Here are some record shots of some very uncommon birds seen on Lamma in the last week. The shots are not display-quality photos, but give anough detail to recognise the birds. There were two rare thrushes - White's or Scaly and eyebrowed, and the first record I know of of the tiny buff-bellied flowerpecker.


White's or Scaly Thrush, Cable Road near Pak Kok


Eyebrowed Thrush, Pak Kok


Buff-bellied Flowerpecker, Tai Peng

Buff-bellied Flowerpecker, Tai Peng.

I love that name! Are there many buff-bellied flower peckers living in Tai Peng? I think so and they live there all year round...

A few more shots like this and it'll be a Lamma-zine story, with a great title!

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Well, Americans ridicule birdwatchers by asking them facetiously how many "yellow bellied sapsuckers" they've seen today. (These are real birds - a kind of woodpecker.) I guess a buff-bellied flower pecker might be a good Far Eastern equivalent.

I was woken by an owl hooting away merrily this morning - Po Wah Yuen around 6am. Sounded a little bit like a Koel but I'm sure it was an owl - and it was still pitch black outside. I've lived on Lamma over 5 years but it's the first time I've heard one. I was wondering how rare they are here.....is it a winter visitor? Anyone know which kind it's likely to be?

The common one is called a collared scops owl - I've pinched a couple of images from the Internet. They have a two-note mournful hoot, repeated at about 3 minute intervals, very similar to the related New Zealand "Morepork"

A bluethroat was seen yesterday in the cabbage patches in Yung Shue Long valley. As far as I know it is the first time it has been recorded on Lamma.

Anybody get some more photos?



藍喉歌鴝, 南丫島, 榕樹塱, 2007-01-20

I wonder if any of these rare visitors can be attributed to climate change and warmer winters? How about the bluethroat, for example - is it usually found further south? In general, is there an impression of birds wintering further north than in the past?

It is quite possibly due to more people looking. At the moment there are a few people actively looking for birds, so fairly uncommon species may previously have gone un-noticed.

But here's another one - a record shot only, I'm afraid - a rare Pale Thrush (Turdus pallidus), previously unrecorded on Lamma as far as I know, seen this afternoon on the cable road outside Tai Peng.

A couple of uncommon thrushes down at the end of Yung Shue Long Valley this afternoon. THe location was kindly pointed out by digiscoper Neil a couple of days ago. Too far away to get good shots but enough to recognise them as Pale Thrush and Scaly Thrush.

It's very hard to see a grey nightjar unless you stumble upon one sleeping in an exposed place. That is what this one was doing this afternoon, on the wall of a drain in Pak Kok. Unfortunately, the spot could only be approached directly through the swamp.

Wow, great shot Zep! What a beautiful bird. Thanks for braving the swamp to get a picture for us.

Thanks - here it is again up close and personal. I thought it was sleeping, but it had its little beady eye on me all the while.

Looking in the "avifauna" book I see that as a spring passage migrant there are only four previous records in the whole of Hong Kong, although rather more in summer and autumn.

Congrats, Zep, you've made the home page again, 2nd day in a row, WILDLIFE PHOTO OF THE DAY!

That spot is also open to ANYBODY's photos now that Guy has become so busy with work and can't post a daily photo anymore.

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Do they call nightjars "goatsuckers" here like I have heard them called in the U.S.? I haven't seen too many goats around HK, so maybe not. Nightjar is an interesting enough name anyway.

I remember watching nighthawks in California flying around at dusk. They would drop straight down in the sky and when doing so their wings made almost a brief growling sound. The first time I heard it I looked around thinking it was a bear. Do these nightjars to the same?

Yes - I think "goatsucker" is used in US, but that word is also used for a particularly noxious kind of Caribbean vampire - so if you buy one on e-bay better make sure what kind you are getting! Most nightjars belong to the genus is Caprimulgus, which is Latin for "goat sucker."

The nighthawk and the "whippoorwill" are similar. In fact the nightjars of Africa, Asia and America all look remarkably similar. There are 86 species around the world. You can check out a book called "Nightjars of the world" but it has pages of plates of birds that look virtually identical. As far as I know they all feed on flying insects, certainly not blood.

Incidentally, the grey nightjar is quite an uncommon bird in these parts, but there is another species which is resident here, the Savanah Nightjar. This comes out around dusk and has a distinctive "schweeep" call during the months that it is vocal between around March and September. You can often see it in spring and summer skimming for insects on the hills behind Hung Shing Yeh or Tai Peng just before it becomes completely dark.

beautiful bird -- it looks similar to the Aussie tawny frogmouth, are they from the same family? We had one nesting in a tree in our back yard. They don't have a very secure nest, just using the dent in a branch, so not many chicks make it.

I think the frogmouths and also the owlet-nightjars of Australasia are different, but apparently related famlies. Those frogmouths are great birds - we used to get them in PNG too - here's one from an Internet pic.