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A new bird record in China: Moustached Warbler (Acrocephalus melanopogon) and its song characteristics

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Abstract

Moustached Warbler (Acrocephalus melanopogon), belonging to the genus of Acrocephalus and the family of Acrocephalidae, breeds widely but locally in the warm temperate regions from Northwest Africa and eastern Iberian Peninsula to eastern Kazakhstan. However, this species has never been scientifically recorded in China. On 22 April 2016, a Moustached Warbler was observed in Ulanbuy wetland (43°36′N, 87°43′E; 1114 m a.s.l.), Urumqi, Xinjiang of China. This was the first photography-confirmed record of Moustached Warbler in China. As Moustached Warbler is a songbird, the songs were then recorded on 18 May 2016 using a Sony PCM D-100 recorder and the song characteristics were analyzed using Avisoft-SASLab software. The result showed that the mean maximum frequency of song strophes was 6.64 (±0.47) kHz and the mean minimum frequency of song strophes was 1.72 (±0.14) kHz. This study could considered as a supplement of the checklist of birds in China.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Investigation of Terrestrial Wildlife Resources in the Zoogeographic Unit of North Slopes of the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, China (XJLK2014009), the Second Wetland Resource Survey of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XJLK2011008), and the National Key Research and Development Programme (2016YFC1200700). We are grateful to Anna YASKO, Askar ISABEKOV, Raffael AYÉ and LIU Yang for their help in identifying the Moustached Warbler and to WEN Zhimin for providing the photos of Sedge Warbler. Special thanks also to Dr. XIA Canwei for analyzing the song characteristics and to Paul HOLT for revising the English of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Forest Ecology, Xinjiang Academy of Forestry, Urumqi, 830063, China

    Kangping Xu, Xinbin Cai & Xuanlong Lin

  2. Xinjiang Bird Watching Society, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Kangping Xu, Xin Ni, Ming Ma, Jun Gou, Dahuan Sun, Xuanlong Lin & Peng Ding

  3. Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Ming Ma

  4. Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Monitoring and Risk Warning, Xinjiang Academy of Environmental Protection Science, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Peng Ding

Authors
  1. Kangping Xu
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  2. Xin Ni
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  3. Ming Ma
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  4. Xinbin Cai
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  5. Jun Gou
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  6. Dahuan Sun
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  7. Xuanlong Lin
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  8. Peng Ding
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Correspondence to Xuanlong Lin or Peng Ding.

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Xu, K., Ni, X., Ma, M. et al. A new bird record in China: Moustached Warbler (Acrocephalus melanopogon) and its song characteristics. J. Arid Land 9, 313–317 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40333-017-0053-z

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