Japanese Waxwing Bombycilla japonica 小太平鳥
Category I. Accidental winter visitor.
IDENTIFICATION
May 2023, Wong Yung.
15-18 cm. A highly distinctive species that is overall brownish-buff with greyer rump, uppertail coverts and wings, black mask and throat, reddish undertail coverts, white tips to primaries, vinous panel in closed wing and red tips to tail. First-winter birds have duller undertail coverts, paler wing panel and less or no white in the outer webs of primaries. Distinguished from Bohemian Waxwing by red tail tip and scapulars, black mask extending onto rear of crest, plainer and greyer upperparts, pale belly and duller undertail coverts.
VOCALISATIONS
All calls are high-pitched: a short ‘see’ descending sharply in pitch, a long ‘seee’ that is slightly less high-pitched and descends slightly in pitch and both short and long trills intermediate in pitch.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Has occurred in open woodland, mainly in the New Territories.
OCCURRENCE
There are five records from 16 January to 20 April.
1991: seven at Lam Tsuen during 5-6 April (Pearse and Williams 1992).
1997: five at Shek Wu Wai on 7 February.
2003: one at Mai Po NR on 16 January.
2018: first-winter at Airfield Road, Shek Kong on 18 January.
2019: one at Quarry Bay during 28-29 November.
Given that this is an irruptive and nomadic species that carries out late autumn migrations (Brazil 2018), such a pattern of occurrence of late appearances and long gaps between some records is not unexpected.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Generally easy to observe as it forages on fruit in trees.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds in east Russia (Yakutia, Khabarovsk and Amur), adjacent areas of Heilongjiang), and spends non-breeding season in east China, Korea and Japan (Mountjoy and Christie 2020). In China it is a migrant through the northeast provinces and a winter visitor to areas from Yunnan east through Guizhou, Hunan and Jiangxi to Zhejiang and Taiwan, and areas north and east of here as far as Liaoning (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Near-threatened. Population decreasing. A scarce species thought to have a moderately small global population that is threatened by habitat loss and persecution for the wild bird trade.
Brazil, M. 2018. Birds of Japan. Helm, London.
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.
Mountjoy, D. J. and D. A. Christie (2020). Japanese Waxwing (Bombycilla japonica), 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.japwax1.01
Pearse, J. and M. D. Williams (1992). Japanese Waxwing in the Lam Tsuen Valley. A new species for Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 1991: 138-140.
