Bulletin 302 - China #2 - Bulbuls, Dipper and Lark
I had an 8 day birding to trip in eastern China with a wonderful guide Lin Zhang based in Shanghai. He is perfectly fluent in English. We visited 5 different locales. His website is here. FYI making contact within China by email is a problem as the government blocks some email accounts, including gmail. So I had to contact him using MS Outlook. His email is zhanglinas@hotmail.com.
The bulbuls are an old word family of medium sized songbirds. There are 154 species in the family. Some are popular as cage birds and 1 species can be found in the USA as an escaped bird. I saw several new ones on this trip. The sexes are similar. The most colorful was the 8.5" Collared Finchbill (Spizixos semitorques). This bird is IDed by the black head, white neck collar and the rest of the bird is olive.
The 8" Chestnut Bulbul (Hemixos castanonotos) has a black cap, chestnut face, and back, white underparts and gray wings and tail.
The 8.5" Brown-breasted Bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthorrhus) has a black head, brown back wings and tail, white underparts except brown chest band and bright yellow undertail. There were several of these birds flycatching over a small pond and the bright yellow was what caught my eye.
The last was the 9" Mountain Bulbul (Ixos mcclellandii) is rather dull with olive wings and tail, grayish back, rufous on neck and breast and white streaking on gray throat and crown.
The dippers are a tiny family of aquatic songbirds consisting of just 5 species. They are plump birds with short tails that feed along mountain streams, often submerging to find insect larvae. The 8" Brown Dipper (Cinclus pallasii) is the species occurring from the central Asia eastward. The adult is all dark brown with a black bill. We saw several along a mountain stream on the 3rd day. I love watching dippers and so it was a treat to see this life bird.
Larks are a family of 98 species with all except the common Horned Lark being in the old world. The 5.5" Oriental Skylark (Alauda gulgula) is rich brown. I was lucky as this bird landed very close while we were watching for other birds. Usually skylarks are just seen flying.
I have put the different bird families in single folders for easy viewing
I have photos of 7 of the 153 species of bulbul.
I have photos of 3 of the 5 species of dippers.
I have photos of 3 of the 98 species of larks.
Happy birding and photography,
David McDonald
dkmmdpa@gmail.com
photos copyright 2006 - 2018 David McDonald
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