Black Redstart Phoenicurus ochruros 赭紅尾鴝
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Nov. 2017, Michelle and Peter Wong.
14-15 cm. Female has grey-brown upperparts and dull grey-brown breast. Lower breast, belly and flanks are orange-buff.
Female Daurian Redstart lacks the grey coloration and usually has a white patch in the wing.
May 2005, John Homles, Sichuan, China.
Adult male (not recorded in HK) P. o. rufiventris has black upperparts, wings, head and breast. The rump and outer tail feathers are orange. The underparts are rufous-orange.
VOCALISATIONS
A moderately high-pitched ‘tseet’. When followed by a short, clicking ‘tik’ usually indicates alarm.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Has been reported from offshore islands and an area of mainly dry agriculture at Long Valley.
OCCURRENCE
1995: a first-summer male was at Tung Ping Chau on 23 April (Jantunen 1996).
2011: a first-winter female was at Po Toi during 5 - 13 April.
2017: a first-winter female was at Long Valley during 29 October - 27 December.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Often stands in upright posture and frequently shivers its tail. Readily perches on man-made structures such as roofs, posts and fences. Forages for insects on the ground and occasionally takes insects in flight like a flycatcher.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Black Redstart occurs from western Europe and northwest Africa east through the Middle East and central Asia to India, western and central China and Mongolia. Three races occur in China, of which P. o. rufiventris is presumed to have occurred in HK. Three other subspecies are also recognised.
P. o. rufiventris breeds in south Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan east through the Himalayas to central China, and winters in southwest and south Asia. In China it breeds in south Xinjiang, northeast Qinghai, Gansu and Shaanxi south to east Tibet, Sichuan and west and northwest Yunnan. Has occurred as a vagrant or rare winter visitor in Hebei, Shandong, Guizhou, Hainan and Taiwan in China, as well as Japan and South Korea.
P. o. phoenicuroides breeds from east Iran and Turkmenistan to northwest Pakistan north to southeast Kazakhstan, western China (west and southwest Xinjiang and west Tibet), south-central Siberia and west Mongolia; it winters in northeast Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and southwest and south Asia. The third, recently-defined, race that occurs in extreme north central China is P. o. murinus (Fedorenko 2018). Other races occur in Europe and the Middle East (Brazil 2009, Clement and Rose 2015, Collar 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend increasing
Brazil, M. (2009). Field Guide to the Birds of East Asia. Christopher Helm, London.
Clement, P. and C. Rose (2015). Robins and Chats. Christopher Helm, London.
Collar, N. (2020). Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros), 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.blared1.01
Fedorenko V. A. 2018. A new subspecies of the Black Redstart—Phoenicurus ochruros murinus subsp. nov. from the Altai-Sayan mountainous country and the current breeding range of the Black Redstart. Proceedings of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 322: 108–128.
Jantunen, J. 1996. Black Redstart on Ping Chau: the first record for Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 1995: 116-118.
