HANOI – Some sightings at 4 wooded/scrubby city patches last week (17th - 23th Sept) during noon strolls.
On the phylloscs front,
Eastern Crowned Warblers seems less abundant than one week ago. Some
Arctic and
Yellow-browed Warblers, but few compared to
Sulphur-breasted Warblers and "Blyth’s Leaf Warblers", flitting everywhere around. The carambola orchard at Gia Lam was full of warblers (especially Sunday 16
th Sept, a fantastic day) fluttering through all levels, many times at eye-level - excellent opportunities of photo! Concerning the undergrowth-dwellers,
Pale-legged Leaf Warblers were spotted in the 4 patches + a glimpse of a
Dusky Warbler. More experienced birders would have probably added to this list some rarer Warblers not easy to ID such as Hume’s and Two-barred Greenish.
On the flycatchers front, the best were:
- 1cy
Brown-chested Jungle Fly spotted Sunday morning 16th Sept. by the dream team JHJ (Jonathan-Hung-John), seen by me at 15 pm the same day (1 hour and half in the orchard : 2 brief views. Hard job !) and again by Hung the 18th
- 1
Brown-breasted Fly
- 1 (supposed)
Klossi Blue-throated Fly
Also the first
Taiga Flys of the autumn (1st sighting the 16
th Sept, now present in all the 4 patches).
Yellow-rumped, Asian Brown, Hainan Blue, Hill/Chinese Blue Fly, Black-naped Monarch, Asian Paradise Fly still hanging around (in all the 4 patches), + Dark-sided Fly in only 1 patch.
Other migrants included my first
Drongos of the autumn (Ashy, both
leucogenis and
mouhoti races, and Spangled), some
Sparrohawks non ID,
Siberian Blue Robins (2 seen + other individuals heard), many
Seicercus sp. (cf Bianchi’s), 1
Forest Wagtail, 1
Black-capped Kingfisher,
Black-naped Orioles (in the 4 patches), 1
Thick-billed Warbler, 2
Orange-headed Thrushes...
As Hung wrote, we have to share the Gia Lam patch with many hunters. I thought they were after Drongos, Black-winged Cuckooshrikes or Orioles, but in fact they shoot absolutely everything - even flycatchers. I asked a guy who just killed a Hainan Blue Fly : “
why do you shoot so tiny birds?”, he answered: “c
ho vui thôi!” (“for fun!”); and “
what will you do with this bird?”, he said : “
cho meo an” (“I will give it to my cat”). Pathetic..
Sharing a birding patch with hunters is tragic. Nevertheless let’s stay optimistic, guns are much “better” than mist nets - at least for passerines !
Sulphur-breasted Warbler - many sightings recently
"Blyth’s Leaf Warbler" - also one of the phylloscs the most frequently encountered the last days.
Many of them show a very grey head
Asian Paradise Flycatcher
1cy Brown Shrike
Male Chinese/Hill Blue Flycatcher
The very pale breast and the throat-triangle recalls the race
klossi of Blue-throated Flycatcher, but this taxon is confined to southern Indochina!
Last April, I photographed a very similar bird, at Lenin Park (photo below).
male Yellow-rumped Flycatcher
male Black-naped Monarch
1cy Taiga Flycatcher with the beak wide open (still hot here).
Browner than the adults, buffy greater covert/tertial tips.
Photographed at a rubbish dump as you can see. What a nice perch!
Eating a worm
An interesting male Hainan Blue Flycatcher with a white throat-triangle
Brown-breasted Flycatcher, 23th Sept.
Other sightings at Hanoi : 27th August 2010, 9th September 2010, 16th October 2010, 27th March 2012. Regular, but scarce passage migrant.
female
Orange-headed Thrush ssp aurimacula (white median covert tips, dark ear-bars), 23th Sept. A fabulous looking species! She was in a very dark area, I had to set the ISO to 3.200, with a speed of… 1/20s. I steadied my camera against a tree trunk, took a deep breath... and the result is not so bad.
The same bird in better conditions
I also spotted this male the same day, at another place (yes, still hot here..).
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
