Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Arctic Warbler

Rather a frustrating morning, with overnight rain stopping when I left the house, but starting again by the time I got to the patch. Ended up sitting in a shelter staking out "the secret garden", hoping for a skulking Zoothera (who wouldn't?!) but instead just getting the bread-and-butter migrants - an Arctic Warbler showed well, whilst Yellow-rumped and Asian Brown Flies zipped about in the bamboo.

When the rain finally stopped I took a short walk and found a male Siberian Blue Robin, but I was out of time - I needed to get to the office.

As I was getting home this evening, about to dismount from my motorbike taxi I noticed a group of about 6 small greyish-looking starlings head over my house.  We live on a sturnidae flyway that the four resident species use when going to roost in the evenings.  Encouraged by this fleeting glimpse of something more interesting I spent the last 20 minutes of day light watching to see what else was going past, and briefly picked up another group of similar greyish-looking starlings, but views were not good enough to determine if they were Daurian, White-shouldered or Chestnut-tailed (though I suspect the latter)  which are all passage migrants (Chestnut-tailed also breeds in very small numbers).  Try again tomorrow...

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