13/11/2011
The highlight of the day was a warbler sighted at the furthest paddy field from Yin Kong. I flushed it a few times on a trail, and it responded to my pishing a few times. I initially thought it was a Lanceolated Warbler with it's rather dark but warm olive brown mantle, I got a good view of it's nape, back and tail through my bins, it showed little to no markings on it's back. I had brief views of about 1 second each time, after it was flushed 5 times, it flew into cover of a thicker bush and disappeared. I temporarily gave it an ID of Lanceolated Warbler, as I didn't know what else it could be. After I got home and did some research and dug up some books, where I find all Lanceolated Warblers have streaked heads and mantle, and that rules out Pallas's at the same time. Then I saw some photos of Middendorf's Grasshopper Warbler, which have the exact same colour tone. The mantle was warm olive brown, the tertials and primaries are darker then the mantle, the tail was graduated with a dark fringe on the outside, in flight it showed a much warmer and brighter brown near the rump, which unlike Styan's Grasshopper Warbler will show a much duller grey brown. These features lead me to believe the bird I saw was a Middendorf's Grasshopper Warbler.
Common Buzzard x1
Red-turtle Dove x1
Middendorf's Grasshopper Warbler x1
Oriental Reed Warbler x1
Brown Shrike x1
Azure-winged Magpie x1 (Spreading from Mai Po?!)
Collard Crow x2
Silky Starling
Yellow-breasted Bunting
[ Last edited by kmatthew at 15/11/2011 09:35 ]
