Tonglu

7/27/2023 - Tonglu

Tonglu is a county within the Hangzhou province in China, and my family took a trip there over the summer

I spared a morning’s time during the trip to wake up early and birded around the fields and forests near our hotel. Our hotel is ideally located on a small hilltop surrounded by paddy fields, a park and a small forest so there was potential to the site.

Despite having not done any research prior and simply planning on relying on my memory to find my way back to the hotel, I woke up at 5am and left the hotel.

I was greeted by a cacophony of bird calls as soon as I stepped out of the front door. Being in a foreign and unfamiliar place forced me to rely on my instincts to get around the place. I walked down an access road that leads up to the hotel and started birding along a road with dense tree cover on both sides

The white-headed subspecies of black bulbul ***Hypsipetes leucocephalus***

Black bulbul calls early in the morning!

Passing by a small house along the road, I a bulbul-shaped bird chasing a butterfly on its roof. Intrigued, I started shooting right away

Turned out it was a collared finchbill, a locally common bird, feeding on a moth. The whole altercation lasted for a while, with the bird chasing the moth over on the roof before finally catching it in its ‘finchbill’

Also spotted a bird that looks awfully like a tit, but lacks its wingbars. I still cannot identify the bird until now. Wonder what it is?

Always refreshing to see new birds outside of Hong Kong! This interaction will definitely stay with me for a while

I still vividly remember seeing the finchbill tearing through the moth through my viewfinder as I took this photo

Lily pond on a small property beside the road (bet there is a bittern or two hiding in there)

Great tit? Japanese tit? Wonder what this bird is?

Walking along the road brought me into a small village. And where villages are, there will be swallows. A big flock of red-rumped swallows was present here. Being an uncommon visitor to Hong Kong, I have not seen this bird before and I’m happy to have encountered it close-up in this ‘cheat’ tick

Rump is the frontal area of the bird, and this swallow is instinctively named after its orange-red rump

At this point, I was already super happy with the photos and birds of the morning. But more surprises kept coming as I kept walking

Eventually, I reached some open country at the paddy fields

There was a shrike present there as well as another collared finchbill. Besides that, people are started to wake up as it was around 10am at the time and the fields got busy, with trucks and cars coming in and out on the roads. Therefore, I decided to head back to the hotel at this point, ending a productive morning of birding

**Long-tailed shrike**, typically bird of prey found in open country. Common within mainland China as well

This finchbill perched especially close this time round and I got the chance to get some close-ups

Thanks for reading :)

7/27/2023 - Tonglu

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