Summary

This year's trip, the ninth consecutive one by WildWings, coincided with a late spring resulting in the late arrival or the non-arrival of a number of species during our stay. There were no huge falls of migrants, but as in similar previous years the new birds just kept coming and coming, regardless of weather conditions. A feature of this year was that the views we had of most of the birds were exceptionally good, and provided the tour members with unusually rewarding photographic opportunities. Digiscoping was popular, and provided some outstanding and impressive still and moving images. For some of the trickier species - and there are plenty! — this confirmed the benefits of this valuable new aid to identification.

Most tour participants, including several experienced and well-travelled birders, clocked up 100 or more ticks out of the trip total of 237.

Notable among these, and not recorded every year by any means, were Chinese Egret,

Oriental White Stork, Mandarin Duck, Falcated Duck, Little Whimbrel, Grey-tailed Tattler, Relict Gull, Hodgson's Hawk Cuckoo, Little Cuckoo, Crested Kingfisher and White-bellied Redstart (both WildWings firsts), Black-winged Cuckoo Shrike, Pallas' Grasshopper Warbler (the elusive 'PG Tips'), Golden Spectacled Warbler (considered to be the recently split Grey-crowned Warbler), Blue-and-White Flycatcher, and Silky (or Red-billed) Starling.

Chronology

The trip followed the well-proven formula of recent years. On arrival in Beijing, we spent

5-6 May there, combining birding with some sightseeing in and around the city. The visit to the Forbidden City on the Saturday afternoon soon after lunch following our arrival yielded Azure-winged

Magpies and Large-billed Crows, and later the local park close to our hotel provided us with our first migrants, a male Siberian Blue Robin, Red-throated Flycatcher, Yellow-browed Warbler and Yellow-bellied Tit.

The Sunday morning was spent at the Summer Palace, among its breathtaking scenery of lakes, willow trees and ornate bridges. Here we found a Ruddy Shelduck, a pair of Falcated Duck, White-breasted Waterhen, Spotted and Oriental Turtle Doves, a Crested Kingfisher, Grey-headed Woodpeckers,

Chinese Bulbuls and passerine migrants including Olive-backed Pipits, singing Pallas' Warblers,

Yellow-browed Warblers, Little Buntings and Chestnut-flanked White-eyes.

Another visit to the park that afternoon, despite crowds of people out enjoying themselves on a warm public holiday, added to the list 1-2 Silky (or Red-billed) Starlings, and Radde's, Dusky and Eastern Crowned Warblers.

This two-day introduction set us up with our first experience of Chinese birding, followed each evening by excellent and inexpensive Chinese food in a local restaurant.

On the morning of 7 May we travelled down to Beidaihe on the fast train to the coast, where after settling quickly into our rooms we chose our bicycles and were soon out in the field. We set about exploring the best birding areas close to the Jin Shan Hotel where we were staying, and plenty of birds, particularly at the renowned Lighthouse Point, ensured that we did not have to go very far. By dinner that evening the list had grown apace, to include Black-tailed Gull, Rufous-tailed Robin, Red-flanked Bluetail, Siberian

Stonechat, Brown Shrike, Red-billed Magpie, Oriental Greenfinch, and Black-faced and Tristram's Buntings. Numbers such as over 100 Yellow-browed Warblers and over 70 Pallas' Warblers were at first considered remarkable, but soon were accepted as typical.

We birded Beidaihe from 8-11 May, discovering the hotspots such as Eagle Rock and Gully, the Sandflats, the Reservoir, the nearby Wader Pools and Radar Marsh. A steady stream of migrants poured through each day from dawn to dusk, and the early birders (out at 5.00 am every day) were often

rewarded by pre-breakfast goodies. Typical were the Golden Spectacled Warbler in bushes on the beach on 8th (considered to be Grey-crowned), the two Little Whimbrel and Crested Honey Buzzard flying north over the Jin Shan Field on 9th, and a male Siberian Thrush in Legation Gully (with White's

and Eye-browed) on 11th.

Thrushes were unusually numerous in those first few days, doubtless the result of the late spring, and included up to 8 Blue Rock, 4 White's, 10 Eye-browed, 25 Dusky, 2 Chinese Song and a Grey-backed. Everyone was by now enjoying new birds throughout each day, from their first Siberian Rubythroat

or Blyth's Leaf Warbler to Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and Blyth's Pipit.

The variety was enormous - herons, egrets, wildfowl, raptors, waders, gulls, terns and a huge assortment of passerines.

A particularly good wader day was on 9th, when the Sandflats, the Reservoir, the Wader Pools and Radar Marsh held 29 species of wader including an Oriental Pratincole, 10 Lesser Sand Plovers, 40 Pacific Golden Plovers, a Grey-headed Lapwing, 14 Long-toed Stints, 14 Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, 5 Pintail Snipe, 5 Far-eastern Curlew, 54 Marsh Sandpipers, 10 Terek Sandpipers, and a Grey-tailed Tattler - after the two Little Whimbrel already mentioned for that day. A Chinese Egret was in the area for several

days.

On 10 May we made a visit to The Great Wall at Jiaoshan Mountain, an hour's drive north of Beidaihe, not far from where the wall reaches the sea. Here we found several mountain specialities, including Daurian Redstarts, Eastern Rock and Siberian Meadow Buntings, and had excellent views of Pere David's

Laughing Thrushes and Chinese Hill Warbler.

After early morning birding near the Jin Shan on 12th, which gave us several Japanese Quail, an impressive Brown Hawk Owl and an Oriental Scops Owl, we headed south by coach for five days from 12th-16th in the Happy Island area.

This proved to be outstandingly successful, including not just our two separate day trips to the legendary Happy Island itself, but for the (even better?) birding in 'The Magic Wood' and 'The Big Wood' on the coast nearby. Both have fortunately (so far) remained intact from development pressures.

There were so many highlights and exciting experiences that it's difficult to remember them all. Was it the flocks of Lesser Sand Plovers, Great Knot, or White-winged Black Terns? Or the Asian Dowitchers, albeit very low in numbers this year, and so hard to find? Perhaps the cuckoos of five species, including Little and Hodgson's Hawk? Which were best from among Rufous-bellied Woodpecker, Pechora Pipit, Forest Wagtail, and Black-winged Cuckoo-Shrike? How do you measure the impact of 60 Siberian Blue Robins and 30 Siberian Rubythroats in a day, or or the first sighting of White-throated Rock Thrushes or Stub-tailed Bush Warblers? We enjoyed the first arrivals of Lanceolated, Black-browed Reed, Oriental Great Reed, Thick-billed, Arctic and Pale-legged Leaf Warblers, and lots of flycatchers - daily

Yellow-rumped, an Elisae, several Mugimakis, two stunning male and a female Blue-and-White, and the first Siberian and Grey-streaked among the Asian Browns to challenge our identification skills.

Black-naped Orioles, big flocks of white-eyes, Daurian Starlings, Common Rosefinches,and a variety of buntings completed the experience. Happy Island, although becoming grossly over-developed both on the island and offshore, still pulls in the birds, with over 40 other birders there to help to find them. And The Magic Wood? It's still the most perfect migrant attraction one could find anywhere in the world, a perfect combination of location, size and cover for tired, hungry and thirsty migrants arriving from over the sea. It's an island of trees and cover itself in a sea of fishponds and salt pans.

We returned to Beidaihe for an afternoon's birding on 16th which produced a handsome pair of Mandarin Ducks on the Reservoir, and Baillon's and Ruddy Crakes on Radar Marsh. On 17th the best birds were 2 European Spoonbills, a Chinese Little Bittern and Black Drongo newly arrived.

On 18-19 May we travelled north westwards by coach, to stay overnight at Old Peak in the Laolin Reserve, in the forested mountains two hours from Beidaihe. Despite continuing (if not never-ending) noisy building work, most of the special birds of the park were found. Bull-headed Shrikes;

Blunt-winged, Yellow-streaked, Blyth's Leaf and Manchurian Bush Warblers; Indian, Oriental, Eurasian, and Large Hawk Cuckoos; Grey-sided and Chinese Song Thrushes; Elisae Flycatcher; Hair-crested Drongo; White-bellied Redstart; and, heard but sadly not seen, Koklass Pheasant and Chinese Leaf

Warbler.

Conclusion

For most of the group, the high spot of the visit to Old Peak, if not of the whole trip, was early on the second morning we were standing on a high viewpoint overlooking the misty mountains to the west, where long stretches of the Great Wall could be seen very clearly stretching away into the distance, with over 30 forts visible. Two Needletails, like very fast fighter jets, were powering round and round us at the top of the mountain pass for minutes on end. Suddenly, two flocks of Purple Herons appeared from the misty south and passed high overhead to the north until lost to view. A more evocative image of China and its unforgettable birding would be hard to imagine.

And so ended another memorable WildWings trip....