AJP noticed Nice Barbets (Psilopogon virens) within the New Territories of Hong Kong final week. They’re unusual residents, dwelling in mature secondary broadleaf forests. They’re additionally tough to identify within the cover. He later noticed a nest gap, excessive in a tree.
The Nice Barbet is now solely to be discovered within the New Territories however Herklots in his Hong Kong Birds of 1953 famous that within the early a long time of the twentieth century they had been on Hong Kong island, even nesting within the Botanic Gardens in 1929. Herklots wrote:
I’ve by no means seen an grownup close to the nest; my collectors say that the grownup chook comes rapidly with a touch, i the same old method with a lot noise, to feed its younger, stays a number of seconds after which dashes away in its regular undulating flight.
You’ll be able to see the pace at which the adults depart and enter the nest within the brief video.
Herklots additionally famous that the birds had been typically heard, with the decision of the male ‘occurring and on’, however seldom seen. ‘This chook by no means involves the bottom and spends its life within the dense fung shui woods of the valleys’. He regarded the inhabitants as a small variety of year-round residents augmented by summer time guests.
One in all Hong Kong’s most spectacular birds.