Ashy Woodswallow Artamus fuscus 灰燕鵙
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Large head and chest tapering to long pointed wings that extend beyond tail tip at rest, large gape, short tail and legs. Fairly uniform grey upperparts with dark mask between eye and bill and pale rump. Wings grey narrowly fringed whitish. Greyish head and throat contrasts with pale buffish tinged underparts and whiter undertail coverts. Bill metallic pale blue with dark cutting edges. Has habit of regularly but not frequently dipping tail.
Glides on stiff flat pointed wings and spreads its broad tail for extended periods interspersed with short periods of flapping.
VOCALISATIONS
The typical call is a slightly nasal, buzzing and inflected note similar to a flight call of Barn Swallow.
The song has a jauntiness and variation similar to that of Acrocephalus warblers.
OCCURRENCE
The sole Hong Kong record is of one at Heung Fan Liu, Lower Shing Mun Reservoir on 23 April 2011 (Lambert 2013).
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Readily perches on wires.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. From India east through Bangladesh to Indochina as far south as northern Malaysia and southern Vietnam, extending into coastal provinces of China, where it has been recorded in southern Yunnan, Guizhou, southern Guangxi, southern Guangdong (as well as one record in the north of the province) and Hainan (Rowley and Russell 2020, Liu and Chen 2020). Up to 2009, the only Guangdong record appears to be at least one bird collected in Macau in April 1853 (Cassin 1856). This species may be extending its range eastward.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Cassin, J. 1856. ‘Birds’ in Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853 and 1854, under the Command of Commodore M.C. Perry, United States Navy, by order of the Government of the United States. Vol. 2. Washington: Beverley Tucker. Pp. 216-248.
Lambert, J. 2013. Ashy Woodswallow Artamus fuscus at Heung Fan Liu. The first Hong Kong record. Hong Kong Bird Report 2011: 204-206.
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.
Rowley, I. and E. Russell (2020). Ashy Woodswallow (Artamus fuscus), 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.ashwoo2.01
