The super-hot Taiwan summer is in full swing and birding activity is low, so beach weekends have taken over from birding trips – at least until wader passage starts up again in August.

One local year tick I finally saw today was Peaceful Dove, also known as Zebra Dove. Kaohsiung has a small introduced population of these tiny doves, including a few pairs along the Love River, barely half a mile from my house. Urban pigeons, even cute ones like the Peaceful Dove, don’t get the pulse racing ….. which is probably why it’s taken me until July to go and see them.

I’ve also been hard at work compiling my East Asian bird list. Up until now, I’ve had separate lists for Southeast Asia, Korea, and Taiwan. I thought it would be interesting to combine them, which also provided a timely opportunity for some list housekeeping: the weeding out of any recently “lumped” species, and the incorporation of the latest splits.

The result was a respectable pan-East Asian list of 866 species. Thailand is the country where I’ve seen the highest number of birds, although I don’t keep a Thai list on its own. In rough order, next is South Korea, then Taiwan, Cambodia, Malaysian Borneo (Sabah) and Vietnam, with only around 10 additional species added during mainly non-birding visits to Indonesia and Laos.

Year tick: Peaceful Dove (total 216).