Forest Wagtail Dendronanthus indicus 山鶺鴒
Category I. Scarce passage migrant in autumn, rare in winter and spring; occurs mainly in forest areas but migrants can be seen in open country.
IDENTIFICATION
Feb. 2014, Martin Hale. Adult.
16-18 cm. Atypical wagtail, neither pied nor yellow, that employs a distinctive stiff side-to-side swaying of body and tail. Has distinctive breast pattern of inverted dark triangle flanked by dark breast sides against off-white underparts; upperparts medium olive-grey, while broad off-white tips to median and greater coverts produce a distinctive double wing bar. Whitish supercilium narrower in front of eye, ear coverts paler below eye.
Dec. 2019, Matthew Kwan.
First-years are browner above.
VOCALISATIONS
The typical call heard from flying or perched birds is a single or double-note ‘pink’. This note can also be given when perched, along with a ‘tee-too’ falling in pitch on the second syllable. Both calls can be heard in this recording.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Forest Wagtails occur throughout HK, including the outlying islands, and are usually associated with forests, fung shui woodland or wooded areas on migrant sites such as Po Toi. It also occasionally occurs in more open habitat such as Mai Po NR, Long Valley and Lin Barn Tsuen, occasionally feeding alongside other wagtails.
OCCURRENCE
Forest Wagtail is an autumn passage migrant mainly during the period from the third week of August to the first week of October, peaking in the third week of September (Figure 1). The earliest autumn record occurred on 24 July 2016. Numbers in the rest of October and much of November are rather low, but there is an increase from the final week of the month indicating the arrival of a small but irregular wintering population. These birds depart by the first week of March, and there are no records during the period from 3 March to 6 April. Spring passage is generally evident from 7 April to 6 May, though the earliest ever spring record occurred on 31 March 1997.
No change in status is indicated by historical records. Kershaw (1904) and Vaughan and Jones (1913) recorded it as a migrant and winter visitor to the Pearl River delta, while the first record in HK was that of Herklots (1941) who noted one at Lam Tsuen on 20 April 1941. Later, Herklots (1953) stated it was a rare spring and autumn migrant.
DIET AND FORAGING
Small invertebrates are taken, but no details.
BEHAVIOUR
Forages on forest floor in clearings or on paths, occasionally along horizontal tree boughs.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds from southern Primorsky Krai south through northeast China, the Korean Peninsula and south Japan to central and east China; winters in the coastal provinces of southeast China west to northeast India and south through Indochina to southeast Asia and the Greater Sundas, also southwest India and Sri Lanka (Tyler 2020). In China a summer visitor south of a line from Yunnan to Liaoning and a winter visitor to southern coastal areas including Taiwan and Hainan (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Figure 1.
Herklots, G. A. C. (1953). Hong Kong Birds. South China Morning Post, Hong Kong.
Kershaw. J. C. (1904). List of birds of the Quangtung Coast, China. Ibis 1904: 235-248.
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.
Tyler, S. (2020). Forest Wagtail (Dendronanthus indicus), 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.forwag1.01
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.
