Silver Oriole - Another Early Autumn Rarity

Three species of Orioles have been recorded in Hong Kong before, Black-naped Oriole being a fairly common and regular passage migrant, the other two are Maroon Oriole and Silver Oriole, both having just been recorded in Hong Kong once. The Maroon Oriole record was a single bird from Po Toi, however it was later deemed as an ex-captive individual due to the race being the largely sedentory Taiwanese subspecies. The only Silver Oriole record also came from Po Toi, on November 2018, this species is globally very rare, and are known to breed in central and southern China, while wintering down in South East Asia, most records outside of China comes from Thailand, where it is a rare winter visitor. Therefore, when Tom Li posted he found a Silver Oriole up on Ngong Ping, you can imagine the excitement! 

When I arrived, it was just over 2 hours after Tom sent out the news, a few birders were already there but had no luck. We walked around the supposed GPS spot without seeing much, by 12:30pm I think most of us there thought the bird might have moved on. I decided to take a walk closer to the main road, just to see if I can bump some bird activity, an Amur Paradise Flycatcher came in hawking for insects, as I was looking at the flycatcher, a much larger bird flew in briefly and out to hide behind the tree. At that moment I suspected it could be the oriole, but I did not see any details on the bird and therefore could not confirm. I waited for a few minutes when the bird finally moved and came into view, sure enough it was the Silver Oriole! I took a few photos and immediately called the other guys over. For the next hour or so the bird showed fairly well on and off. By the looks of its dark iris it should be a young bird, and likely a female.

Silver Oriole - Incredible Rarity!

Other birds nearby along the trail includes 2 Amur Paradise Flycatchers, as well as a Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and a single male Hainan Blue Flycatcher, making for quite a nice supporting cast along that short stretch of trail behind the Big Buddha.

Amur Paradise Flycatcher

Yellow-rumped Flycatcher - juvenile

Hainan Blue Flycatcher - male

I haven't birded anywhere near home for a while, Wu Kau Tang is one of my favourite place locally to check, however last winter was quiet disappointing that have resulted in me largely neglecting the site for a while. And, quietness seems to have continued onto this autumn, I failed to locate any Barred Cuckoo Dove in the valley, although I am sure they will be around somewhere...I found a fairly interesting looking immature male Fork-tailed Sunbird with some adult feathers coming through. Indochinese Green Magpie is of course a staple here in north east New Territories, however it doesn't make them any easier to get photos of. Streak-breasted Scimitar-Babblers are fairly common here, and not unusual to see a few of them during a walk here.

Fork-tailed Sunbird - juvenile male

Indochinese Green Magpie

Streak-breasted Scimitar-Babbler

A female Hainan Blue Flycatcher as well as 2 juvenile Yellow-rumped Flycatchers were about the best birds I could manage on a morning walk. Pale-legged Leaf Warblers are now returning, I heard up to 2 birds but didn't want to show.

Hainan Blue Flycatcher - female

Yellow-rumped Flycatcher - juvenile

Wu Kau Tang is also quite well known for its dragonflies, with several usually rare or uncommon species regularly found here. The Blue-spotted Duskhawker is one of those more unusual species, I saw 3 individuals just along the stream here. Before I left I found an adult Taiwan Kukri Snake hiding behind some plants next to the footpath, I didn't want anyone killing it so I ushered it back into the bush.

Blue-spotted Duskhawker

Taiwan Kukri Snake

We just had our first typhoon of the season, a very strong typhoon Yagi that luckily mostly missed Hong Kong, as it landed further west towards Hainan Island, we got mostly strong east winds in Hong Kong, which in my experience pushes in various terns into Plover Cove, so in the morning of the typhoon I decided to head out to the dam to scan the sea, sure enough there were hundreds of terns. Mostly Common Terns, over hundreds of them! I scanned for Aleutian Terns but had no luck.

Typhoon bringin in a lot of terns

 Common Tern

Whiskered Terns were also in fairly good numbers, many of them flew up the dam and onto the reservoir, making for quite an interesting sight.

Whiskered Tern

A few Great Crested Terns were amongst the best of the terns, I also saw a few distant Little Terns and a single Gull-billed Tern. I keep hoping for some true pelagic birds, but given how far in I am, the probability of that happening is not high.

Great Crested Tern

Quest for Silver Oriole

Silver Oriole - One of the star species of Guangdong's forests

The Silver Oriole is a relatively little known species that breeds in southern China and over winters in mainland South East Asia. It is listed as Endangered due to their limited range and heavy habitat loss of the tropical and sub-tropical forest throughout their range. They are probably one of the rarest breeding species in Guangdong, being rather elusive and not often seen. It is estimated that their global population is no more around 2000 individuals and decreasing.

I've been to Nanling in the past where they are most often recorded but failed to locate them. Last year having heard the news of a pair of Silver Orioles breeding at Liuxihe National Forest Park, I really wanted to give it a try this year. Sure enough, around mid May we got news that the pair had returned to the exact same location! Captain and Kei decided to go on the 25th of May, which I unfortunately had work. Luckily I was able to join another group organised by Principal Kwok. We wanted to get there as early as possible, so we met at 3am and transferred to the Huanggang Cross-boundary shuttle buses to go over the border, where we met with our driver at 4am. Weather was not looking particularly good, we could only hope that the heavy rain ease off by day break...

A quick nap in the van and we arrived at Liuxihe in just two and a half hours! We got off at a restaurant where the footpath up hill is located just to the back. Luckily for us, the weather did improve and we were able to remain dry for the rest of our journey!

Road next to hiking trail entrance

The location of the Silver Oriole is roughly at (23.742036, 113.843287), you can access the area through a footpath from behind the restaurant at the base of the hill, the hike is not particularly difficult, it took us just less than 40 minutes to get to the dam where the Silver Orioles are nesting.

Map of route taken

With most of us not getting any good sleep the night before, we were finding the path much tougher than it should have been, but we managed in the end. The footpath cuts through some beautiful bamboo forest, I was expecting Chinese Bamboo Partridges to be abundant here but surprisingly we got none in the morning.

Beautiful bamboo forest

We arrived at the dam just past 7am. Just as everyone were still getting their cameras ready, a saw a bird flew in from the right side, it had dark head, grey body and a red tail! It was surely a Silver Oriole! It flew in and perched on top of a bamboo where I was able to confirm it as a female due to the streaky underparts.

On top of the dam

Silver Oriole - Target achieved in less than a minute after arriving!

It was an incredible rush to be able to find our target species so quickly! A few minutes later the male also appeared and perched a little further away. This was the only perched view we had of the male during our time here.

Silver Oriole - male

For the next few hours we had good views of the female occasionally perching out on top of a bamboo, the male also flew past a few times. Views were not exactly close, even with my 500mm lens with 1.4x extender my image still needed a heavy crop, but Chun brought with him a scope, so we were able to get top views.

Silver Oriole - female

During our time there the adults never returned to the actual nest, which probably meant the young had already fledged and is somewhere nearby, sure enough Chun found the fledgling perched in one of the tall trees. The adults were feeding their young at the interval of around 15 - 20 minutes. Sightings of fledglings are not common, so we felt very fortunate to have been able to witness it! The adult brought in various of prey items, including caterpillars, cicadas and fruits.

Female with caterpillar

Female with fruit

Silver Oriole - recently fledged young

Other birds in the area while we waited included a few Slaty-backed Forktails and a juvenile Plumbeous Redstart, although both were quite far away. We also had a Black Eagle which only showed briefly, another fairly scarce species throughout Guangdong, Liuxihe is likely the most southerly limits of this species we known of so far.

Slaty-backed Forktail

Plumbeous Redstart - juvenile

Indochinese Yuhinas were quite abundant and we encountered several flocks. Black Bulbuls were also in good numbers as expected, along with Chestnut Bulbuls, Grey Treepies and Hair-crested Drongos.

Indochinese Yuhina

Black Bulbul

As we descended I spotted a Hill Prinia singing on an open branch, this is the closest encounter I've had with this species. Hill Prinias seemed pretty widespread in a few forest sites at Guangdong, including Gutian, but absent from Hong Kong. Whether this species can spread to Hong Kong remains to be seen.

Hill Prinia

Just before we got back to the restaurant, James spotted a flock of Black-throated Tits, a charismatic species of Guangdong's forests, relatively rare in Hong Kong where they are still seen occasionally. We had fairly good views of these cute birds.

Black-throated Tit

We had a brilliant lunch at the restaurant, while we were there we also noticed a House Swift nest just under the terrace, which provided very close up views, in Hong Kong this species usually nest on much taller buildings, so it's unusual to be able to see their nest up close.

House Swift - at nest

Our van departed at around 1pm, the way back to Shenzhen took slightly longer due to traffic, but we were able to get back to Shenzhen Huanggang Border at just around 4pm. It just shows such day trips from Hong Kong can be extremely productive, and open up a lot of relatively unexplored or under-birded areas in southern Guangdong. A huge thanks to Principal Kwok for organising the logistics for the trip, and it was extremely enjoyable with all the company of fellow birding friends.

Trip List:

1. Spotted Dove (Streptopelia chinensis) 
2. Asian Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps indica) 
3. Large Hawk-Cuckoo (Hierococcyx sparverioides) 
4. Lesser Cuckoo (Cuculus poliocephalus) 
5. Indian Cuckoo (Cuculus micropterus) 
6. Black Eagle (Ictinaetus malaiensis) 
7. Collared Owlet (Glaucidium brodiei) 
8. Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis) 
9. Great Barbet (Psilopogon virens) 
10. Chinese Barbet (Psilopogon faber) 
11. Speckled Piculet (Picumnus innominatus) 
12. Bay Woodpecker (Blythipicus pyrrhotis) 
13. Grey-chinned Minivet (Pericrocotus solaris) 
14. Scarlet Minivet (Pericrocotus speciosus) 
15. Silver Oriole (Oriolus mellianus)  -  A pair feeding a recently fledged young
16. Hair-crested Drongo (Dicrurus hottentottus) 
17. Grey Treepie (Dendrocitta formosae) 
18. Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 
19. Japanese Tit (Parus minor) 
20. Black-throated Tit (Aegithalos concinnus) 
21. Red-whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus) 
22. Chinese Bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis sinensis) 
23. Black Bulbul (Hypsipetes leucocephalus) 
24. Chestnut Bulbul (Hemixos castanonotus)  
25. Common Tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius) 
26. Hill Prinia (Prinia superciliaris) 
27. Indochinese Yuhina (Yuhina torqueola)  
28. Swinhoe's White-eye  (Zosterops simplex)
29. Rufous-capped Babbler (Cyanoderma ruficeps) 
30. Streak-breasted Scimitar-Babbler (Pomatorhinus ruficollis) 
31. Huet's Fulvetta (Alcippe hueti)  
32. Chinese Hwamei (Garrulax canorus) 
33. Oriental Magpie-Robin (Copsychus saularis) 
34. Slaty-backed Forktail (Enicurus schistaceus) 
35. Plumbeous Redstart (Phoenicurus fuliginosus) 
36. Crested Myna (Acridotheres cristatellus) 
37. Fork-tailed Sunbird (Aethopyga christinae) 
38. Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus)