A walk around the Olympic Forest Park on Tuesday evening revealed that autumn passerine migration is beginning to get going… First, I flushed a Richard’s Pipit from a path near the ‘underwater corridor’, then a Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler flew across the path and dived into deep cover, showing the white tips to the outer tail feathers. Just before dusk a snipe circled a couple of times before dropping like a stone into the edge of a reedbed. I grabbed a few very poor images and I suspect it was a Pin-tailed Snipe or Swinhoe’s. Its flight was subtly slower than Common Snipe, it lacked an obvious white trailing edge to the secondaries and the legs appeared to protrude relatively far beyond the tail. Images below and opinions welcome. Swinhoe’s and Pin-tailed Snipe are notoriously difficult to separate so best to go down in the book as a “Swintail”…!
There were also some dragonflies on the wing. In addition to the usual Sympetrum kunckeli, these presumed Deielia phaon were patrolling the edge of the reedbed.
The trickle of passerine migration certainly whets the appetite for what will be, I am sure, another brilliant autumn of migration here in north-eastern China. I have just booked my flight to Dalian for late September, where we will have a group of birders covering the Laotieshan area for at least a couple of weeks this autumn. After the fantastic Spring experience, I can’t wait to return to see if the autumn migration matches my expectations.
On the way back from the Olympic Park to the metro station, I enjoyed watching the local Beijingers using the public spaces built for the Olympics. Great stuff!