At about 10.15am on Wednesday morning, I was coming down from the Upper School on Po Toi through the gravesites when I was attracted by a bird calling from a thick area of grass and weeds. I was with the bird for the next 5 minutes, although most of the time I could not see it as it remained deep in the scrub. I knew where it was because it was calling continuously. I did manage to get some views and these 4 photographs before it flew off towards some bamboo and woods on the other side of the valley. I did not see it again.
The bird was small, with a prinia size body and a longish tail slightly cocked. The crown was brown with a buffish supercilium and a dark brown eyestripe. The back and part of the wings were red-brown but the flight feathers were dark in flight. The throat was whitish grey with the breast darker grey but the belly was yellowish buff (more yellow than the photograph shows) and the flanks and undertail coverts were a more orange colour. The underside of the tail was dark brown – I could not see the upper side or the rump. The legs were pale and the bill dark brown on the upper mandible and pale on the lower.
The call was quite distinctive and made continuously, starting with a long ‘trrrrrrrrrrrrr’ (make the sound with the tongue vibrating on the upper palate) and followed by at least 3 sequences of a short ‘tuk took’, the ‘tuk’ being slightly higher in pitch than the ‘took’. The whole sequence was ‘trrrrrrrrrrrr tuk took tuk took tuk took’, the ‘trrrrrrrrrrrr’ being much longer than the ‘tuk took’.
The bird description could fit Yellowish-bellied Bush Warbler but I have no idea whether the call fits that species.
Any comments please?
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Last edited by wgeoff at 18/08/2010 17:57 ]
