Wednesday December 17th

With an 11 pm flight, I decided to make a day of it and go to Tai Po Kau to see what forest species I could add.  Tai Po Kau is the third of the big three Hong Kong birding sites, and a lot of the ebird target species I hadn't caught up with are mainly seen there.  I had read it was often frustrating with thick undergrowth and hoped to see 5 lifers for the day.
I checked in for my flight at Central Station, left a hand-luggage bag at the left luggage and got the train to Tai Po Market.  I decided to forego the instructions how to get to Tai Po Kau (a bus), and set out up along a Google Maps path that seemed like a direct line to the Park.  It started well, with several Chestnut Bulbuls before I'd got far.

Shortly thereafter, I met a locked gate which I circumvented and the path petered out to almost nothing. Fortunately I had GPS and the path the Google assured me existed to guide me in picking my way up the hillside. Eventually I met a more encouraging path and got to a trig point on the top and a better path down the other side to Tai Po Kau.
Once in the woods, I followed the Yellow/Brown trail.  Along the way, I found a couple of Greater Necklaced Laughingthrushes rustling leaves just down the slope.

Just after it met the Blue Trail, I heard a few birds and sat for a break as a fantastic feeding wave of birds came through - among them were Huet's Fulvettas, Blue-winged Minlas, Velvet-fronted Nuthatches, 

And just like that, I had passed my day aim by 10 am.  Stopping to look for the source of every rustle on the forest floor proved a worthwhile, if slow, endeavour.  It gave me a Japanese Robin, proabbly the bird of the day.  Very like a European Robin, but with an all-orange head.  The other bulbul, Mountain Bulbul,  put in a few appearances through the day.

There were two possible Minivets; Scarlet eluded me, but I saw male and female Grey-chinned Minivet.

 

Pygmy Cupwing are supposed to be almost impossible to see, but at one point, I saw a small brown thing moving (see also Stubtail, bush warblers, shortwing) but then heard the long two-note song in the same area.
As the day wore on, the birds slowed down and I didn't see anything new after lunch. The last new bird I found was a Japanese Thrush, looking very like a Blackbird with a white breast.  All in all, I found ten lifers for the day and added a tick to the Mai Po day by realising that the flagged Red-breasted Flycatcher must be in ebird as a post-split Taiga Flycatcher, which I hadn't seen before (RBFL was in India).  So I ended the trip with 50 lifers exactly and with my life list at 926.