Zappey's Flycatcher Cyanoptila cumatilis 琉璃藍鶲
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Oct. 2010, Michelle and Peter Wong.
16–17 cm. The adult male has turquoise upperparts, breast, chin, throat and cheeks contrasting with slightly darker lores and paler crown and white bases to the sides of the tail.
The female has greyish-brown upperparts with rufous-brown on the wings, rump and tail. It has a narrow pale eye ring. The breast is olive-grey, the belly and undertail are whitish. First-winter males are like the female but have blue on the wings, rump and tail.
Oct. 2010, John and Jemi Holmes.
There may be a blackish line on the lower border of the breast.
The adult male can be separated from Blue-and-white Flycatcher by its uniform blue-green coloration and its contrastingly dark lores, although the colour of both species can vary with light conditions. Females and immature males are, on current knowledge, indistinguishable from Blue-and-white Flycatcher in the field.
VOCALISATIONS
The call of this species is unknown, though it is presumably similar to Blue-and-white Flycatcher.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
The sole record occurred at the migrant hotspot of Po Toi.
OCCURRENCE
There is one record: a male photographed on Po Toi on 19 October 2008 (Holmes 2011).
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Previously considered a subspecies of Blue-and-white Flycatcher (Leader and Carey 2012).
It breeds in central and east-central China, from Beijing south to south Shaanxi and west Hubei, and probably further west to north Sichuan. It winters in southern Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Java, and is scarce in north Borneo (del Hoyo et al 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Near Threatened. Population trend decreasing. This is a poorly known species and is thought to have no more than a moderately small population size that is likely declining as a result of habitat loss on its breeding grounds.
del Hoyo, J., N. Collar, and J. S. Marks (2020). Zappey's Flycatcher (Cyanoptila cumatilis), 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.zapfly1.01
Holmes, J. (2011). Blue-and-white Flycatcher Cyanoptila cyanomelana cumatilis on Po Toi. The first record of this taxon in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 2007-08: 279-287.
Leader, P. J and G. J. Carey (2012). Zappey's Flycatcher Cyanoptila cumatilis, a forgotten Chinese breeding endemic. Forktail 28: 121 - 128.
