Mugimaki Flycatcher Ficedula mugimaki 鴝姬鶲
Category I. Uncommon autumn migrant, scarce winter visitor and spring migrant to closed-canopy forest and woodland-edge habitats.
IDENTIFICATION
Nov. 2018, Michelle and Peter Wong. Adult male.
12.5 – 13.5 cm. The adult male is distinctive with slate-grey head and upperparts, a white spot behind eye, a white patch on the upperwing coverts, white edges to tertials, and white edges at base of the tail. The throat and breast are rufous-orange. The belly and undertail coverts are white.
Dec. 2012, Michelle and Peter Wong. Adult female.
The adult female has greyish-brown upperparts and pale dull orange throat and breast. Sometimes it has a pale patch behind the eye. It lacks the white base to the outer-tail feathers of the male. Pale tips to the greater coverts form an inconspicuous wing bar.
Jan. 2018, Kenneth Lam. First-winter male.
First-winter males are variable. Some are like the first-winter female, others resemble a washed-out adult male; all show brown primaries and wing coverts and two whitish wing bars, like the female. They do, however, show a white base to the outer-tail feathers, a deeper orange tinge to the underparts and dark uppertail coverts.
Nov. 2016, Michelle and Peter Wong. First-winter female.
The first-winter female has grey-brown upperparts, two whitish wing bars and pale orange throat and breast. Some 1st-winter males are very similar but have white at the base of the outer-tail feathers.
VOCALISATIONS
The call is a hard, dry ‘tuk’, ‘tuk-tuk’ or a short series of these.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Shows a preference for mature woodland, particularly on the Tai Mo Shan massif, but has occurred at widespread locations including urban parks and the outlying islands and is regular at migration sites such as Po Toi and Ho Man Tin.
OCCURRENCE
Mugimaki Flycatcher has been recorded from 4 October to 15 May. As Figure 1 shows, it is primarily an autumn passage migrant, with peak numbers occurring from the last week of October to the first week of December, during which period 66% of all records from 1999/2000 to 2019/20 occurred, with highest numbers in the third week of November. It remains scarce in winter. There is a weak spring passage, albeit with a significant peak during the first fortnight in April. This is the same pattern as was reported in Carey et al. (2001) for the years 1988 to 1997.
The number of birds recorded during each season is rather variable (Figure 2). There was a low of four birds in 2002/03 and with a high of 83 in 2016/17. The increase in numbers recorded can probably be accounted for by an increase in observer activity. Numbers at individual sites are generally low, the highest count on record being an exceptional 30 at Tai Po Kau on 23 November 1969.
Double-digit counts have been made on five occasions at Tai Po Kau and once at Shek Kong; all apart from one (20 at Tai Po Kau on 20 November 1986) occurred in the period 1968 to 1973. In addition, most sightings in the 1960s and 1970s were equally divided between autumn and midwinter, whereas between 1988 and 1997 most records were in autumn. Clearly, this trend has continued both in terms of dates of occurrence and the paucity of high counts. Indeed, peak counts since 1999 have all been in single digits, the highest being eight at Shek Kong Airfield Road on 9 December 2012 and at Ho Man Tin on 23 November 2016.
Vaughan and Jones (1913) noted Mugimaki Flycatcher mainly on the coast as a spring migrant during 2-17 April. Herklots (1940) noted that the only certain record in the 1930s concerned three seen at Mong Tseng on 25 November 1939. It was also recorded in spring by Dove and Goodhart (1955) and in winter by Walker (1958).
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Usually solitary, although several may on occasion feed together in loose association. Food includes insects and some seeds and fruits. Forages at various levels of tree canopy and in the understorey. Catches insects in flight from an exposed perch, often alighting on a different perch after a sally. Up to two wintering birds at Tai Po Kau Headland were seen eating the seeds of Zanthoxylum avicennae in several years in November and December. Six were seen feeding in the same fruiting Michelia macclurei tree at KFBG on 17 November 2021.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds in southern Siberia, northern Mongolia, northeast China, North Korea, the Russian Far East and Sakhalin. It winters in southeast China, southeast Asia, the Greater Sundas, the Philippines and Sulawesi. In China it breeds in northeast Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, and winters in Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan (Clement 2020, Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Clement, P. (2020). Mugimaki Flycatcher (Ficedula mugimaki), 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.mugfly.01
Dove, R. S. and J. H. Goodhart (1955). Field observations from the Colony of Hong Kong. Ibis 97: 311-340.
Herklots, G. A. C. (1940). Notes and comments. Ornithology. Hong Kong Naturalist 10: 122-127.
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.
Vaughan, R. E. and K. H. Jones (1913). The birds of Hong Kong, Macao and the West River or Si Kiang in South-East China, with special reference to their nidification and seasonal movements. Ibis 1913: 17-76, 163-201, 351-384.
Walker, F. J. (1958). Field Observations on birds in the Colony of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, Hong Kong. (duplicated).
