wgeoff

A new thread for April but this is in reply to Brendan's posting for February/March.

At last an Ashy Minivet and a flycatcher, hopefully there will be more new migrants this week. Tuesday may be a good day if there is a real wind change tomorrow with some rain.

Sooty-headed Bulbul is probably a resident on Po Toi but in very small numbers and usually in the scrubby areas away from the main centre. There are also higher numbers in spring and autumn so it is probably a passage migrant also.

wgeoff

A week when I felt Po Toi was starting to return to normal.

Bird of the week, probably bird of the spring and maybe even Po Toi bird of the year was the Redstart found by Mr C W So on the football field early on Tuesday morning. I don’t mind repeating his photos here, they are so good



Thanks to Mr So, we actually have some good photos of the bird which proved very elusive all week but was definitely still there yesterday. I think it’s a female Black Redstart which would be a second HK record (the first in 1995, also in April). Thank you Mr So.

A very bizarre event happened on Wednesday evening. I had been looking for the redstart on-and-off through the day, without success, and near to 6pm I decided to return home for dinner.
Walking up from the ferry pier and nearly at Mr Ng’s house, a small brown bird ran up the path just in front of me and ran around the corner. I quietly rounded the corner and found the bird standing upright in the middle of the concrete path. Very long pale legs – I quickly thought through what it could be – the redstart?, a Siberian Rubythroat?, a Siberian Blue Robin?, all occurred to me but they were all wrong somewhere.
I started to take some photos when I suddenly noticed the redstart was actually in a bush next to this bird. I left the bird and followed the redstart – here are the photos of the bird.



It looks to me like a Bush Warbler, and a Brown Bush Warbler since the under-tail coverts are plain orange buff.
But, a Brown Bush Warbler standing on a concrete path?? Or any Bush Warbler come to that. My conclusion is that I disturbed this bird when it had just arrived and it was a bit lost.

Other supporting cast this week – two Grey-faced Buzzards on Wednesday, the Hoopoe still there, Ashy Minivets and male Blue-and-white Flycatcher all week, also Asian Brown, an early Grey-streaked and at least one male Narcissus, and on Thursday six species of bunting, Tristram’s, Little, Yellow-browed, early Chestnut, Japanese Yellow and Black-faced (very common). Here some photos of Blue-and-white, Narcissus, Tristram’s and Japanese Yellow.




What we are missing are other Philippine species – Ferruginous and Mugimaki Flycatchers. So still a long way to go to catch up previous years. And no cold fronts on the horizon, so we may even miss some regular species this year.

At sea, the first terns and skuas plus a long awaited Ancient Murrelet and a Sanderling caught up in the Red-necked Phalarope flocks




For the third time in six years, the whole South Peninsular was ravaged by fire for Ching Ming. Firemen and helicopters were called in




I’m starting to believe these fires are started deliberately, possibly to clear gravesites. It looks black now but it will start to green after the first rains and will be back to normal for autumn migration. Nature will win.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 8/04/2011 12:37 ]

wgeoff

The exceptionally slow start to spring continued this week. I did not see a single flycatcher all week, in a week where it’s normal to see four or five species not just four or five birds. So far, no Brown Hawk Owls, Dollarbirds or interesting leaf warblers like Eastern Crowned or Pale-legged. And it’s not just the rarer birds which are absent – even more common migrants like Grey Wagtail, Common Sandpiper and Common Kingfisher are rare or absent this year.

And in amongst all this nothingness, a Black Redstart, second record for Hong Kong. This is Po Toi.
The bird showed well around the sister’s café on Wednesday but was not seen on Thursday so I suspect it has now gone. These may be the last photos taken of this bird




I’m glad it stayed long enough for many people to see it. The old lady who lives near the ferry pier came back off a two week holiday to see the bird, and so maintain her comfortable lead over Paul Leader in the Hong Kong list stakes.
One reason why it stayed so long must be the sandy rocky habitat created by the clearance of land for farming. So perhaps we have the young Po Toi farming couple to thank for the bird as well as Mr So who took the first photos.

Also on offer this week, a Black Bittern which flew up the east coast on Wednesday morning, single Japanese Sparrowhawk and Chinese Goshawk, a fine Grey-tailed Tattler on the rocky shoreline, the Hoopoe which has now been on Po Toi for five weeks, a few Ashy Minivets but not as many as usual, a really good-looking summer male ocularis White Wagtail on the football field and a Yellow-fronted Canary in the same area.




The Grey-tailed Tattler showed great expertise at prising the small molluscs you can see in the photo off the rocks with its bill and eating them.
Canaries are migrants or summer breeders on Po Toi, seen in both migration seasons and once feeding young.

Even at sea it was quiet – just one Ancient Murrelet, one Arctic Skua, a single flock of 8 Gull-billed Terns and a few Greater Crested Terns. But this is quite normal for early April, the pace should start warming up next week.

So what about next week on the land? What we need is a really good cold front with rain but we’re not going to get one. Next best is a depression with rain and one in scheduled for Sunday/Monday. It could do the trick, especially if the rain is quite heavy for a time. I live in hope. But it may now be too late for some of the early spring migrants.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 15/04/2011 05:27 ]

wgeoff

A much better week this week after the rain on Sunday.

Tuesday was the best day (Monday would have been even better but I wasn’t there). Bird of the week was the Red-breasted Flycatcher which stayed throughout the week.
It showed the usual Red-breasted features of pale lower mandible (dark in Red-throated), brown longest upper-tail coverts (black in Red-throated) and generally buff colouration (greyish in Red-throated)



but the real clincher is always the call. Here is the call of this bird

http://www.geoffwelch46.com/RBFLYCALL00.mp3

compared with a composite professional recording of Red-breasted (a churr) and Red-throated (a rattle)

http://www.geoffwelch46.com/RBRTFLYCEV81.mp3

This is the fourth spring record for the species on Po Toi after the first in 2007, followed by 2008, 2009 and now 2011.

While I’m on calls, here is the song of a Dusky Warbler, the first I can remember for Po Toi

http://www.geoffwelch46.com/DUSKYWSONG00.mp3


Tuesday also had six other species of flycatcher, Grey-streaked, Asian Brown, Ferruginous, Narcissus, Blue-and-white plus the Red-breasted and a Hainan Blue reported by Martin Williams. Supporting cast included Striated Heron, Chinese Goshawks, a very fine Black-capped Kingfisher, Pale Martin, Swinhoe’s Minivet from the previous Saturday, an Oriental Reed Warbler and some Chestnut Buntings.
Here the Kingfisher and a Ferruginous Flycatcher, one of my favourite spring visitors




But they had almost all gone by Thursday which was very quiet. Just this strange combination of a late Black Bulbul and a Yellow-fronted Canary sharing the same bamboo.




Although I did catch up a bit, I am still way behind the previous four year’s spring migrant count as this chart shows (pink line well below the other colours from end of March onwards)




Egret migration is almost completely absent so far this year, including no Pond Herons - where are they all?

Sea-watching was quite good this week, with five species of tern, Common, Black-naped, the first Aleutian, Bridled and a small passage of Greater Crested (total 32) together with two species of Skua, Arctic and Long-tailed and two Ancient Murrelet. The last species pleased my guest, Brendan, who stayed with me all week and also saw Roseate Tern, but I’ll leave him to supply the seabird photos which are much better than mine. Sea birds should now increase to a peak over the first two weeks of May.

PS Paul Leader has commented that the unusual bird I saw two weeks ago (see First Week in April above) running and standing on the concrete path was a first-winter female Siberian Rubythroat, not a Brown Bush Warbler. Apparently first-winter females do not always show the distinctive white head pattern shown in the text books and for behaviour and rarity, a Siberian Rubythroat fits much better than a Bush Warbler. Thanks Paul.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 22/04/2011 06:51 ]

wgeoff

Yet another quiet week on Po Toi in a spring which must rank among the quietest ever (ignoring an Ashy Woodswallow or two). I wrote in the most recent HKBWS Quarterly Bulletin number 219 that spring on Po Toi is ‘short, fast and furious’ but the adjectives ‘long, slow and tedious’ are more appropriate for this year.

The fact that I saw my first Dollarbird, Brown Hawk Owl and Mugimaki Flycatcher this week demonstrates this. These species are more than two weeks late on a normal spring, as were Chinese Pond Heron, Grey-faced Buzzard and Ferruginous Flycatcher before them. Other species about one week late have been Chinese Goshawk, Japanese Sparrowhawk, Ashy Minivet, Blue-and-white Flycatcher and Black Drongo and as yet no Brown Shrikes when normally I am falling over them.
And the numbers are not there either. Almost all species are in fewer numbers than previous years.

All the result of weather. This has been a very quiet spring weather-wise with only one weak cold front on 4th April and a small depression on 18th April. The net result is both a warm spring and fewer migrants. I have discussed the relationship between average spring temperature and early migration dates in Bulletin 216. It’s not that the birds are migrating later or in smaller numbers, it’s just that to see spring migrants in Hong Kong you need some bad weather to bring them our way. Otherwise they just overfly or pass well to the east of Hong Kong. Good for the birds, not so good for the bird-watchers.

So to some photos from this week. Firstly my own (as seen from the quality), Ferruginous and Mugimaki Flycatchers (Tuesday), Brown Hawk Owl and Dollarbird (Thursday), a fine male Grey Wagtail and a Swinhoe’s Minivet (all week).




But pride of place to Jennifer Leung’s male and female Hainan Blue Flycatchers on Sunday. This is quite a rare species on Po Toi and these photos are especially good.




No sign of these or the Grey-headed Flycatcher on Tuesday when I arrived.

Also quiet at sea with light winds. Just an Arctic Skua (here passing in front of a bright blue Maersk container ship), Greater Crested Terns and waders, for example these Curlew migrating high up heading north east, and this Striated Heron coming in off the sea.





No Short-tailed Shearwaters yet, although they have already arrived off the coast of West Malaysia where they are also now known to be annual spring visitors.

Good luck to the HKBWS Boat Trip on Sunday.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 29/04/2011 09:00 ]