Monday 29 December 2014

A Little Haven in Shek Kip Mei

29/12/2014

A Birder from HKBWS been reporting a location call "Wo Chai Shan". It's a small patch of woodlands on a small hill located between Shek Kip Mei and Prince Edward, in other words right in the middle of the city. It's just about 10 minutes walk from Shek Kip Mei MTR station, and is a great little place to bird if you need a break from the bustling city.

The woodlands weren't particularly very high quality, but it was bigger then I expected, and the trees seems to be holding up fairly well with some pretty mature trees up there. A rarity have been spotted in the form of a Brown-chested Jungle Flycatcher, I was trying to look for that today but it never showed. However, a walk around the hills was very much enjoyable. The trail system seems to have been created by walkers themselves and are fairly well maintained! It's not an official park created by the government, but you see benches, picnic tables, even swings!

There seems to be some local speciality, too. The hill was filled with Greater-necklaced Laughingthrushes, possibly the easiest place in Hong Kong to see. Great place to observe these sociable birds, I had a great time just looking at them preening each other. At one point I saw 6 on the same branch!

Greater-necklaced Laughingthrush






The other local speciality should be the Crested Goshawk, they only showed briefly but other people have seen them here as well. I saw a pair. I am sure with all the laughingthrushes, that translate to a lot of food for the Goshawks.

Crested Goshawk


Hill was teaming with Pallas's Leaf Warblers and Yellow-browed Warblers, too.

Pallas's Leaf Warbler

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