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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Part 1)

10,000 Birds

This is the home of the Rusty-naped Pitta , admittedly one of the less glamorous of the family, particularly the subspecies found in Yunnan, but still a nice sight and still a pitta. He published a number of books on birds of India and Burma, making me wonder how hard all these overseas civil servants really worked in their day jobs.

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Asia’s Deadliest Bird: The Brown Prinia

10,000 Birds

It inhabits rather dry areas within a region notorious for being one of the rainiest parts of the world, and is thus patchily distributed from Burma through Laos, Cambodia, parts of Thailand and south China, all the way to Vietnam. Just don’t try this with a Brown Prinia, unless you have life insurance and a family in need.

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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Part 2)

10,000 Birds

In this case, the correct one (according to the HBW) is Sir Herbert Thirkell White (1855-1931), a British colonial administrator in Burma. He also wrote some books on Burma, one of which (“A Civil Servant in Burma”) Wikipedia calls a classic. In my opinion, eBird is a bit unfair to the female Rufous-bellied Niltava.

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