Start of Autumn Migration

Appearance of Amur Paradise Flycatchers officially marks the end of our quiet summer. A short walk at Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve last month yielded two of these energetic birds, both busy looking for insects and fighting each other. These quick moving birds were perfect subject to test out my newly acquired Canon EOS R6 mk II, which seems to be doing its job fairly well, together with the RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 lens, was a very light and manageable setup in the forest. In the same bird wave I also found an Eastern Crowned Warbler, another early migrant. 

Amur Paradise Flycatcher - first of our autumn migrants

Otherwise, it was still relatively quiet, with mostly local residents seen, only Huet's Fulvettas and Mountain Bulbuls were cooperative enough for me to photograph.

Huet's Fulvetta

Mountain Bulbul

While there are no buntings to attract during the summer in the paddyfields, hundreds of Scaly-breasted Munias take advantage of the rice, they are always good models especially when seen up close, such as this one. I didn't really bother looking for breeding Greater Painted Snipes anywhere, but its a species always lovely to see.

Scaly-breasted Munia

Greater Painted Snipe

Deep Bay Area is receiving more autumn migrants now such as Pin-tailed Snipes and various waders. Kentish and Siberian Sand Plovers are both returning, as well as Long-toed and Temminck's Stints. I expect more will soon be following.

Pin-tailed Snipe

Kentish Plover

Siberian Sand Plover

Long-toed Stint

Temminck's Stint

Eastern Yellow Wagtails are also returning once more, they often migrate in flocks and now outnumbering our local White Wagtails.

Eastern Yellow Wagtail

Last week we just experienced one of the strongest typhoon since 2018, typhoon Saola strengthen with centre wind speed reaching over 230km/h at its peak. It barely weakened as it reached within 50km to Hong Kong, luckily it was a relatively compact typhoon, we only experienced the worst of the winds for a few hours before it slowly moved towards Macau. The strength of the wind was clearly visible during the aftermath, as we saw numerous trees collapsed, even this sail boat got toppled during the storm.

Damage from Typhoon Saola

Hoiling and I decided to head out towards the seaside once the wind died down the next day, hoping to see if any birds had been blown into Plover Cove, as soon as we got off our car we saw terns flying around in the harbour, mostly Common Terns foraging amongst the boats. There were also plenty of Whiskered Tern along with them. 

Common Tern

Whiskered Tern

I was pleasantly surprised by a few Aleutian Terns mixed in with the Common Terns, they are considerably scarcer than Common Terns and I only usually see them during pelagic trips! I was even more surprised when I saw some Greater Crested Terns, these large terns are usually seen much further out at sea, no doubt the typhoon brought them this far into the cove.

Aleutian Tern

Greater Crested Tern

For the next hour or so we continued to count the passing terns, I am sure it was up to way over a hundred terns coming through, in the end we counted up to 8 species of terns, other than those previously mentioned, we also added Black-naped, Bridled, Little and Gull-billed Terns. Before we left we also saw a flock of Red-necked Phalarope flying past. Certainly made for an interesting post typhoon activity!

Black-naped Tern

Red-necked Phalarope

Pelagic Fun in May

I joined two pelagic trips in the beginning of the month, hoping to catch some more seabirds before spring migration is over. Both days saw strong easterly winds throughout the day, which is not good for migrating seabirds, but great for birders! Although we didn't find anything really unusual or rare, finding at least a few Shearwaters and Skuas was already something! This is also a really good time to find migrating terns, which we saw no less than hundreds of them. The most numerous being White-winged Black Terns, these good looking birds can be fairly common during passage, and this was a particularly good year for them, as birders been seeing them almost anywhere with water! We encountered flocks of these feeding together.

White-winged Black Tern

Common Terns were also seen in good numbers, we saw constant stream of these throughout the trips. Most were of race longipennis with all dark bills, only a few were of race tibetana or minussensis. Quite a few were seen resting of floating polystyrene out at sea, taking a break from their long distance migration.

Common Tern - race longipennis

Common Tern - race tibetana / minussensis

Spring is also a great time to see migrating Aleutian Terns in Hong Kong waters, it still amazes me to think that up till 80s their wintering grounds were almost unknown to ornithologists, and wasn't recorded in Hong Kong until 1992! Now, we know they winter in equatorial waters in South East Asia and as a regular passage migrant through the coast of China. We were able to get quite close to a few of these elegant looking birds as they rested on floating buoys or debris.

Aleutian Tern

Another regularly recorded species of tern throughout spring is the Greater Crested Tern, this species does not breed in Hong Kong but probably breed somewhere not far from Hong Kong, even from a distance we can usually pick them out from other terns due to their larger size.

Greater Crested Tern

The smallest of our migratory terns is the Little Tern, we saw quite a few following most of the White-winged Black Terns. They also have quicker wing beats, always looking quite 'busy'.

Little Tern

Finally, you get our trio of breeding tern species. They start arriving by late April and now starting to show signs of courtship. Black-naped Terns are the palest looking of the three species, they look almost all white from afar, with only a black stripe running across the back of their head.

Black-naped Tern

Bridled Tern is the most numerous and darkest of the three, they are also the largest and have longer wings. We saw plenty of them during the trip, but usually in pairs, I wonder if those are already paired up for the breeding season.

Bridled Tern

The least common of the trio is the Roseate Tern, we only saw a single one resting on the buoy with the Black-naped Terns. In breeding plumage their breast turns a pinkish hue, hence appropriately called the Roseate Tern.

Roseate Tern & Black-naped Tern

Hundreds of Red-necked Phalaropes migrate in flocks at sea, this arctic breeder winters throughout tropical oceans, during spring migration they are commonly found feeding on the waves. Breeding females have dark face, while males are duller in colour.

Red-necked Phalarope

On the first trip we encountered a single Arctic Skua, this seems to be the most numerous Skua species we've been getting these few years. Much thanks to dedicated sea watcher Bart de Schutter, who notified us of this incoming bird from behind our boat from his sea watching point on Po Toi! ID for adults are pretty straight forward, as they have a short streamer and slightly bulkier than Long-tailed Skuas, the large single wing patch on upper and lower wings also supports that.

Arctic Skua

No pelagic trip feels complete without find a Shearwater or two, we were lucky to find Short-tailed Shearwaters on both trips, though the best encounter was on the second trip when this individual flew in alongside to our boat! Thanks to the dedication of Hong Kong sea-watching pioneers like Geoff Welch and Bart de Schutter, we now have a much better understanding of seabirds migration in Hong Kong, it also shows the limitation of boat trips in terms of racking up species count, as we have limited visibility at sea, we are likely missing a lot of birds going past us outside of 1km radius. That being said, we do get to enjoy close encounters with these birds when we do chance upon them, so I am not complaining!

Short-tailed Shearwater