Great Stone-Curlew Esacus recurvirostris 大石鴴
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Jun. 2009, Kinni Ho.
41-54 cm. Large, somewhat ungainly, long-legged shorebird with a large, thick and slightly upcurved bill. Pied face pattern, grey crown, rather pale and unstreaked upperparts, buff undertail coverts and unstreaked buffish chest. In flight black flight feathers apart from largely white inner primaries forming a distinct patch, smaller isolated pale patches in in outer three primaries, pale sandy greater and median wing coverts, black tipped tail.
VOCALISATIONS
Loud, high-pitched and far-carrying. Typically, upslurred and can sound similar to Eurasian Curlew.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
The sole record occurred on a brackish water pond at Mai Po NR.
OCCURRENCE
One at Mai Po NR on 24 June 2009 (Smith 2012).
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Resident from southeast Iran through parts of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, northern Bangladesh and Myanmar to northeast Indochina and south China (Hume and Kirwan 2020). In China has been reported from southern Yunnan and Hainan (Liu and Chen 2020). The Yunnan records are from major rivers in the extreme south or southwest bordering Laos or Myanmar, while the Hainan record records are from east coast estuaries, the most recent of which was in 1964 (Smith 2012).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Near-threatened. Population trend decreasing. Expected to undergo a moderately rapid population decline over the next three generations owing to human pressures on riverine ecosystems, including the construction of dams.
Hume, R. and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Great Thick-knee (Esacus recurvirostris), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.grtkne1.01
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Smith, B. (2012). Great Stone-curlew Esacus recurvirostris at Mai Po. The first Hong Kong record. Hong Kong Bird Report 2009-10: 252-254.
