4 Nov 2018 - birding day with friends from Shenzhen

Two birders from Shenzhen came to HK today so we birded with them for whole day, woke up at 5am and was back to home at 11pm, like a day in birding trip, very tired as we carried our heavy lens and tripod full day!

We spent the first half day in San Tin, a successful twitch of Common Pochard and Pallas’s Reed Bunting, sadly dipped the Mandarin Duck (but this species is very common in mainland China). We also enjoyed fantastic view of a first winter Pied Harrier, saw distant Common Starling, some Yellow-breasted Bunting, Chestnut-eared Bunting, plenty Black-browed and Oriental Reed Warbler and a mongoose. And an interesting crow was spotted in flight, calling strangely and clearly smaller bill and size than Large-billed Crow, should be Carrion Crow or Rook (I go for latter).

sleeping Common Pochard - long staying duck

Pallas's Reed Bunting - usual view in HK as we saw in LV before

Pallas's Reed Bunting - a cutie

Pallas's Reed Bunting - sometimes fed on ground like sparrow

Pallas's Reed Bunting - the greyish lesser coverts is difficult to be seen, but the smallish bill also separated from Common Reed Bunting

Pallas's Reed Bunting

Eurasian Collared Dove

Chestnut-eared Bunting

another Chestnut-eared Bunting

Pied Harrier - if you see a harrier with white rump in HK, 90% is a 'good' harrier

Pied Harrier - barred underwing also an evidence of 'good' harrier in HK

Pied Harrier

Pied Harrier - looking at us, showing us the facial disc

Pied Harrier

Pied Harrier - closer than the what we saw in MP

Pied Harrier without the 2X extender

We made another twitch after lunch - another Pallas’s: Grasshopper Warbler in Telford. We spent half an hour and finally saw both the Pallas’s Grasshopper and Black-browed Reed Warbler. Nice view but still difficult to get a clean shot.

Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler - I didn't take a single photo, nice tick for them!

Birding never stop even at night. We managed to see a Brown Fish Owl in flight, my most meaningful species in my life, as Wing Tung and I firstly met each other because of a Fish Owl under moonlight.

A great day but very tired👻, again, should plan to buy a car.

The two checklists in San Tin and Telford as here:
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S49661057
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S49661966