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