Yangkou Birding Trip, May 2014

Yangkou Birding Trip, May 2014

with Craig Brelsford and Martin

After much deliberation and effort, I could gather only Martin from Germany and our guide & mentor for the trip Mr.Brelsford from the United States. As decided earlier we geared up with all our equipment on a gloomy day ahead with a little bit of drizzle from Shanghai. We started around 2:30am to beat any probable traffic that may stop us reaching our destination in time.With Craig knowing the highways and the path in & out we reached there before sunrise.

To give a background of Yangkou, I have gathered some information from Craig's blog to make this useful for everybody. Yángkǒu is a hotspot on the East Asian Australasian Migratory Bird Flyway, having gained fame in recent years as a stopover point for spoon-billed sandpipers.

Who am I?

I am Sid and belong from India. I am basically an IT Manager who works in Shanghai. I am serious enthusiast in avian fauna in the region. So I have been going to places nearby Shanghai and hope to help fellow birders to siege opportunity for photographing birds in China. You can look into my website at www.shutterguru.in

Who is Craig Brelsford?

Criag is an American birder who lives in Shanghai and is in a project to create this field guide. Craig runs the Web site craigbrelsford.com and is a Chinese-language student at the Shanghai University of Engineering Sciences. Craig is from Florida in the United States. 

For bird trips in China, please reach him at info@craigbrelsford.com

Craig with his big gun!

Tour highlights

We reached at Yangkou and drove towards the Yìnhǎi Temple area that is exactly at the shore of the East China Sea. When I parked the car and was stretching my hands to relax, I was greeted by a cute little Asian Brown Flycatcher sitting on a vantage point. Knowing flycatchers this one was very cooperative and I took a lot of pictures.

After an hour of moving around, we found that the small patch of fauna can attract so many of passage migrants to a single spot. In our small stint of 3 hours there, we found many species of flycatchers.

-    Japanese Paradise Flycatcher (Male and Female)

-    Asian Brown Flycatcher

-    Mugimaki Flycatcher

-    Brown-streaked Flycatcher

-    Dark-sided Flycatcher

Other than that there are other species like the Leaf Warbler, white-cheeked starling, red-billed starling, crested myna, white wagtail, meadow bunting, Japanese tit, Eurasian magpie, Eurasian hoopoe are visible around the temple area.

After our tryst with the temple area, Craig took us to some reeds around the few meters away from the temple to show us the impressive Reed Parrotbill. We found one of them playing around but could not take a picture as they are definitely a difficult subject to photograph in the reeds. There is Hawk Cuckoo consistently coming to the nearby electricity poles and singing.

After this we went to have some quick lunch and go to the nearby mud flats and fauna near by a small road along side of the sea coast. There we found similar kind of birds with an addition to the shore birds. We saw the Sandpipers, Saunder’s Gull, Curlews, White-winged Terns and many other shore birds in the distant mudflats.

After we drove for a distance on the road along the sea shore and then stopped by a colony of sandpipers and terns to observe them and obviously take some pictures. They were in hundreds. There is a particular time the tide comes in and the birds feeding on the mudflats comes closer to the road in the shore. We placed ourselves in the high elevation point which gives us place to hide as well a vantage point to shoot. Then we saw the water coming in and birds coming closer. We took some useful shots of the habitat and it was around 3pm in the afternoon.

We decided to go back to the temple area for some more time before pushing for the journey back to Shanghai. The journey generally takes 3-4 hours from one way. The best season is the spring until April & May before the migrants leave the place.

Hope this is useful for you and write to me if you need some more information.

All text and photos in this report © 2014 by www.shutterguru.in

 References: http://www.craigbrelsford.com/blog.html

Quest of Wildlife in China (Jiangsu Province)

In my short quest being in China my love towards wildlife is driving me to different wildlife zones in this diverse flora and fauna of this huge country. Alike India, China has it all like greenery,snow capped mountains, deserts and abundant in wildlife. I found it difficult to understand the awareness levels of the educated English speaking mass of China. Very few of them even have an idea what they have in store for wildlife. When I ask them do you know this place, they ask me is that zoo? Are you kidding me? There is surely an issue with the language and understanding. So when you get out in this country a smart phone really helps a lot.

I am based in this beautiful next generation city Shanghai. So I decided to explore the near by provinces in search of wildlife. After a lot of research I found that there are few natural reserves ( as they call for restricted wildlife reserves) in the Jiangsu province. After a bit of struggle to make people understand where I wanted to go they got my point and I decided to go to Dafeng Milu Reserve and Yan Cheng Wet Land Natural Reserve in Jiangsu Province. I decided to stay in the Dafeng Peninsula Hotel as it was almost equidistant from both the reserves plus an amazing hotel to spend a quality weekend.

To brief about the reserves and what to expect from them I am going to explain each reserve in brief.

Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve, Dafeng, Jiangsu

Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve with an area of 2666.7 hectares is located in Dafeng County at the Yangtze estuary, south of Yancheng. The reserve overlaps with the transition zone of Yancheng Nature Reserve. The Nature Reserve is 50 kilometers southeast of Dafeng and 95 kilometers southeast of Yancheng City. It is 300 kilometers away from the northwest of Shanghai, northeast of Nanjing and southeast of Xuzhou. The reserve was founded to reintroduce Milu deer (Pere David’s Deer) to the wild and is the largest of its kind in China. This is an endangered deer and this reserve has the highest number of them in the world.

Milu Deer at Dafeng Reserve

After I reached there I was little disappointed due to facility to explore the facility by special means. You need to accompany the electric carts with tourists and go inside the facility. So its difficult to take good shots along with people with touristic mindset. But I managed to take quite a few shots with the time I got. There are chances that you may see some avian species around the park like Ivory winged Magpie, Chest Nut startlings, White whiskered green bulbul, sparrows what I remember in the short time I got outside the Milu enclosure.

Ivory Winged Magpie

The next day I set my target at the Yan Cheng Wet Land Reserve, by far the largest in China as I heard. But I was happy to get some hands on the wildlife in China :)

Yancheng Coastal Nature Reserves

The Yancheng coast is a large and dynamic wetland with extensive mudflats, river channels and salt marshes. The wetland has two National Reserves: Yancheng Nature Reserve and Dafeng Milu Nature Reserve. The Nature Reserves are internationally assigned as Reserves for the Biosphere by UNSECO and as Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention on Wetlands sites).

Getting out of the hotel at 8 am in the morning after a heavy breakfast, I set out with my two charged batteries and my equipment to have a great day at the reserve. They are using this reserve as a breeding section for the endangered Red Crowned Cranes but you will find many other species like the Siberian Crane, Great Egret, Greylag Goose, Brahminy Shelduck and many water birds.

Brahminy Shelduck

Greylog Goose

After having a rather productive day I thank that I survived the chilling cold at 1 degree and had some memorable shots of the birds. If you are willing to travel in China for wildlife ensure that you have enough research and facts right before you set out for the travel. I am going to travel to other provinces like Sichuan - the home for the Giant Panda and also home to many bird species.

References and more information at:

http://tastejiangsu.com/attractions/wetlands.html

www.yczrbhq.com - Official Website of the Yan Cheng Wet Land - Better use Google Chrome for translation