Dermot Breen's Blog

Tuesday, 18 September 2018

Taiwan 25th March 2018

Looks like I let the blog slip yet again. I'm going to try to throw up the last of the Taiwan pics as soon as possible. I was just in Cyprus two weeks ago and have plenty of shots from that trip as well. Quite on the homefront here so far with the only recent good bird being an adult American Golden Plover at Omey Strand.

Back to Taiwan. We spent the first half of 25th March around the Zengwun Estuary which is one the main areas for wintering Black-faced Spoonbills which we saw good numbers of. The estuary and adjacent shrimp ponds proved to quite good for waders. I managed to tick my first ever Long-toed Stint here. I spotted one bird resting on a dyke immediately adjacent to the bus. It quickly flew off before I managed to get any shots. Other notable waders seen in the area included a small distant flock of Great Knot, Pacific Golden Plover, Greater Sand Plover, Curlew Sandpiper, Red-necked Stint and Marsh Sandpiper. In all we recorded nineteen species of waders here. Another unexpected surprise was a single Chinese Egret. Easily overlooked amongst the local Little Egrets. This species is listed as Vulnerable by the ICUN and the global population numbers no more than 3,200 individuals.

No new endemics for the day but I did have the following four lifers - Chinese Egret, Long-toed Stint, White-shouldered Starling and Black-faced Bunting.

Black-faced Spoonbill

Chinese Egret

Little Egret

Black-crowned Night Heron

Green Sandpiper

White-shouldered Starling with a Red Turtle Dove.

Light-vented Bulbul

Brown Shrike

Javan Myna

Pacific Swallow

Male Plumbeous Redstart

Female Plumbeous Redstart

White Wagtail leucopsis

White Wagtails subspecies leucopsis (top) and ocularis (below).

White Wagtail subspecies ocularis

Sunday, 27 May 2018

Taiwan 24th March 2018

I started off the day with a pre-dawn walk around the hotel to finally try to see a Savanna Nightjar. We had these birds calling at night around every hotel that we had stayed at so far in the trip. They seem to have no problem living right in the middle of the biggest most lit-up and noisy cities. Several males could be heard calling above most city streets at any given time during the night time. I finally managed to lock eyes on one bird on the top of a high rise building at about 0400 hours.
Come the dawn we travelled to the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. We spent a few hours on the university grounds and the adjacent Jing-si Lake park.
We were now in the far south of the island and we travelled nearly as far south as possible to Longluan Lake Nature Center. There were bus loads of Taiwanese tourists visiting the visitor centre overlooking the lake which was really a large relatively quiet reservoir. The main reason for coming so far south was to catch up with Styan's Bulbul or Taiwan Bulbul, one of the few remaining endemics left for the trip. This species has undergone a long term decline due to hybridisation with the introduced Light-vented/Chinese Bulbul and is now largely restricted to the extreme south of the island.
We headed back north to our hotel but stopped at the large river at Xinpi. Most the large rivers that we had seen were confined to very small channels due to low flow rates. It's quite clear that a huge amount of rain must fall to fill up these rivers from time to time. It was a little discouraging to see that most of rivers were subjected to large scale industrial gravel extraction. We had great views of a small flock of Black-faced Spoonbills here. The species is listed as endangered by the IUCN. While the numbers have increased in recent years, globally the population still only stands at just under 4000 individuals. Around half of this winters in Taiwan. We also had a colour ringed bird which I'm still trying to pin down.
While the Styan's Bulbul was the only new endemic for the day I also ticked Savanna Nightjar, Maroon Oriole, Whistling Green Pigeon, Eastern Marsh Harrier and Black-faced Spoonbill.