Finding Vagrants in Hong Kong

October 2018: An Epic Day if Birding at Mai Po and other Hong Kong Wetlands

Sunday, October 14

October 2018 got a little confused - I had had an October trip planned to Asia for months and was looking forward to trying for Mountain Peacock-Pheasants in Malaysia and for Whiskered Pitta in the Philippines.  Then, just weeks before I was due to leave, the trip got cancelled and I had to try to un-book the travel arrangements.  No sooner had I said my apologies though, and cancelled all the ground arrangements for the trip, than I got word that schedules had changed again and that I was indeed free to go to Asia if I wanted!  It was too late to save the Malaysia part of the itinerary, but I was able to resurrect the Philippines trip (more later) and had a single spare day in Hong Kong so reached out to birding friend and local bird guru John Allcock to make plans for a day of birding, including a visit to the fabled Mai Po reserve.

So super early, up and out of the hotel and off to the New Territories to meet John.  First stop was a woodland trail at Shek Kong which, given the date, we hoped would be crawling with interesting migrants.  It wasn't.  In fact it was pretty dead bird-wise, but oh well, never mind, and on to the next spot.

Kam Tin is not the most scenic birding area on earth.  A muddy storm drain full of discarded tires and shopping carts surrounded by concrete banks and overpasses.  It is a wetland though and so draws lots of wetland birds with a good selection of shorebirds and egrets spread up and down the muddy channel.  Our target here was the scarce and declining Gray-headed Lapwing, a lifer for me and a bird I'd looked for unsuccessfully at this site the previous year.  We got out of the car, I scanned the channel, picking up a good selection of birds but no lapwings, but thankfully John was more thorough and picked out a pair in the distance.  So, a life bird, and the day was starting to look up.

Gray-headed Lapwings in scenic surroundings.

Up next was another site I'd birded before, the farm fields and paddies of Long Valley.  Our goal here was to look for scarcer buntings amongst Yellow-breasted Buntings in the dry rice fields and see if we could turn up a rarity or two.  We ended up not finding anything very different but I did get another life bird when we flushed a Lanceolated Warbler a couple of times; a tiny, mouse-like, skulker but very welcome on the list.  And now onwards and time for the main event.

Azure-winged Magpies at the Mai Po HQ Building

Mai Po is world famous.  The marshes, fish ponds and mud flats of the reserve have been intensely birded and studied for years (a function of there being British birders in Hong Kong) and are legendary in birding circles.  I had actually been there once before but, lacking the correct permit, had not been able to access the best parts of the reserve at the right time and had seen very little.  This time I was properly permitted and birding with a local expert so my expectations were high and I'm happy to say they weren't disappointed.

Over the next six hours we saw more than 80 species at Mai Po, including 4 life birds for me.  On the way to the mud flats we worked our way through the fish ponds and found Black-browed Reed Warbler, Pied Harrier and Collared Crow, all of which were life birds for me.  We also flushed a bird that we were pretty sure was a White-browed Crake, a mega-rarity in Hong Kong, but were unable to re-find it so had to let the record go.  Then we spent several hours enjoying some of the best shore birding there is on offer anywhere in the world.

The mud flats at Mai Po are viewed from floating hides at the end of long boardwalks that lead out through the mangroves to the shores of the Pearl River.  The mud was quite literally covered in birds, and with a rising tide we took our places in the hides and started to study them as they got closer and closer.

The mud at Mai Po is literally carpeted with shore-birds and wading birds (plus a Collared Crow).

Wading birds were initially most obvious with three species of egret, several herons and the globally endangered BLACK-FACED SPOONBILL all feeding out on the mud.  Beneath them though was a carpet of shorebirds ranging in size from the larger  Eurasian Curlews, Whimbrels, and Black-tailed Godwits down to the smaller plovers and sandpipers running between their legs.  The reserve was famous for a trinity of very rare Asian shorebirds that would all have been potential life birds to me - Nordmann's Greenshank, Asiatic Dowitcher and Great Knot - and while diligent scanning didn't pull out either of the first two, we did find a couple of GREAT KNOT, a bird I was very happy to finally add to my list.

Eurasian Curlew and Whimbrel

We also managed another bird that was interested for me when we found a Long-billed Dowitcher, a bird I think of as North American but apparently they breed in small numbers in Asia too.

The greatest excitement of the day though was when John, scanned through the hundreds of Pacific Golden-Plovers handed me the scope and said, "what do you think about this one?".  He knew the answer already of course, the eye-pattern was different and a sort of breast-band effect strongly suggested EUROPEAN GOLDEN-PLOVER, only the 3rd one ever recorded in Hong Kong!

European Golden-Plover

So a great day, and with a few hours to kill we headed over to the San Tin fish ponds to see if we could add a few extra species.  We weren't expecting to top the excitement of the plover but not 10 minutes after arriving we stumbled into another rarity, Hong Kong's 4th record of BOOTED WARBLER which we flushed from some grass and managed to get a few record shots of.  Truly a great day of birding and all in one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Booted Warbler

Asian Urban Birding (Part 4) - Hong Kong

A Quick Stolen Morning of Birding in the New Territories

I really hadn't planned to do any birding in Hong Kong.  I arrived late on Sunday night from Singapore and had a ton of meetings on Monday and Tuesday before flying back to New York on Wednesday.  When I looked more closely at the schedule though it looked like there might be a window to get some birds in on Wednesday morning between my early morning calls and my trip to the airport.  Needing some local expertise I reached out to some local guides but drew a total blank, then on Tuesday I got an email from John Allcock (local birding expert and eBird reviewer) ... his plans had fallen through and he could bird with me in the New Territories on Wednesday morning if I wanted to .... of course I wanted to!

Wednesday March 9th - Various Hong Kong Hot Spots

Up at 3am for conference calls and then checked out of the hotel 5:30am.  The hotel was the very fancy Four Seasons, and I checked in as a business man but checked out as a bird bum (dressed in well worm, sweaty, dirty, birding cloths, that I'd worn in Singapore).  I also asked for a cab to an out of the way place in the New Territories rather than to the airport.  I suspect the hotel staff were a little confused.

Finding my way to Tai Po Station, and after a Starbucks breakfast (they serve real British-style Sausage Rolls in Starbucks in Hong Kong - awesome!) I managed to find John in the station parking lot and we were soon off to Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve for some early morning forest birding.

The reserve was a really neat piece of secondary forest - all the primary forest was apparently cut down during the Japanese occupation in World War 2 - and was a surprisingly positive story.  The forest is re-growing and the birds are apparently re-colonizing.  Many species have come back to Hong Kong, some natural re-arrivals and some no doubt helped by the local Buddhist tradition of buying and releasing song birds.  The weather was pretty grotty, and the birds were a little quite this morning but we did manage to get a small list of forest birds including a Pygmy Cupwing (formerly Pygmy Wren-Babbler) and a calling Chinese Barbet, a recent colonist and a life bird for me.

Next stop, with the rain easing off and the sun coming out, was the legendary Long Valley, an area of government-subsidized traditional farmland and paddy-fields.  This habitat is long gone from modern Hong Kong except in this small area where old ways are preserved, and it truly is a birding spectacle, quite literally stuffed with birds.

Chinese Pond-Heron (only one Pond-Heron here) and Pied Avocet 

A mix of vegetable fields, paddy fields, ditches, and areas of fallow land really seem to be a really rich bird habitat.  Lots of shorebirds and a few herons filled the fields and a good mix of wintering passerines inhabited the field edges.  We saw 4 species of pipit (Olive-backed, Red-throated, Richard's, and American), Little Buntings, 2 types of Eastern Yellow Wagtails, lots of 'Stejneger's' Siberian Stonechats, and even a Chinese Blackbird.

I have a soft spot for Wood Sandpiper, one of the first 'rare' birds I saw as a
kid in Wales.

On the shorebird front, there were lots of Wood Sandpipers, Common Snipe,  Little Ringed Plovers, Pied Avocets and Black-winged stilts (Marsh Poodles).  The shorebird I wanted to see here though was Greater Painted-Snipe, a life bird for me, and John (who had previously done research on this species) diligently worked the fallow fields until he found me some.

Great Painted-Snipe thinking we can't see them.

While we were talking (and birding) I mentioned that I still needed Black-faced Spoonbill and, still having a little time before I had to get to the airport, John suggested a quick stop at the Nam Sang Wai Wetlands to see if we could find some.

This stop turned out to be another very birdy spot with lots of shorebirds (Marsh Sandpipers, Spotted Redshank, Common Greenshank, Avocets, Stilts, etc.), herons, ducks, and an Eastern Marsh-Harrier.  But no Spoonbills ... and with time running out we admitted defeat and headed off to find me a taxi to take me to the airport.  As we left the area though I caught a glimpse of some white birds through small gap in the mangroves ... somehow they seemed wrong for egrets so I asked John to pull over and 'humor me'.  We waked back down the road and found a gap in the mangroves and .... Black-faced Spoonbills!  Life bird!  And a great way to end the trip .... 193 species of birds ... not bad for some stolen time on what was otherwise a trip characterized by busy days of meetings and busy nights of conference calls.  Got me thinking about what birds I can see on my next trip to Asia.

Crappy record shot of Black-faced Spoonbills ... but a life bird!

So trip over, I changed out of my stinky birding cloths on the roadside and put on clean cloths for my 16-hour flight to New York.  Figured I'd probably still smell bad but it wouldn't be obvious who smelled like a salt marsh if I changed my cloths.  Until next time Asia ...