mchristine

I would much incline to support Gary's view that it is NOT a Red-backed Shrike.  According to the distribution map of Red-backed Shrike published by Birdlife, it is an European bird with declining population.  According to the information from "A Checklist on the Classification and Distribution of the Birds of China" (Chief Editor ZHENG Guangmei), Red-backed Shrike is much restricted to North Xinjiang only.

From the distribution perspective, the "suspected Red-backed Shrike" I saw in Long Yuen yesterday was unlikely to be a real Red-backed Shrike.  When I saw the bird, I would say that it mostly likely was a juvenile Brown Shrike.   

It would be good to seek expert advice from European and Xinjiang birders.

[ Last edited by mchristine at 2/10/2013 10:43 ]

mchristine

Quote:

Original posted by lpaul at 2/10/2013 11:13
Juvenile/first-winter Red-backed Shrike based on very warm upperparts, white ground colour to the underparts, long primary projection, rather square tail and white fringe to the outer tail feathers.

It should become a ground breaking finding if it is all confirmed that it is a Red-backed Shrike, juvenile in particular.  All sources I came across consistently stated that Red-backed Shrike was a migrating bird found scarcely in Europe,  Russia, Africa, Northern China yet never mentioning Hong Kong as far as I am aware of.  Shouldn't these sources be updated?

mchristine

Quote:

Original posted by ajohn at 2/10/2013 14:25
Christine, your books are correct that Red-backed Shrike breeds across Europe and only as far east as Xinjiang. It is a declining species in much of the range, but is still numerous across most of the ...

Dear AJohn,

Thank you for your sharing.  Once again, all these bird books and webpages should be advised to be updated if Red-backed Shrike were consistently found in Taiwan, HKG, Japan............

mchristine

Would like to share with you all an interesting and informative article in relation to the above differentiation

http://www.dutchbirding.nl/content/journal/pdf/2000-6.pdf