Hanoi : Black Stork and Woodcock to start the New Year

A strange pair of species for a post title, but one was the biggest (and maybe the rarest) bird I have seen over the past few months, and the other the hardest to photograph. Both have been spotted during a walk yesterday morning along the Red River, at Hanoi, only 1 km from the city centre.

January 1st is the traditional day for birders to get outdoors and make a good, birdy start to the New Year!

The Black Stork was roosting on a sandbar with 50-60 Grey Herons, near Vinh Thuy Bridge. An adult, maybe the one recorded mid-Nov 20km upstream by S. de Albuquerque & M. Ashby.

After being flushed, the flock (with the Stork) landed 300 meters away on another sandbar, in the middle of the river.

A long distance and heavily cropped record shot. Grey Herons here in Vietnam have a very large flush distance (at least 200m for this pic). They are hunted for food so they have very good reasons for not trusting humans.

Sightings of Black Stork over the last 3 years at/around Hanoi (that I am aware of):

-26^th Oct. 2011 (2 juv.,Vinh Thuy Bridge also)

-26^th Oct. 2012 (1 juv.)

-10^th Nov. 2012 (2 juv., among them one seen the 26^th Oct.)

-mid-Nov. 2013 (1 ad.)

-1^st Jan. 2014 (1 ad.)

All these birds were sighted along the Red River, often roosting on sandbars, only one time observed foraging (in a small pond adjacent to the river).

Black Stork is a rare winter visitor in Vietnam (only recorded from East Tonkin apparently).

The Eurasian Woodcock was flushed in a nearby orchard.

Not an uncommon sight in the Hanoi area (both winter visitors and passage migrants), in small wooded areas, banana plantations and even downtown parks – where they have some difficulty to hide!

A lucky flight shot

Winterers/migrants downtown Hanoi

Not much birding this week (26th Nov ->2nd Dec), the weather was awful. The terrible Hanoi winter has begun : cold, wet and GREY!

At the Botanical Gardens, I flushed an Eurasian Woodcock around the toilet area ! This guy was trying to hide itself behind a tiny bush. My second sighting of a Woodcock in this park. I also picked up a male Mugimaki Flycatcher.

Most of the White-tailed Robins or Fujian Niltavas spotted least week have gone - or have been captured by... blowpipe hunters (see the last photo of this post).

The park held small flocks of Turdus thrushes. Some male Japanese Thrushes with different patterns, whilst the others, all females or first-year birds, presented a significant identification problem and were not all identified conclusively.  I did not found the solution in the guide books or on the Internet...

An adult male Japanese Thrush showing the "usual" pattern (i.e. the most encountered) with grey-blue mantle contrasting with black head

A black-backed male Japanese, with almost no contrast between head and mantle, and big black spots below (my second sighting of this pattern at Hanoi in 2 years, the other one here).

I am almost certain that this bird is coming from Northeast Asia. Japanese Thrush has different populations with plumage variations (curiously not covered in the guide books), birds breeding in China are a bit different from those breeding to the NE in Japan. 

I suspect it's a 1st cy Japanese (heavily spotted below/flanks), but the strong warm orange down the flanks make me confused.

Well-demarcated streaky rather than spotted breast, faint spotted below... I suspect it's a 1st cy Grey-backed.

 

female White-tailed Robin

What is that ? From this angle, ID is a bit tricky

Hm hm.. a small blue patch in the neck : female Fujian Niltava

Blue Whistling Thrush. Nice bird, but crappy background.

male Mugimaki Flycacher. Regular passage migrant here.

I spent one hour skulking around the toilet area, chasing this Rufous-tailed Robin. And if people saw me as a pervert, I don't care ! That is the price to pay for capturing close-ups of birds which are much more difficult to photograph in the forest.

It is really not too difficult to get nice shots of winterers/migrants in the urban parks because they can often allow much closer approach than the ones we encounter elsewhere.

Careful, it is slippery!

Olive-backed Pipit. Very common winterer.

We do not stop the progress ! Jivaro style hunting in the city !

They can hit a passerine at 20m - I took all my photos at less than 10m...

They do not use darts but soft balls. The objective is not to kill the bird but to stun it, and then put it in a cage.

Daurian Redstart

A stroll at the sand bank and the wooded area near the Thang Luong bridge this morning did not brought a great number of birds but some interesting species. On the sandbank a resting Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus), no other birds. The beach was occupied with some 50 cars from the 4x drive club so we decided to visit the open wooded area and the banana plantation nearby. Here we flushed an Eurasian Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) in the banana-tree plantation. In the open wooded area a group Olive-backed Pipits (Anthus hodgsoni), two Taiga Flycatchers (Ficedula albicilla), and a male and female Daurian Redstart (Phoenicurus auroreus), o.a. were identified.

Jan de Groot and Brieke Steenhof

Crested Serpent-eagles (the proofs !)

Hi all,

This morning (22 October) I came back to the wooded area of the Red River Island to finish the job, i.e. take photos of the raptors I spotted yesterday.
A view of what we call "the wooded area of the Red River Island" for those who don't know the place. It is a small wooded patch of 100x400 meters (in the background) surrounded by cultivation, located 1 km from the city center. Vegetation is dense with many bushes, trees are generally less than 10-15 meters in height. So, nothing special... but goods birds are regularly spotted there.
The nearest good forests are 40-50km from here (Tam Dao, Ba Vi...).

I arrived when the sun was just beginning to cut through the fog. I flushed an Eurasian Woodcock in a crop field, and some minutes later I saw a raptor circling in the mist. I managed to get 2 shots before it disappeared.

Broad rounded wings, longish tail, mostly plain and pale underparts, three blackish tail-bands, broad rufous bars on belly, stripes on throat... I think everyone will be OK : Jerdon's Baza !

After this, the big guy I was waiting entered the scene, gliding slowly above the canopy, and landing on the highest tree of the area.

After a while, an another Crested Serpent-eagle appeared. Yes, two ! But clearly not the same age.

One is an adult; broad white band then broad black band can be seen along the trailing edge of the under-wing.

The other one is an immature, not a 1st calendar-year (whitish bellow according to the Robson guide), but a 2nd or 3rd cal-year I don't know.

But the perfect plumage and the swollen aspect of the secondaries recalls very much a juvenile raptor (1st winter), what do you think ?

Sebastien Delonglee

Woodcock in the Botanical Garden

Yesterday, short stroll in the Botanical Garden 1 hour after Simon.

When I was admiring the Ferruginous Fycatcher I saw something big landing at about 40 meters. A Woodcock ! Being disturbed by people, it took off again and flew directly in my direction, and landed at around 5 meters ! It walked quickly to hide itself under the shrubs along the wall. I approached a little, it flushed again and disappeared between the trees.

15 minutes later, an another one - or maybe the same bird which had discreetly came back ?- flushed from those shrubs . When I moved out of the park (south gate), I saw it again flying above... the bia hoi restaurants. Assuredly this park is not a good rest area for Woodcocks.



The Ferruginous Flycatcher juvenile

In the Lenin Park : Ferruginous Flycatcher still there (and have diversified a lot its perches network !), Hainan Blue Fly, Siberian Blue Robin. No Thrushes...

And again a bird trapper, trying to catch Red-whiskered Bulbuls with a captive bird.

Sebastien