Hanoi : Migrants & happy escapees

HANOI - Some sightings last week (17th - 23th Sept) at different spots in the city.

• Wooded/scrubby patches :

10 species of flycatchers seen (Yellow-rumped, Asian Brown, Dark-sided, Hainan Blue, Hill/Chinese Blue Fly, Klossi Blue-throated (1), Black-naped Monarch, Asian Paradise Fly, Grey-headed Canary Fly, Verditer).

More Dark-sided, Taiga than last week but less Yellow-rumped and Asian Paradise.

First sightings of the autumn of Grey-headed Canary Fly, Verditer Fly (both the 25th Sept) and Blue-whistling Thrush (27th Sept.).
+ Ashy and Splangled Drongos, Siberian Blue Robins, Seicercus Warbler sp., Black-naped Orioles (big flock at Botanical Garden), Orange-headed Thrushes…

On the phylloscs front: Eastern Crowned, Arctic, Yellow-browed, Dusky, Sulphur-breasted, "Blyth’s Leaf W.", Pale-legged Leaf W.

Also a flock of 5 Red-billed Leiothrix at Gia Lam, presumably - according to Hung - confiscated from cage-bird dealers and released back to “the wild”. Not genuine birds for sure, but nice sighting !

• Vinh Thuy :

Mudflats :30 Grey-headed Lapwings, 1 wounded Black-winged Stilt, 50+ Kentish Plovers, small flock of Temminck’s Stints, 1 Red-necked or Little Stint (interesting sighting inland I think), 1 Peregrine Falcon + all the usual suspects.

Open fields/scrubs : many Black Drongos, Siberian Stonechats, Brown Shrikes, 1 Dollarbird heading north (?!). In the scrubs around and inside the small wooded area (an old lychee orchard) 1 lone White-browed Laughingthrush - presumably liberated itself from a cage. Also a male resident Shikra soaring above the orchard. I initially misidentified it as Japanese Sparrowhawk but the correct ID was pointed out to me by Hung.

• Downtown Hanoi :

Purple-backed Starlings seen with Hung near the lake Hoan Kiem, a small flock of 10-20 individuals feeding in the high branches of a fruiting tree, with among them 1 orange-dyed individual and 1 White-shouldered Starling.
At the autumn 2010 we saw some big flocks in the city (Lenin Park + around Botanical Garden, from 30-40 to +200 birds together, between the 29th August and the 16th Sept.).

Last year: no sightings – just because of a lack of observers in the city parks!

Purple-backed Starlings (near Hoan Kiem lake)

Enjoying its freedom, with a White-shouldered Starling

male Hainan-blue Fly

1cy Dark-sided Fly

Seicercus Warbler sp.

Eastern Crowned Warbler

Red-billed Leiothrix

Ashy Drongo

This individual has brown - and not reddish - eyes, 1cy bird ?

Distant shot of a White-browed Laughingthrush

Resident male Shikra soaring above the lychee orchard at Vinh Thuy

a wounded Black-winged Stilt

Flock of Grey-headed Lapwings. Hung around more than 1 week

1cy Cinnamon Bittern

Disgusted at local slob hunters...

They are everywhere...
They have their preferred patches, like me.
Unfortunately, their favorite hunting spots are also my favorite birding spots :))
They know very well what "chim di cư" (migrants) are, when the birds arrive and where to find them.
They shoot at anything that moves. This one : 15 birds in the bag, half were flycatchers as big as your thumb.

NO LIMIT to how many creatures they kill.

That's not hunting, that's just massacre...
They are not "hunters", they are just vandals...

Lenin Park, Hanoi

Hi all,

this morning (16th September) a walk through the northern and eastern parts of the park (including toilets, of course) produced the following - as always amongst others: at least 3 Dark-sided Flycatchers, 3 Asian Brown Flycatchers, 2 Yellow-rumped Flycatchers (1 female-type, 1 first year male), 1 probable male Hainan Blue Flycatcher, 8 or more Arctic Warblers (with one bird being confusingly brownish-colored on the back), about 30 - 40 Purple-backed Starlings still in the fruiting tree Florian has marked on his map.
Cheers,
Florian, Falk

And at lunch in the botanical gardens there was 1 Asian Brown Flycatcher, 2 Brown Shrikes and 1 Arctic Warbler.
Simon

And a Verditer Fly in the Lenin Park, the one seen yesterday by Florian. A lifer for me...
If I summarize, 5 species of Fly today over there, good !
And if I add the Brown-breasted and other species seen last winter and springer (Mugimaki, Red-throated, Blue-and-white and Fujian niltava - wintering !-), at least 10 species of Fly (let alone Asian Paradise-Fly and Grey-headed Canary Fly) have stopped in this area as big as a football ground. Not bad for an urban park.
Sébastien

Verditer Flycatcher/Lenin Park
Dark-sided Flycatcher/Lenin Park

Flycatchers and Starlings in Lenin Park

Another rainy morning, so we did not go to the island. Richard went to Lenin Park instead, where he quickly found his 3rd lifer of the trip, the Yellow-rumped Flycatcher. I (Florian) joined him a little later and it turned out not too bad: Lots of Flycatchers: 3 Dark-sided, 1 Asian Brown, 2 Hainan Blue, 1 Verditer. That fruiting tree Sebastien photographed yesterday still had plenty of Purple-backed Starlings, so I finally got to see them as well. I thought there were 2 White-shouldered among them, but not sure. I also saw a yellow vent and streaked belly which think must have belonged to a juv. Black-naped Oriole. And 2 Brown Shrikes and a Cuckoo sp.
That area behind the toilets had 4 flycatchers alone, so even if smelly definitely a good spot.

And in order to distract myself from urgent work, i played a little with google maps. The locations of starlings and that place behind the toilets:


Lenin Park Hanoi auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

200 Starlings brighten up the leaden sky of Hanoi

Hi all,

Some news about our Purple-backed Starlings. Well, they seems to be much more numerous than before, that's good. Today at noon, at Lenin Park, I encountered a large flock of around 200 individuals that were gorging themselves on small fruits.

I stayed a rather long time over there and didn't noticed any other species among them. 100% Purple-backed !

The flock above the Park Lenin Lake. I counted 200-210 birds, you can try !

But before, without the help of the camera, I estimated it around... 60-80 individuals -- ughh !

Sébastien

Rainy day birding in Hanoi

Having spent the past two weeks reading on this blog about all those fabulous migrants that have been turning up in Hanoi I just had to get up north. Rain stopped play for the planned visit to the Red River Delta with Florian & Falk this morning so the morning was spent birding around the botanical gardens and the Presidential Gardens/Ho Chi Minh Museum area. Not the best of birding conditions but finally caught up with the Purple-backed Starlings near to the Ho Chi Minh Museum and then on my second visit to the Botanical Gardens later in the morning a Brown-chested Jungle-Fly showed up. Florian and Falk also caught up with the jungle-fly. Not a lot else of note apart from an Asian Paradise Flycatcher in the bot gardens and a Tiger Shrike and Burmese Shrike in the gardens behind the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. We'll try again for the Red River Delta tomorrow rain permitting ...

Richard Craik

Update Purple-backed Starlings + White-shouldered Starlings, Truch Bach

Hi all,

7 Purple-backed Starlings and 2 White-shouldered Starlings in the fig tree at 25 Nam Trang, Truch Bach Lake.

Cheers,
Falk

Purple-backed Starlings in Hanoi

A flock of 30-40 Purple-backed Starlings stopped to feed in a fruiting fig tree along the edge of Truc Bach lake this morning (31/08/10). After half an hour or so they headed off to the botanical gardens (as did I, where there was a 1st year male Yellow-rumped Fly). I first saw them on the 29th, whizzing past the window of my flat, but did not identify them until today.

Simon Mahood