rayso

19/9/09 8:45am
Black-winged Cuckoo-shrike

spotted foraging on the way to LFS, near Robert Black tennis court in HKU.

rayso

Good morning in LFS:

Black-naped Monarch  x1
Japanese Bush Warbler  x1
Buff-bellied Flowerpecker  x1

all were seen along the stream near Hutton Road.
so fortunate to see such birds even in the deafening noise from the machines in the nearby construction sites.

rayso

an addition:

after checking the book, i suspect i saw a Greenish Warbler as well.

it was relatively large and its legs were dark, not as pale as yellow-browed's.
it flied between branches and twigs not high above the stony stream.
these match quite well with the description in the bird book.
in addition, i didn't hear it called.

if this is true, i had 4 ticks in around an hour just beside the construction sites!

rayso

and yes, i did see swamps of silver-eared mesia today! presumably in a bird wave with the black-naped monarch.

rayso

23/11 830-1000  sunny

dusky warbler >2
blackbird (likely a female)
olive-backed pipit
mugimaki flycatcher F
yellow-browed warbler

+an interesting bunting
(please help me identify it):

it's not a small bunting, with tail quite long relative to its body. the tail is white on the sides.
it does have a median crown stripe, yet not very distinct from the lateral crown stripes.
longitudinal stripes on chest are obvious. background color of chest is close to white.
there are 3 very very distinct black stripes running from the neck to the rump on the back.
the butt was a bit rusted.

it was seen foraging on a trail with boulders and short vegetation beside. the trail was near a stony stream and it eventually flied to it and wandered about. it didn't seem to be shy. it stayed <1.5m to me.
watched it for about 15min and it was only seen on tree branch once. most of the time was foraging on ground.

i suspect it is a meadow bunting juvenile.or probably a chestnut-eared bunting juvenile. less probable a tristram's bunting, due to its quite distinct crown stripes as shown in the bird book.

what do you guys think it is? i didn't expect id buntings was this hard....

rayso

it couldn't have been a  BF bunting i think. the bird i saw was not that dark in color

rayso

i found it in stream next to fire station.
i considered little bunting as a possibility initially. but it's considerably smaller than the bird i saw. so i would better stick with tristram's and meadow.

rayso

exam period => birding period!

8/12 1200 to 1300   cloudy
a good bird noon after the exam around the LFS education centre

grey-backed thrush
brown-breasted thrush
pale thrush
blackbird
yellow-browed warbler (a lot!)
chestnut bulbul (don't see them in summer in LFS)
Asian Stubtail Warbler
Grey Wagtail
Blue Magpie

for the brown-breasted and pale thrushes, i'm not very sure about their identity.
but the suspected brown-breasted i saw had a large patch of orange (color more intense than grey-backed's) on the sides of the belly(didn't see the breast clearly).

and is the lack of eye-catching details a feature for pale thrush? i saw a somehow featureless thrush for a no. of times in LFS and guess it might have been a pale thrush.

[ Last edited by rayso at 9/12/2009 00:17 ]