Shake your Booty .....
Booted Warbler - Iduna caligata Thanks to Mike Kilburn for finding this in the scrubby margins beside some San Tin fishponds. Hong Kong's fifth or sixth Booted Warbler - and the first for me in HK !...
View ArticleBraving the Concrete Jungle
Chinese/Yellow-billed Grosbeak - Eophona migratoria That's the birds braving the concrete jungle of course, - I'm just an urban (urbane?) softy. We returned from Brisbane to the news that a Baikal...
View ArticleSouthwest Pacific Seabirding - Part I Vanuatu to New Georgia
Port Vila, Vanuatu Having boarded the previous night, we set sail from Port Vila, Vanuatu on Jan 6th, 2017. On board Expedition Yacht Sauvage, we were hosted by Didier, Sophie and Chloe Wattrelot....
View ArticleSouthwest Pacific Seabirding - Part II New Ireland to Kolombangara
Beck's Petrel - Pseudobulweria becki On 20th January 2017 we arrived off Silur Bay, New Ireland. We were there because we knew that Birdlife International had identified the area in 2012 as a good...
View Article“Po Toi and HK Southern Waters”
Long-tailed Skua - Stercorarius longicaudus “Po Toi and HK Southern Waters” is the usual billing for Hong Kong Bird Watching Society boat outings that aim to find seabirds. These spring boat trips...
View ArticleGull-billed Terns
The Gull-billed Tern (Gelochelidon nilotica) is a spring passage migrant, with sometimes flocks of several hundred in Hong Kong in spring. When viewing noisy and quarrelsome flocks like this, it's...
View ArticleLate April - grey days mean good birding
Friday, 21st April 2017 I cycled out for a couple of hours in the boardwalk hides at Mai Po. The tides were pretty low, but I wanted to see whether there were many birds on the moss in front of the...
View Article"A week is a long time..."
"...in politics..." (Harold Wilson) "... in April bird migration...." (me) I had a couple of mornings at the Mai Po boardwalk hides, and here's a selection of what I saw. At the peak of the tide The...
View ArticleOriental Dwarf Kingfisher - and supporting cast.
Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher May. Another month has arrived and it feels like “Phase II” of spring migration. The waders and flycatchers have mostly passed in peak numbers but the birds that breed...
View ArticleStarting to feel like Summer
Short-tailed Shearwater - Puffinus tenuirostris After the excitement of the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher, it might seem strange that we returned to Po Toi Island the following day. However, a week...
View ArticleFiji - Part 1 - Land birding near Suva
Golden Fruit Dove - Ptilinopus luteovirens This trip was centred on a ten-day boat trip to look for the Critically Endangered Fiji Petrel, of which, more later. Fiji is a direct ten-hour flight from...
View ArticleA welcome stranger - HK’s First Black Noddy
Black Noddy - Anous minutus Three species of tern breed on the rocky islets off the northeast coast of Hong Kong’s New Territories. Bridled, Black-naped and Roseate Terns brave man-made hazards such...
View ArticleFiji - Part II - Seabirding east of Viti Levu
Viti Levu, Fiji Tropical Cyclone “Ella” had stirred up Fiji’s weather, and we started out towards Gau from Port Denerau near Nadi, not Suva as originally planned. The main reason for going to Fiji had...
View ArticleInner Mongolia, March 2017
Shore (formerly "Horned") Lark - Eremophila alpestris There’s nothing like the swelter of August in HK to cause me to hark back to the cool few days in March we spent in Inner Mongolia, near the...
View ArticleQinghai - Birding around Yushu, 22nd to 24th August 2017
Tibetan Ground Tit - Pseudopodoces humilis We arrived in Yushu, se Qinghai on 22nd August. We were due to join some friends for a fairly intensive high-elevation tour on the 25th, so arrived early to...
View ArticleQinghai Province - a Snow Leopard Quest, 25th to 30th August 2017
Early morning, south Qinghai Province We had first heard about the possibility of seeing Snow Leopards in China when we read Terry Townsend’s “Birding Beijing” blogposts earlier this year....
View ArticleIn praise of - Pied Kingfishers
Pied Kingfisher - Ceryl rudis Exuberant, noisy, full of life - Pied Kingfishers brighten a great swathe of the "Old World" from East Africa to South China... Pied Kingfisher - Ceryl rudis Pied...
View ArticleNorth Chile, 6th to 22nd October 2017
Northern Vizcacha - Lagidium peruanum The thirteen-hour flight from Sydney to Santiago crosses so many time zones that it arrives (local time) before it took off. This meant that our first three...
View ArticleSeabirding in the Humboldt Current - Part 1
Elliot's (White-vented) Storm-Petrel - Oceanites gracilis The main reason for our trip to South America was a voyage scheduled from 23rd October to 16th November 2017 on Yacht Sauvage. Kirk Zufelt...
View ArticleSeabirding in the Humboldt Current - Part 2
Galapagos Petrel - Pterodroma phaeopygia Waved Albatrosses were an almost constant presence as we approached the Galapagos Island group on the last few days of the voyage. Waved Albatross -...
View Article