Hanoi : Phylloscs "influx"

HANOI – Some sightings at 4 wooded/scrubby city patches last week (17^th - 23^th 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: “cho 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 !

 Pale-legged Leaf Warbler

 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, 23^th Sept.

Other sightings at Hanoi : 27^th August 2010, 9^th September 2010, 16^th October 2010, 27^th March 2012. Regular, but scarce passage migrant.

female Orange-headed Thrush ssp aurimacula (white median covert tips, dark ear-bars), 23^th 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..).