Black Stork Ciconia nigra 黑鸛
Category I. Formerly scarce winter visitor to wetland areas in the northwest New Territories; now much declined and rare.
IDENTIFICATION
Dec. 2022, Paul Leader.
95-100 cm. Very large with long neck and legs, and broad wings with obvious fingers in wing when soaring. Upperparts and neck all dark, chest to underparts and armpits white. Bill and legs red on adult, much duller and greyer on first-years such as this.
Nov. 2015, Sam Chan.
First-years are brown and much duller than adults at close range.
VOCALISATIONS
Usually silent away from breeding sites (Elliott et al. 2020).
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Most records are from the Deep Bay area with the remainder involving birds on single dates at low-lying marshy areas in the New Territories, apart from two at Plover Cove Reservoir on 13 December 1981 and again from 1 January to 14 February 1982, and one over Aberdeen Country Park, HK Island on 31 January 1993. Most birds that have been aged (mostly during the 1990s) have been immatures with records of adults on 2 March 1969 and 1 January 1979 (two birds).
OCCURRENCE
Black Stork is now a rare winter visitor from the last week of October to early January (Figure 1), with extreme dates since 1999 of 19 October and 5 January. Historically, extreme dates were 16 October 1966 and 5 April 1985. The highest numbers used to occur between the last week of December and the first week of February, but no birds have occurred after the first week of January since 1994.
All records recently are of singles apart from two on 18 November 2004. Prior to 1980, higher counts were more frequent, and three to five birds were noted on several occasions. The highest counts on record are 15 on 31 December 1967 and 14 on 1 February 1970.
Against a background of increased observer activity and much improved access to the intertidal areas of Deep Bay since the mid-1980s, these changes are considered indicative of a substantial decline. While Black Stork seems never to have been numerous in HK, it declined significantly after 1970 and again after 1993.
This species was not recorded by either Vaughan and Jones (1913) or Dove and Goodhart (1955). Macfarlane and Macdonald (1966) stated it was an occasional winter visitor to the Deep Bay marshes from 1 November to 16 March.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds from Portugal and France east through eastern and central Europe across much of Eurasia as far as the Sea of Okhotsk mainly between 35oN and 60oN (Elliott et al. 2020). In China breeds across the northern part of the country away from high plateau areas and winters south of the Yangtze (Liu and Chen 2020). Numbers in Xinjiang, however, are much declined, which may be the case elsewhere given the decline in HK.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Figure 1.
Dove, R. S. and H. J. Goodhart (1955). Field observations from the Colony of Hong Kong. Ibis 97: 311-340.
Elliott, A., D. A. Christie, E. F. J. Garcia, and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Black Stork (Ciconia nigra), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.blasto1.01
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Macfarlane, A. M. and A. D. Macdonald, revised by Caunter, J. R. L. and A. M. Macfarlane (1966). An Annotated Check-list of the Birds of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, Hong Kong.
Vaughan, R. E. and K. H. Jones (1913). The birds of Hong Kong, Macao and the West River or Si Kiang in South-East China, with special reference to their nidification and seasonal movements. Ibis 1913: 17-76, 163-201, 351-384.
