A Raptor Day - Hanoi

Today (6th March) I went to the Red River island, more precisely the cultivation and scrub between the "forest" and the main trail, a small area of around 2-3 hectares. I just sat and waited the actors enter the scene.

Highlights : 1 Black-faced Bunting male, a flock of 15 Grey-capped Greenfinches, 2 Pied Harriers (1 male, 1 juvenile), 1 Eastern Marsh Harrier male, 1 Siberian Rubythroat male, 2 Bluethroats, 2 Chinese Blackbirds.
Grey-capped Greenfinch
This bird is fairly common along the coast, but seems to be also not scarce inland, at least in East Tonkin. Indeed, it’s my second sighting of this species this winter far from the coast, the first one near Dông Mô lake, 50km west of Hanoi (26th December).

In this flock, there were also some juveniles begging for food and still being fed by parents. So they were born in the middle of the winter ?!

A stunning Pied Harrier male

As I was trying to hide myself behind a ridiculous bush to photograph the Bunting, I suddenly realized that a big guy was flying towards me. It tried to catch something in a cornfield and flew over me, very close, not scared.

Pied Harrier immature

Eastern Marsh Harrier male

Black-shouldered Kite

I added this crap pic below because it shows well a form of display I have observed sometimes : the bird raises and lowers the tail (around 1 time per second), with a soft call (“piu.. piuu”), when the partner is around.

This guy belong to the pair of the northern tip of the island. The small wooded area where they tried to nest last year has been cut down...

Cheers,

Sébastien Delonglée

A Pleasant Morning in Dong Hoi

I'm slowly making my way south on the train from Ninh Binh after a fantastic visit to Cuc Phuong, and broke the journey last night at Dong Hoi, Quang Binh Province, which I gather is the northernmost extremity of Central Annam, or the southernmost extremity of North Annam.

Having discovered already that Robson's guide has a few deficiencies, and that stated ranges are sometimes incomplete, I suspect it won't be news to many readers that Gray Capped Greenfinch has a broader range than given in his book. I am now neither in East Tonkin nor in South Annam, the two areas given for this species, and am in fact almost exactly between the two of them, so it seems worth noting that the species is near-abundant along the coast here.

Dune and casuarina near Dong Hoi, where Grey Capped Greenfinch is very common.

For a good ten kilometer stretch of beachfront casuarina scrub on the peninsula across the bridge to the east of the city proper, I found it to be perhaps the most common species, seen virtually every time I stopped my motorbike.

The least boring of this morning's birds:

Blue Rock Thrush (in Dong Hoi city proper)
Grey Capped Greenfinch
Kentish Plover
White Wagtail
Grey Wagtail
Oriental Skylark
Cinnamon Bittern
Black Capped Kingfisher
Zitting Cisticola, properly identified

Were you to find a Blue Rock Thrush right along the riverfront in downtown Dong Hoi, this ruined (bombed, by my people) church would be about the only likely spot. There was one on it this morning.

Incidentally, there are kilometers of unpeopled beach beginning just a kilometer or two south of Dong Hoi along the coastal spit on the other side of the river.

02/26/2011

Cheers,
Richard Fleming

Tristram's Buntings for Christmas

Hi all,

One day trip to Mount Ba Vi last Sunday (26th December).
In winter, this mountain can be very foggy and birding impossible. Sunday, the weather was nice, cold for sure but no mist, and the 3 famous peaks were perfectly visible as the photo shows (foreground : Đồng Mô lake):

I focused on the degraded forest and thickets around the restaurant area. Surprisingly, I saw many interesting species that we encounter generally in good forest, mixed with birds of more open habitats and forest edges. Many fruiting trees yielded flocks of Thrushes and other good birds.

Highlights : 2 Tristram's Buntings, 1 male Fujian Niltava and 1 Chestnut Bulbul (hard to believe I know, but good views...)

Seen also, among many others : - Barbets : Great (heard only), 1 Green-eared, 1 Blue-throated

- Thrushes : 1 Black-breasted, some Grey-backed and Scaly

- 1 Verditer Flycatcher

- 1 Stripe-Tit Babbler

- 1 Oriental Turtle Dove

- Flowerpeckers : 1 Scarlet-backed and 2 Fire-breasted feeding on the same fruiting tree

- very showy Orange-bellied Leafbirds, male singing and female

- 1 Chestnut-flanked White-eye in a flock of Japanese ones.

- Sunbirds : 2 Crimson, 1 Fork-tailed

- some Orange-flanked Bush Robins

- 1 Green Magpie sp
Tristram's Bunting. I flushed 2 birds, non identified. One of them, more curious, reappeared in the thickets in which they had just disappeared, and observed me during long et nice seconds.
Fire-breasted Flowerpecker male

Fire-breasted Flowerpecker female

Gorgeous Crimson Sunbird male

Blue-throated Barbet. I saw this bird 500m after the cactus garden, so at low altitude (300m). Each time I go to Ba Vi, I stop at this place which offer panoramic view on the valley and I have generally a contact with this species, moving in a degraded open forest. I don't understand why this bird which don't seems to have narrow habitat requirements (I mean good forest) is so rarely spotted elsewhere.

Scaly Thrush

A Japanese Thrush which seems to hesitate : Hmm, which one to choose ?

On the way back to Hanoi, I came across a flock of 20-30 Grey-capped Greenfinches at Đồng Mô lake, along the dyke (the northest one), feeding over grasslands grazed by cattle and perching sometimes on eucalyptus trees. Difficult to approach.

A nice birding trip with 2 lifers in the pocket (the Greenfinch and the Bunting), exactly one year after I began to interest myself in the vietnamese avifauna and twitched my very first local bird, it was a Robin Magpie...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone !

Sebastien