Birdy Fish Ponds

While Mai Po Nature Reserve is arguably the best birding spot in Hong Kong, there are plenty of wetlands outside of Mai Po that can be very productive during the migration. Fung Lok Wai is one of the areas that I've come to really like, the overgrown fishponds in the area provides a lot of cover for reed warblers, this is likely one of the best place in Hong Kong to look for Manchurian Reed Warblers, as I found two there just one morning. One of them was relatively showy, although still incredibly difficult to get any clear photos with nothing in the way.

Manchurian Reed Warbler

Oriental Reed Warblers and Black-browed Reed Warblers can both be found here with relative ease, there's almost at least one Black-browed Reed Warbler in every patch of tall grass. Dusky Warblers were in even higher numbers, they were simply everywhere you look, with one almost every few metres, with this many of them, it gives you a lot of chances to get good photographs of at least one of them.

 

Oriental Reed Warbler

Black-browed Reed Warbler

Dusky Warbler

Other interesting birds in the area includes a female Plaintive Cuckoo, the Pheasant-tailed Jacana is still around, although still incredibly difficult to approach and often fly off way before you are anywhere close to it. Eurasian Coots are not that common in Hong Kong anymore, but can still be found here relatively easily. Four Amur Falcons drifted through high up, this species is often very on time when it comes to migration.

Plaintive Cuckoo

Pheasant-tailed Jacana

Eurasian Coot

Amur Falcon

The tall grass also attracted plenty of buntings, I had at least two Chestnut-eared Buntings along the track, while several flocks of Yellow-breasted Buntings came through, mostly seen inflight, but quite a few came down to feed on the ground as well, including several lovely looking males.

Chestnut-eared Bunting

Yellow-breasted Bunting - male

San Tin is another good areas of fish ponds, the area also attracts a good numbers of buntings, including Black-faced Buntings, several Yellow-breasted Buntings, a few Little Buntings and Chestnut-eared Buntings. With this many buntings around, I can only imagine how good it will be to be in Long Valley!

Black-faced Bunting

Yellow-breasted Bunting - female

Little Bunting

Chestnut-eared Bunting

A half drained fish pond attracted plenty of waders, including a few Spotted Redshanks and many Common Greenshanks. A small flock of Eurasian Teals also decided to drop in here. Other than the three species of Reed Warblers (Manchurian, Black-browed and Oriental), Zitting Cisticolas can also be found in the tall grass, but often not as skulky.

Spotted Redshank

Common Greenshank

Eurasian Teal

Zitting Cisticola

The best bird for me at San Tin was a Japanese Quail, there seems to be a good number of these around at the moment, with several reported at various locations. Its been a while since I got a photographable one, so I was quite happy to catch a glimpse of this one before it ran off to the side of the road and not to be seen again!

Japanese Quail

Along Tam Kon Chau Road I had a Pied Harrier, it flew in quite close but completely caught me off guard! So I had completely wrong settings on my camera, luckily I was able to salvage a few shots from the burst of photos that I took.

Pied Harrier

Tai Sang Wai is becoming increasingly popular amongst photographers, so birding there is now much less enjoyable. That being said, there are still some good birds there, most notably a Japanese Quail, although I didn't see it while I was there as there were too many people on the road...A rather friendly Chestnut-eared Bunting though was more obliging to show.

Chestnut-eared Bunting

There were a few interesting birds around, but none were too photo friendly, including a rather distant Black-winged Kite and several species of waders on a drained fish pond. The only note worthy bird was a single Common Starling, which I think is quite an early bird, only 4 days shy of being the earliest recorded in autumn.

Common Starling

There were up to five Red Bishops along the fish ponds, being very colourful these birds naturally attracted tons of photographers...Although I am quite concerned about how these birds got there in the first place. These are no doubt released caged birds, but I suspect these may have been released on purpose by photographers rather than from mercy releases, as most mercy releases only happen during certain festivals. If this is the case, I find this a rather tasteless practice that should not be encouraged, not only does this encourage to buy birds from the bird trade which may include wild caught birds, but releasing caged birds can lead to bird flu getting spread to wild birds or even worst create invasive species that fight for resources with our native birds...'Luckily', they only seems to sell males at the bird market due to popular demand, as females are drab and not desirable, so there is very little chance that these exotics will establish themselves in Hong Kong.

Red Bishop - male