Birding Shanghai in November 2023 (contractual obligation publish)

This November, I went birding in Shanghai precisely as soon as – the results of each some disagreeable modifications within the accessibility of some good birding websites and a few touring that took me away from Shanghai for half of the month.

Nonetheless, I noticed just a few thrushes – amongst them certainly one of my favorites, the Japanese Thrush.

The reason for the scientific identify of cardis offered within the HBW sounds a bit spurious to me however is presumably right: “maybe from the resemblance of the black markings on the underparts to the spades in a set of taking part in playing cards (French carde card)”.

Some Japanese researchers apparently barely obsessive about intercourse analyzed the mating success of male Japanese Thrushes relying on their music repertoire. Their discovering: “The whistle repertoire dimension was not associated to the mating standing, whereas the trill repertoire dimension in polygynous males was bigger than that in monogamous males.” If you wish to contact these researchers, please go to the karaoke bar the place they’ve been training trills ever since.

Because the Chinese language will not be notably keen on the Japanese, they name this species the Gray Thrush (wuhui dong).

I additionally noticed another thrushes that have been much less obliging with regard to having their images taken – Gray-backed Thrush …

… and Dusky Thrush.

The Yellow-throated Bunting was once referred to as Elegant Bunting till it was found that the namesake of the species, Sir Edward Elegant (1783-1844) was not solely an eminent naturalist but additionally a slaveholder and a vocal supporter of different opinions that will these days clearly be thought of racist and sexist.

Three different birds: Eurasian Hoopoe …

… Manchurian Bush Warbler …

… and Pink-flanked Bluetail.

Not very spectacular, I hear you say, and I absolutely agree. Within the music trade, typically bands lie dormant for an prolonged interval, however nonetheless, the grasping document firm requires them to launch a brand new album, if solely to meet their contract. In trade phrases, that is typically referred to as the Contractual Obligation Album. In that case, what’s launched is commonly a sort of filler album – although the technical time period for filler varies relying on circumstances: it could possibly be a “Better of”, a “Stay at …”, a “B-sides compilation”, an acoustic album, or an album recorded with a classical orchestra.

Since 10,000 Birds has been taken over by a grasping and unrelenting German, the enforcement of my contractual obligations in writing a weekly publish have additionally been enforced rather more tightly. To fulfill that man, right here is my model of a contractual obligation publish – a set of images taken in Shanghai in any of the previous November months. However I can’t give him the satisfaction so as to add any textual content to those older images.

November 2016: Scaly-sided Merganser …