Changi, Tuas 12Dec09

From KH

I was at Changi for raptor watching with Danny, JS, Con, Harry and Kim.

Looking at my photos today, I realised that there wasn't 2 kestrels high up in the sky near the motorcross area, but 2 Chinese Sparrowhawks. The one with black wingtips is clearly an adult and the other with very pale underparts is likely a juvenile. 1st two ©Tan KH, 3rd ©Lau JS.

This is the low flying Chinese Sparrowhawk near the LP149 entrance ©Lau JS.

Also, the 2 OHBs (1 dark, 1 pale) at the low-flying Chinese Goshawk location are in fact 1 dark OHB and 1 pale juv CHE. In the first photo below, the CHE appears to have a small head, but the tail pattern and the number of fingers rule out OHB. The bird to the left is the dark morph OHB. ©Tan KH

See Con's photo below for clear shot of the dark morph OHB. ©Con Foley

In conclusion:

1) 1 Common Kestrel
2) 2 Chinese Sparrowhawk - 1 adult, 1 juv
3) 1 dark morph OHB
4) >5 Black Bazas
5) 3 CHE - 1 pale juv, 1 pale adult, 1 dark adult
6) >3 Black-winged Kite
7) 2 WBSE
8) >5 Brahminy Kites

It was also nice to see these migrants:

1) 1 juvenile Hodgson's Hawk Cuckoo
2) 1 Grey Nightjar
3) 1 Black Drongo
4) >10 Ashy Minivets
5) 1 Brown-streaked Flycatcher
6) 1 Asian Brown Flycatcher
7) Brown Shrikes
8) Barn Swallows

Grey Nightjar. Left ©Tan KH, right ©Lau JS

Danny and JS went on to Tuas. Here's JS's report:

Hi Tun Pin and David,

I am sure that both of you would be interested in this discussion.

Today, I saw a grey plover-like bird together with a flock of golden pacific plover on a grassland at Tuas reclaimed land. There's nothing wrong with that given the overlapping of habitats between the two species. However, the "grey plover" had golden dots and lack black flanks/"armpits". The first feature is still possible for a fresh plumage grey plover, according to Field_Ident_of_Forms_of_Lesser_Golden_Plover_Dunn_Morlan (Tun Pin, this was one of the 3 documents that you sent to me for my reference.) Regarding the second feature, I feel, in my opinion, a distinct feature and a must-have feature for all grey plovers including non-breeding or juvenile birds.

So, I have a problem now. The grey plover-like bird is something special. Its specialties were a very white supercilium, grey face, darkish prominent streaky crown, black wing feathers with white notches and minimal gold-yellow spots. Ignoring the black armpit, the thick bill, white supercilium, grey face and black-and-white plumage would point to grey plover. (Thanks Kim Chuah! Once, you made me spend 2h counting grey plovers in hundreds of non-breeding pgp at sbwr!)

Then, I was 10m away from the flock with only a problematic bino and a 300mm with 1.4x TC. There was no way I could count the exposed primaries but still took some photos of the alarmed bird and its typical pgp-companions. Remembering about the grey armpit of the american golden plover, I flushed the bird and photographed their flight. Apparently, I lost track of the bird while the flock flew off. (left bird is the furthest as the flock flew in the same direction as where their heads pointed, see gp0002 and gp00021).

gp00021 is attached as a control photograph of the flock, spot the bird if you can...

gp0002 shows the longish wing of what I think is the suspected agp because on the ground, it was one of the first few to take off, very likely the second bird to took flight given its most extreme left position in the flock.

gp0001 shows the alerted bird. I would like to apologise for the buffish supercilium. It was caused by my poor camera handling skill, resulting to the camera evaluating the colour of the bird using the brown-green grass as neutral. Nevertheless, it is useful to show how long the exposed primaries are.

According to wsgb-apr2004-golden-plovers, pg 6:

Conceivably, someone observing the same plover at much greater distance might be able to see only three exposed primaries (suggesting fulva) on a bird that could be in partial breeding or nonbreeding plumage. However, there should be no confusion as to species since the long primary projection of this individual (about the same length as the bill) would clearly indicate dominica.

The length of the exposed primary of the suspected agp is clearly similar in length to the bill based on gp0001. So, maybe the bird could be an agp, maybe...

Besides the longer wing and longer exposed primaries, there's still doubt because long wings could be due to viewing angle and long exposed primaries could be due to moulting tertiarls (unlikely to moult all the tertials at the same time). With still a probability of it being a pgp, I have to address the issue of the number of exposed primaries. I hate counting feathers but according to all the identification documents sent to me by Tun Pin, the number of exposed primaries is the definitive feature. Luckily, the bird helped me, together with its pals. Both the adjacent pgp and suspected agp turned their back towards me as shown in gp0003 and gp0004.

gp0004 is attached as a control photo in case of obstruction and for verification. (If you cant count >4 primaries, its alright because I counted 3 only...)

Another noteworthy feature to look out is the shortish tertial in relative to the tail. The tertials look like they do not extend beyond the tail with high certainty. Regarding falling a distal third of the tail tip, that would be nice to have but, in my opinion, not shown in my photos.

Given the inadequate number of exposed primaries based on my photos, on my own, I am suspecting an agp-like pgp. Even if the id is not possible to determine, I am sure that this would fuel your interest, in particular David's. I hope that you can id an agp in malaysia and post it on your blog. Your stalking and patience is very admirable and hard to find but much-meeded for this kind of hard to separate species (other members of this group is the nordmann's gs, little stint,...) Dunlin is on my list but now, it is put on hold until the spring migrating flock arrives here.

gp0005 shows the difference in length of the tail(pt B) and the tertial (pt A). Apparently, it looks like the bird has a shorter tertial than tail, although a closer tail to the tertial would be better, minimizing the error that causes the tail to look longer due to the raising of the tertial.

gp0006 shows another view of the number of primaries and the distance of the projection of the tail beyond the tertial of the suspected agp. Nevertheless, I feel that these photos, including gp0005, are too blur to be used as a evidence because the subject of focus at that time was the pgp.

My father brought up a relevant point that the id of the bird could be grey plover although in my earlier email, I had rejected that id. Not told by any of the photos, the flight shot of the waders was taken on the third attempt. As a result, I have flushed the birds twice with no photos to show for the underwing of the suspected agp. At the same time, the bird that I id in the flight shot as the longer-winged agp may not be the bird. However, although I had no photographs of the first two flush, I had seen the underparts of the flock using bino on the first attempt and through the camera eyepiece on the second. None of the bird showed black armpits, though brown-grey armpits are common. (maybe grey armpit is not a good feature to begin with for field identification...)