After finding yesterday's Tiger Shrike so close to home and with very little effort, I was inspired to give Suan Rot Fai a damn good kicking this morning.
Gloomy conditions at dawn with low cloud after heavy overnight rain meant that looking for warblers and flycatchers would have to wait and I headed to some more open areas to see what was happening around the lakes. One of the first birds I heard calling was my first Brown Shrike of the autumn and as the morning progressed I picked up another five - birds are on the move!
Whilst checking the mimosa that makes up the "Rubythroat Bushes" I flushed a shrike, which I assumed would be another Brown, but when I got the binoculars on it I could see it had a grey cap and my thoughts immediately turned to a picture I'd seen on Facebook a couple days previously of a Burmese Shrike at Khon Kaen University. The bird flew around for a minute or so and it was obvious from the flight pattern that this was not a Brown Shrike, being much less direct or purposeful. More time getting views of the bird perched confirmed that it was indeed a juvenile Burmese Shrike, and only my second patch tick of the year!
Burmese Shrike is resident in easternmost India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Vietnam and southern China, with some short-range migration into Thailand and Cambodia outside the breeding season.
Other migrants were a bit thin on the ground, with just one Arctic Warbler and two Eastern Crowned Warblers, a Blue-tailed Bee-eater heard overhead and a single Barn Swallow seen.
Gloomy conditions at dawn with low cloud after heavy overnight rain meant that looking for warblers and flycatchers would have to wait and I headed to some more open areas to see what was happening around the lakes. One of the first birds I heard calling was my first Brown Shrike of the autumn and as the morning progressed I picked up another five - birds are on the move!
Whilst checking the mimosa that makes up the "Rubythroat Bushes" I flushed a shrike, which I assumed would be another Brown, but when I got the binoculars on it I could see it had a grey cap and my thoughts immediately turned to a picture I'd seen on Facebook a couple days previously of a Burmese Shrike at Khon Kaen University. The bird flew around for a minute or so and it was obvious from the flight pattern that this was not a Brown Shrike, being much less direct or purposeful. More time getting views of the bird perched confirmed that it was indeed a juvenile Burmese Shrike, and only my second patch tick of the year!
Burmese Shrike is resident in easternmost India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Vietnam and southern China, with some short-range migration into Thailand and Cambodia outside the breeding season.
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| Burmese Shrike |
Other migrants were a bit thin on the ground, with just one Arctic Warbler and two Eastern Crowned Warblers, a Blue-tailed Bee-eater heard overhead and a single Barn Swallow seen.
1 comment:
Oh! Yes! The migrants are coming.
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