jon@campari.sm.unisys.com (Jonathan Gingerich) (02/02/89)
These are birds I spotted during Christmas vacation in Taiwan: White Wagtail Tree Sparrow House Swift Chinese Bulbul Black Drongo Pale Thrush Steere's Babbler White-tailed Blue Robin Sharp-tailed Munia Formosan Firecrest European Nuthatch Red-rumped Swallow Black-crowned Night Heron Chinese White Eye Tawny Wren Warbler Bush Warbler Crested Myna? Golden Mountain Thrush Black-naped Blue Flycatcher Artic Willow Warbler Yellow-bellied Wren Warbler Little Egret Cattle Egret Intermediate Egret? Great Egret? Red Turtle Dove Yellow Wagtail Common Sandpiper NOTES I was using "A New Guide to the Birds of Taiwan" by Severinghaus & Blackshaw. It is, uhn, limited, especially the colored plates which are worthless. There is another field guide available at the Provincial Museum of Natural History. It has a single illustration for each bird, and a range map, but I suspect the map is based on elevations. There is a single English sentence of description, and not too much more in Chinese, and it's expensive, so I passed on it. There is also a two volume set of photographs of the the birds of the island, with only titles. "The Field Guide to Birds of Japan" was very helpful along with being a glorious paean to Japanese printing art. I should have done better with the Egrets, but the guide doesn't help with distinguishing the Intermediates from the Greats and I didn't have enough time. I would have gotten a lot more Swifts and Swallows if I had been driving, but then I would have probably been dead, but that's another story. I am happy with the Warblers, especially the Artic Willow, which I spied while eating lunch in a small garden behind the Supreme Court building. The most interesting bird is perhaps the Babbler, although it is very common in its habitant. It is green with yellow showing through the feather edging, and has brilliant orange-yellow lores and banding under the tail. It has a small crest and is extremely noisy and active, suggesting a psychodelic waxwing. Many of the Babblers are endemic, but this is the only one I saw. The most fortuitous may have been the Firecrest, since they are supposed to frequent tree tops, but I saw them down low. The prettiest has got to be the one my wife spotted, the Golden Mountain Thrush or Tiger Thrush in Chinese. It is a brown thrush completely dappled with golden fletching. Really gorgeous. Jon. Gingerich