common and White-throated Kingfisher, Plain Prinia, Great Tit, Fork-tailed Sunbird, Japanese White-eye, White-rumped and Scaly-breasted Munia. All these species are now regulars in early Autumn.

Early on Wednesday morning I was treated to the spectacle of a Waterspout forming just 100 metres from where I was sitting looking for seabirds. I believe it featured in the evening news that day. It was awesome and just a bit scary to look up and see this column stretching up many hundreds of feet above my head  into a dark cloud.

Unfortunately, it was too close to view properly in my telephoto lens, so I attach a few tame photos of the water bubbling below the spout and one I took of the column itself, plus the photo which appeared on the evening news and seems to have been taken on the far side of Dangan Island. X marks the spot where I was sitting



[ Last edited by wgeoff at 15/12/2009 05:14 ]

kmike

Hi Geoff

I'm curious about your OH Ground Thrush - a nice bird to see in August! . . . what was the damage to the bird, and why do you think it was cage damage rather than natural wear and tear?

Cheers
Mike

wgeoff

Hi Mike

I may be a bit pessimistic and the photos are not very good, but I think there are signs of a bald patch on the breast and some growths on the feet?



[ Last edited by wgeoff at 15/12/2009 05:14 ]

kmike

Thnak Geoff this is helpful.

I think the next area of expertise for HK birders to develop will be in deformities and types of wear on HK birds.  
I understand the Records Committee will produce something on this issue in due course, but perhaps we need to arrange a talk from a vet who deals with cagebirds to understand the likely types of damage.

Its good to have your reports coming again on Friday mornings to get us all thinking about birding in the weekend ahad

Cheers

Mike

wgeoff

Thanks Mike

I nearly didn't go this week but John Holmes talked me into it. He struggled manfully around with his 800mm lens for about 90 minutes and we then retired to the restaurant for a liquid lunch.

His account of the day appears in
http://johnjemi.blogspot.com
Somehow, mention of the lunch is missing.

I'm glad I did go because the waterspout was a lifetime experience. Apart from that, the words 'hot' and 'very' come to mind.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 22/08/2009 05:48 ]

wgeoff

A really good week this week, with 15 new autumn species including 10 on Thursday alone. Many species are 7-10 days early this year, probably because of the very light winds and good migration weather all over south China recently.

New species were Chinese Goshawk, Pintail Snipe, Dollarbird and Bright-capped Cisticola on Tuesday, Koel on Wednesday and Grey Heron, House Swift, Forest Wagtail, White Wagtail, Richard's Pipit, Zitting Cisticola, Arctic Warbler, Dark-sided Flycatcher, Asian Brown Flycatcher and Yellow-rumped Flycatcher all arriving on Thursday.

Many of these are earliest autumn records for Po Toi, a few for Hong Kong.

The Chinese Goshawk (first year bird) was a lunch-time fly-through bird so I missed getting a photo. Also the Forest Wagtail, very skittish bird which flew before I could snap it. But I managed photos of most of the rest.
Here are Dollarbird (first year bird), Bright-capped Cisticola (sharing a bush with a Scaly-breasted Munia), Dark-sided (first year), Asian Brown and Yellow-rumped (probably also first year) Flycatchers together with a small piece of a rather large Python which took a long time to cross my path yesterday (the head had long gone when I took this photo)




As usual in autumn on Po Toi, many migrants were first year birds but the Grey Heron may well be the bird which wintered on Po Toi and was last seen on 25th May.

At sea, the only bird seen was an immature large gull, also an early record. Examination of the (long range) photos showed it to probably be a Black-tailed Gull.

AFCD have planted a 500 sq m area of the South Peninsular with native trees. If they survive the storms and fires, it may eventually become another good migrant area on Po Toi.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 15/12/2009 05:16 ]