Amongst Chinese language birders, Tengchong – and significantly the monastery on the backside of Laifengshan – is called among the finest locations to see the Slender-billed Oriole.
I don’t fairly get the excitement concerning the Slender-billed Oriole because it appears fairly just like the Black-naped Oriole and apparently is even thought to be conspecific by some authorities.
Sadly, the HBW states that the species is “nearly extinct in some areas in China owing to looking and trapping for the cagebird commerce and taxidermy”.
The Maroon Oriole appears far more fascinating, although my photographs do probably not do it full justice.
Its scientific species identify traillii is a uncommon instance of a scientist not made up by me, specifically Thomas Stewart Traill (1781-1862), a Scottish physician. In response to his Wikipedia entry, he was a powerful however unsuccessful supporter of ladies attending the college, so he is without doubt one of the higher folks to call a chook species after.
He shouldn’t be confused with Stewart Traill (1936–2018), the founding father of a cult-like group of evangelical Christians, the Church of Bible Understanding. Given the next description of this particular person, he’s actually not price naming something after him: “Extra surprising was Traill’s therapy of his spouse, Shirley, and his youngsters. … on many events … Traill got here dwelling and instantly received out a scale for his spouse to step on and be weighed. He then spanked his spouse for her obvious failure to satisfy his expectations. … Traill did this sufficient occasions that Shirley started to cover the dimensions.’
The Lovely Sibia is gorgeous even in Mandarin Chinese language (Li se qi mei, “Lovely babbler”) …
… and naturally in science (scientific identify pulchella, “little stunning”).
The Black Bulbul is available in two morphs – one correctly black …
… and one with a white head.
As I noticed each of them on the similar spot in Tengchong, I ponder whether the chook beneath is a results of a pairing of the 2 morphs.
It isn’t needed to depart China and go to Nepal to see the Ashy Bulbul – regardless that I’m not certain the Chinese language birds are fairly as enchanting as those described at nepaldesk.com:
“[E]xploring Nepal’s wilderness for the enchanting Ashy Bulbul is an unforgettable expertise for avid chook watchers and nature lovers alike”. However I can think about that nepaldesk says roughly the identical about some superb and enchanting leeches.
The description of the Bar-winged Flycatcher-shrike on the identical website shouldn’t be a lot much less exuberant:
“Whereas the Bar-winged Flycatcher-shrike could not rank as Nepal’s most famous chook, its hanging appears, fascinating habits, and contribution to the colourful chook neighborhood positively make it price noticing.”
Contribution to the colourful chook neighborhood. Oh my.
The poor Mountain Bulbul carries the scientific identify mcclellandii, after Sir John McClelland (1805–1875) …
… regardless that stated man primarily labored as an ichthyologist …
… aside from additionally being despatched to north-eastern India to determine if tea may very well be grown there. Undecided whether or not he wrote to his spouse about this necessary mission, or even when he had a spouse.
It’s stunning to see an Elvis imitator in Tengchong however what different ecological area of interest might the Crested Finchbill probably occupy?
The Chinese language identify of the Chestnut-vented Nuthatch is li tun shi, with the “tun” character within the center translated as “buttocks” by Google Translate. I at all times sort of suspected “vented” is a euphemism …
Witout being requested, Google Translate additionally provides that Li tun shi means “I opened it once more” in Yoruba. Hopefully this info is beneficial for some readers, significantly these with plans to journey to Nigeria.
Usually I might consider these photographs of a Chestnut-flanked White-eye as being fairly horrible however they do present the name-giving characteristic of the species moderately properly.
And – look ahead to it – there may be a paper on the mitochondrial genome sequence of Chestnut-flanked White-eye. Welcome to 10,000 Birds, the one web site on the planet the place such papers may be the topic of a operating gag. A foul one, admittedly.
This Nice Noticed Woodpecker isn’t even making an attempt to cover its spots. However why ought to it.
One paper on Nice Noticed Woodpeckers is titled “Necessities by the Nice Noticed Woodpecker Dendrocopos main for a suburban life”, however opposite to my expectation, it doesn’t state that the birds want a automotive (an SUV, maybe?) when dwelling in suburbia.
Plainly on this species, the males do a lot of the exhausting and the ugly work – specifically gap excavation and nest sanitation (supply).
Most birders in all probability solely pay informal consideration to the Korean Journal of Parasitology and can thus have missed a paper on a newly recorded feather mite on a Gray-capped Pygmy Woodpecker.
Surprisingly, the authors declare that they haven’t any battle of curiosity with this text, indicating that the worldwide feather mite foyer shouldn’t be as highly effective as I believed.
In response to the paper cited above, feather mites are fairly host-specific, so this species of feather mites won’t hassle the Gray-capped Canary Flycatcher. How is that for a hyperlink?
The monastery on the backside of Laifengshan can also be a very good place to see Verditer Flycatcher, at the very least in winter.
Excellent news for individuals who are too lazy to make use of Google themselves:
I lastly seemed up “Verditer” on-line.
It means (supply: Oxford Languages):
“A lightweight blue or bluish-green pigment, sometimes ready by including chalk or whiting to an answer of copper nitrate, utilized in making crayons and as a watercolor”.
The Blue-winged Minla has a cameo function in a paper on a bird-pollinated Himalayan plant.
Apparently, the darkish colour of the plant nectar attracts the chook, as proven by managed experiments. Or within the language of the “science hippies” (Ze Frank ), the “purple nectar [acts] as a foraging sign”.
If you don’t like blue, right here is the Purple-tailed Minla.
(To cite from “Duck Soup”, the Marx Brothers film: “These are my rules, and in case you don’t like them… properly, I’ve others”).
A complicated-looking restaurant in a village close to Tengchong has a goldfish pool put in at its entrance. I’m not certain what number of vacationers this pool attracts, but it surely actually attracts a Brown Fish Owl. From the restaurant roof, the owl presumably selects its dinner earlier than swooping down and grabbing it with none assist from the restaurant workers.
A 2004 paper trying on the battle between one other fish owl (Tawny) and cold-water fish farmers in Taiwan discovered that owls had been a difficulty at 1 / 4 of the farms noticed. Sadly, on the majority of those farms, owls had been trapped with metal leg-hold traps or mist nets, leading to 10 owls being discovered drowned within the fish ponds. On condition that the examine estimates that the owls take solely between 0.05% and 0.66% of the fish, the trapping looks like an overreaction, however then once more, I like owls significantly better than fish farmers.
