Birding Hanoi: Sun & Thrushes

Last week, we've been spoiled by one week of glorious sunny weather, the kind that makes it hard to stay inside and work. It has been associated with a major cold front with North wind that brings in lots of migrants, the most obvious of them were Thrushes with many flocks seen. Definitely a winter Thrush!

Noon photo strolls at the Botanical Gardens produced a normal winter selection of species including : Japanese, Scaly & Grey-backed Thrushes, Chinese Blackbird, Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher, Yellow-browed & Dusky Warblers, Red-Flanked Bluetail, Olive-backed Pipit, Fujian Niltava, Chestnut-flanked White-eye. 

Along the Red River, in agricultural/scrubby and wooded areas, I added the following winter visitors/late migrants (2 afternoon visits): Eurasian Woodcock, Taiga & Asian Brown Flycatchers, Black-capped Kingfisher, Hoopoe, Citrine Wagtail, small flocks of Light-vented & Black Bulbuls, Daurian Redstart, Bianchi’s Warbler (seen and heard, call recorded. Not a Seicercus sp. this time), Brownish-flanked & Manchurian Bush Warblers (call of the former also recorded), Sibe Stonechat & Grey Bushchat, Siberian Rubythroat, Eastern Marsh and Pied Harriers, Common Kestrel, Brown Shrike, and 2 non-migratory but interesting species (for the city): Masked Laughingthrush (at least 2 individuals together) and Puff-throated Babbler.

I spent half of my time in my hide, which explains this quite short species list.

I forgot : I also bumped into a Leopard Cat. This is my 3^rd sightings of this species (2 + 2+ 1 individuals) along the Red River at Hanoi, in dense reed beds/scrubby areas, at 2 different sites.

I am convinced that these cats are highly adaptable, occurring in a wide range of habitats (not only forests), provided that we leave them in peace.

Here photos taken at Botanical Gardens:

 Chestnut-flanked White-eye after the bath

 Female Red-flanked Bluetail

 Female Fujian Niltava

 Deluxe perch

 Male Fujian Niltava

A Striped Squirrel – probably the Eastern Striped Squirrel (Tamiops maritimus).

Its presence in the park is strange (released?). Nice little fellow, it changes the usual Pallas's Squirrels. 

Here photos taken along the Red River:

 Black-shouldered Kite - resident.

 A male Eastern Marsh Harrier taken to task by a Kestrel - quite a size difference!

 Male Pied Harrier

Hoopoe - a regular but uncommon passage migrant in autumn and spring at Hanoi, I do not remember having seen one in winter

 Masked Laughingthrush - 2 seen

 A late Black-capped Kingfisher - as Hoopoe, more likely observed in autumn and spring at Hanoi.

 Puff-throated Babbler -  my first Babbler within the City limits

 Bush Warblers are photographers nightmares. You can locate them all by call, but seeing and photographing them is another issue. I was lucky with this Brownish-flanked Bush Warbler.

 Just half lucky with this Manchurian Bush Warbler.

Male Siberian Rubythroat. Also a ground-dwelling skulker (but not a mega one like the Bush Warblers). It is also much less nervous about coming out in the open – it helps the photographer.

 Female Japanese Thrush

Scrutizing the ground...

 Scaly Thrush - a personal favorite

 

Merry Christmas and a Bird-filled 2014 for everybody!

Sebastien

Some recent sightings from Ba Be National Park

Spent a couple of days at Ba Be National Park earlier this week with Le Quy Minh, Simon de Albuquerque and Marcel Ashby and looks like we found something new for the Vietnam list …  wait for it …. da, da, da, da, da, ... Great Crested Grebe. Not the most exciting species for European birders maybe but it appears to be a first for Vietnam.

The bird was seen at close quarters happily paddling around the lake on the afternoon of 19th and again on the morning of 20th November. 

White-eared Night-herons (we made it five birds) were observed heading out to feed at dusk on 19th and returning to roost at dawn on 20th.Also a nice little group of nine Mandarin Duck and a pair of Tufted Duck currently in residence on the lake.

A few days earlier a Black Stork was seen flying along the Red River near Lien Hong by Simon and Marcel. 

Cheers all,

Richard Craik

The lonely Grebe (Le Quy Minh)

Deluxe Ducks - the Mandarin family (Le Quy Minh)

Fansipan disaster

The Sun Group Corporation has commenced construction of a three-wire cable car system in Sapa town, Lao Cai province, to transport tourists to the peak of Fansipan Mountain – the roof of Indochina (3,143m), in the heart of the Hoang Lien National Park. It is scheduled for completion by the end of 2014.

The 7 km-long three-wire cable car system – the first of its kind in Asia – will be able to carry a maximum of 2,000 people per hour, with a capacity of 35 passengers per car. It will shorten the current two or three-day journey required to reach Fansipan’s summit down to... 15 minutes. 

That cable car will seriously threaten the site in the following ways: 

-The construction will cause the heaviest damage to the mountain in its history, and destroyed the authenticity and integrity of the topography of the mountain top. 

-Damage to vegetation and ecology. A swath of forest and vegetation of about 10 meters in width has to be felled below the cable car line; at the top a large surface of vegetation have to be destroyed for the cable car station, stores, restaurants and concrete paths – and probably hotels! A cable car owner is always soliciting tourists for more profit, which leads to a crowded mountain top. Then merchants are tempted to open more stores and restaurants. The top of the mountain will become a source of pollution and will endanger the whole mountain. 

-A scar on the natural beauty of the scenery. The cable car, never in harmony with the natural scenery, becomes visual pollution. Travelers visit this mountain to seek beauty, knowledge and mental relaxation. Hiking in the Fansipan Mountain enables one to fully explore the sites’ natural, aesthetic and cultural value. The construction of the cable car will damage the value of the national park. 

-Not in accordance with the basic demands of tourism. Relevant local departments should have invested in outbound transportation construction and improved fundamental tourist facilities outside the scenic zone, but instead they cash in on transportation in the heart of the scenic zone at the cost of damaging irreparably the site. It takes two or three days with local porters (of the Mông ethnic group) to reach the top, while soon 15 minutes will be enough. When the cable car company will profit, the local people will lose. 

-A contradiction to the protection of a national park. The aim of a national park strategy is to reserve and protect the authenticity and integrity of the original relics for future generations. Profit-seeking development projects contradict the public service role and spiritual and cultural functions of the national park. 

The effect of building a cable car system is obviously to cash in at the cost of damaging the scenery. 

No cable cars are allowed in national parks in the United States. The well-preserved natural scenery draws tourists from home and abroad. Each of America’s five mountains over 2,000 meters above sea level attracts more than 2 million tourists a year. Mount Fuji in Japan stands 3,776 meters above sea level. The road stops at 2,000-odd meters, and there is no cable car or neat walking steps above that point. A small path leads all the way to the top. The mountain attracts more than 2 million visitors annually. Do the Japanese have no money to build a cable car? 

Cable cars and other commercial entertainment facilities should be built in their proper place, not in scenic zones and national parks!

Cable cars also are needed in some mountainous regions as a means of transportation. Cable cars are promising, but not in the wrong place!

The summit of Mount Fansipan

Xuan Son National Park

Mid October I visited Xuan Son National Park, about 125 km West of Hanoi, so about 3.5 hours driving. The target was the Odonate fauna, but as very little is known about its birds I present here an overview of what I encountered. Having said that, my eyes were trained on nearby space most of the time and I ignored many of the birds calling, as the dragonflies were great. Nonetheless, the tally for birds was not bad at all.

There are several ways to access the National Park, with the entry near Coi Village well hidden. It has to be approached from the North, from QL32. That way you first get to Coi and from there to Lap village. Beyond Lap village is an area with a great clear stream through primary forest. It has a footpath of concrete slabs on one side and a narrow concrete road (newly constructed) on the other and various bridges, but the overal impression is that the forest is still good, the stream clean and visitors few, apart from the local minority people. At the end of the concrete road it turns into a forest trail leading to a waterfall. In parts the trail had collapsed in a landslide, so it is careful going, and in parts it was very steep and slippery, so that it was dangerous for the elderly, so to speak.

During the trip towards the park and near the park entrance I saw several Amur Falcons on wires or hunting, a large flock of swallows, including Barn, Red-rumped and Sand Martin, and a nice flock of Red-billed Blue Magpies. On a previous visit I also had seen Japanese Buzzard and Oriental Honey Buzzard migrating, and Blue-tailed Bee-eaters, Ashy Minivet overhead, and Red-throated Pipit, Dusky Warbler in the fields. This time I was inside the forest more, so did not see that many migrants passing.

Along the trail Limestone Wren-Babblers were quite present, I saw at least 3 family groups. The stream had Plumbeous Water Redstart and Blue Whistling Thrush, and near the first bridge at dusk two huge owls, Eagle Owls or Fish Owls, I could not tell in the low light. Inside the forest I encountered several flocks of Spangled Drongos. This is a common species, but with them were Long-tailed Broadbills on several occasions, Indochinese Green Magpie and Bay Woodpeckers. The previous weekend we had also seen Silver-breasted Broadbill dipping into the stream to have a bath.

Grey-cheeked and Rufous-throated Fulvettas were common, as was Grey-throated Babbler.

Grey-headed Canary-Flycatcher was another common species. The only other Flycatcher I saw was a Fujian Niltava. A Steaked Spiderhunter was seen several times calling from what apparently was its favourite branch to call from and a Dollarbird sat at the top of a tree.

On the way out of the park a small flock of Silver-backed Needletails was hunting over the fields, as were Ashy Woodswallows, another common species.

All in all it is a very interesting place and judging from the many unknown calls there is much more to see. Here is a far away shot of the Spiderhunter.

Tom Kompier

Botanical Gardens (Hanoi) : Flycatcher number 18

This week, morning watches of the 3 or 4 city patches has been revealing large numbers of  Phylloscs - among them my first Dusky, Radde's and Sulphur-breasted of the season.

But the best bird of the week was a female Ficedula spotted at the Botanical Gardens, showing a rufescent tail, drooping wings and the peculiar habit of flicking tail constantly.

Other features: rufous-brown wings, mantle and below brownish-buff, paler throat, buffish eye-ring.

The darker pics (when the bird is in shadow) 

show the actual colour more accurately than the bright ones.

After a search on the OBCs image database, I confidently identified it as a female Slaty-blue Flycatcher, a lifer, a patch tick and the 18^th  species* of ‘flycatcher’ (of the genera Rhinomyias, Muscicapa, Ficedula, Cyornis,  Cyanoptila, Eumyias and Culicicapa) being observed in the Botanical Gardens.

These bring the list of species (that I am aware of) being recorded in the 2 biggest downtown parks of Hanoi (Botanical Gardens + Lenin Park) to 115. Another recent patch tick was Common Hoopoe, spotted at Lenin Park by Tom Kompier, a Hanoi-based dragonfly/bird watcher who, hopefully, will post soon his sightings here ;)

The parks in Hanoi can turn up some real surprises in spring and autumn.  It’s not that these places are particularly maintained in any way to attract birds – with all the ‘grooming’, it’s the opposite – but a reflection of the fact that there are so few wooded area in/around the city (and so many birds migrating above it) that these places act as a real magnet for migrants.

* the 17 others are : Brown-chested Jungle Fly, Grey-headed Canary Fly, Dark-sided, Asian Brown, Brown-breasted, Ferruginous, Verditer, Yellow-rumped, Green-backed, Mugimaki, Taiga, Snowy-browed, Slaty-backed, Rufous-gorgeted, Blue-and-White sensu lato, Hainan Blue,  Chinese/Hill Blue (excluded : Fujian Niltava, Asian Paradise Fly, Black-caped Monarch).

The other surprise bird of the week was this Chestnut-crowned Warbler seen in an orchard at Hanoi, the first time I have seen this species so low down and presumably a migrant (altitudinal migrant I think - originating from as close as the mountains of northern Vietnam). A great bird for the city!

Splitting headache

Per Alström’s Masterclass on Chinese Phylloscs and Seicercus Warblers here.