AJP spotted Great Barbets (Psilopogon virens) in the New Territories of Hong Kong last week. They are uncommon residents, living in mature secondary broadleaf forests. They are also difficult to spot in the canopy. He later spotted a nest hole, high in a tree.
The Great Barbet is now only to be found in the New Territories but Herklots in his Hong Kong Birds of 1953 noted that in the early decades of the 20th century they were on Hong Kong island, even nesting in the Botanic Gardens in 1929. Herklots wrote:
I have never seen an adult near the nest; my collectors say that the adult bird comes quickly with a dash, i the usual manner with much noise, to feed its young, stays a few seconds and then dashes away in its normal undulating flight.
You can see the speed at which the adults leave and enter the nest in the short video.
Herklots also noted that the birds were often heard, with the call of the male ‘going on and on’, but seldom seen. ‘This bird never comes to the ground and spends its life in the dense fung shui woods of the valleys’. He regarded the population as a small number of year-round residents augmented by summer visitors.
One of Hong Kong's most impressive birds.
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