CHINA:  CRESTED IBIS, TERRACOTTA WARRIORS AND MUCH MORE 2007

 

“The coach screeched to a halt, we piled out and there, feeding in the paddy field below us was our reward…our first Crested Ibis, and what a magnificent creature.  Un-ringed it was an old bird, one of the genuinely native, non-captive bred, stock.  It was gorgeous and its on-lookers were delighted.  As the day unfolded we saw seven more of these superb creatures, four more adults and three recently fledged youngsters near their nest.  It was day nine of the tour and we were at Yangxian in western China’s Shaanxi Province.  We’d already seen an impressive array of the Middle Kingdom’s cultural sites (Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing and the Terracotta Warriors on the edge of Xi’an), along with an even more impressive array of China’s avian delights.

 

We explored the gardens and lakes of the Summer Palace on our first full day, it was an area that yielded a few quality birds with a singing Manchurian Reed Warbler being the best.  We’d have to wait until we revisited this site in mid-June before we caught up with the site’s other premier specialities – Yellow Bittern and Ruddy-breasted Crake, however the views that we then had of these two species made the 10-day wait well worthwhile.

 

Our ensuing overnight journey from the capital north into what used to be Manchuria went flawlessly as, thanks to Qingyu, did all the ground arrangements.  Here we were met by Mr Sun, our knowledgeable local guide, and scurried off in search of Jankowski’s Bunting.  I was fretting -  on each of my previous eight visits this severely threatened species had become harder and harder to find and sooner or later it would no longer be there.  Our good fortune continued and the group’s perseverance earned a reward - we eventually found a pair of what appeared to be territorial birds.  We were just about to focus in on them when a Great Bustard flushed from our feet.  It was almost certainly nesting here and we simply had to withdraw.  Fortunately the gargantuan bustard soon returned.  But where were the buntings?  In our desire to leave the bustard alone and unhindered we’d lost our primary quarry.  It took us almost an hour to find another bird, this time a solitary male, and even then this individual was elusive.  Nevertheless we all saw it.  What a relief, only then could we relax and relish the other things that we’d already seen.  This superb grassland had yielded up a few more jewels in the shape of a fine Daurian Partridge, some fly-over Oriental Pratincoles, good numbers of Mongolian Larks and even a few Pallas’s Buntings.

 

The following day we enjoyed a fantastic full day’s birding at Xianghai NNR – a day that started with a Brown Accentor, possibly the first record for Jilin Province, spotted from one of the hotel bedrooms!  This was soon followed by another local rarity in the shape of an elusive Japanese Waxwing and we soon realised that the reserve, although clearly still suffering from an acute shortage of water, was thronged with migrant passerines and waders and we spent good part of the day searching for these.  Of course we didn’t neglect for the region’s specialities, these were the birds we’d travelled north to see, and we found most of them remarkably easily.  Mr Sun took us to a site he knew for Oriental Stork and promptly found one within minutes of us arriving (this site also held a couple of Ferruginous Pochards, yet another local rarity).  Moving on our next port of call was a marsh that held a seemingly solitary Red-crowned Crane, sadly our only Grus of the entire tour.  Other goodies here included three tumbling Eastern Marsh Harriers, impressive numbers of Amur Falcons and a couple of cooperative Great Bitterns.  We also found the reed beds alive with vociferous Oriental Reed Warblers while the surrounding African-style acacia scrub yielded several Chinese Grey Shrikes, breeding Chinese Penduline Tits and even a female Tiger Shrike. 

 

Water birds included a party of eight Falcated Duck and quite a few Swan Geese while we added a single female Siberian Rubythroat and Siberian Blue Robin, several Thick-billed Warblers and numerous phylloscopus warblers to our burgeoning list of passerine migrants.  Elsewhere we scoured pool edges and built up an impressive list of shorebirds – a list that included local specialities such as Grey-headed Lapwing and a single breeding plumaged Asian Dowitcher as well as good numbers of north-bound migrants (over 100 Red-necked Stints, 115 Sharp-tailed and 350 Curlew Sandpipers being the pick of the bunch).

 

Heading back to Beijing and then south down to Xi’an a cultural interlude took the form of Xi’an’s Terracotta Warriors.  An outstanding and an rewarding detour.  After another comfortable overnight train and a short coach ride we arrived in Yangxian and our quest to see Crested Ibis was reaching its climax.  Our multiple encounters with this, easily the rarest species we saw on the tour, left no-one disappointed and almost as a bonus we stumbled across a fine Eurasian Eagle Owl and several Swinhoe’s Minivets.

 

Moving back north we headed to the bird rich forests at Taibaishan in the northern Qinling Mountains.  No Giant Pandas for us (but we didn’t expect any and most had to make do with a handful of squirrels) but the birds were a fantastic compensation.  Second place in our post tour ‘Bird of the Trip’ poll was Temminck’s Tragopan – a species that ‘fell’ at dawn on our third full day on the mountain as a male flew to within 50 feet of us, perched in full view, shuffled, turned through 180°, shuffled again and moments later flew to a better lit perch.  It stayed there, in full view, for almost a full hour.  Spectacular and appreciated all the more because of the previous morning’s events when we’d been surrounded by three close range calling tragopans and, other than a fleeting fly-by, had been unable to successfully lure one out.  Almost as spectacular were the two pairs of Blood Pheasants that we encountered shortly after our tragopan fest.  Other goodies on this attractively forested mountain included several well seen Lesser Cuckoos, Brown Dippers, a single Ferruginous Flycatcher, a juvenile Little Forktail, several bush warblers with David’s, Spotted and Yellowish-bellied putting on outstanding ‘in-our-face’ performances. 

 

And then of course there were the phylloscopus warblers.  None made it in to the top ten poll – was this a reflection that we couldn’t decide which of the 16 species we’d seen to vote for?  Or was it a reflection of the fact that many of us thought they all looked the same in any case?  Other Taibaishan jewels included several vociferous Sichuan Treecreepers (China’s most recently described species), a couple of massively confiding Golden Bush Robins, an equally showy pair of Spectacled Parrotbills, multiple Vinaceous Rosefinches, some truly exquisite Grey-headed Bullfinches & several Slaty Buntings.  It was a lengthy list…

 

Returning to Beijing we spent part of the next day admiring the Great Wall at Badaling – but not before the site had yielded a number of new birds – an elusive Forest Wagtail, several endemic White-browed Chinese Warblers, a pair of Plain Laughingthrushes, some stunning male Yellow-rumped Flycatchers and a couple of cripplingly close Eurasian Crag Martins being among the most memorable.  In all our tour finished with us having encountered 262 species, hardly a high count by Peruvian standards but the quality was there and this represents a very, very satisfying tally nevertheless.

 

And then, all too soon it was all over.  We’d seen so much in the two weeks we’d been in China. We’d marvelled at downtown Beijing and the massive construction projects that were underway; we’d gawped at the contrast between there and rural China where fields were still being ploughed by bullocks and grain dried on the roads.  We been treated to some outstanding food, met some delightful people and basically had a thoroughly good time.  Now is clearly the time to be visiting China and we’d timed this trip perfectly…”  Paul Holt

 

Bird List:

 

Taxonomy, nomenclature and order follow those used in the preferred regional field guide, A Field Guide to the Birds of China. MacKinnon, J. and Phillipps, K. (2000). Oxford University Press. Except where marked with an asterisk *

 

No leader or participant only species are included on this list. Only species that were seen, or heard, by the leader and at least one participant are included.

 

Key to the status codes:

 

Column 1   =  total number of days that the species was recorded

Column 2   =  maximum daily count for that particular species

H                =  denotes a species that was heard but was not seen

(H)              =  denotes a species that was heard more often than it was seen

I                  =  denotes a species that was introduced to Taiwan

 

Globally threatened species as defined by BirdLife International (2004) Threatened birds of the world 2004 CD-Rom Cambridge, U.K. BirdLife International are identified as follows:  EN = Endangered; VU = Vulnerable; NT = Near-threatened.

 

Chinese endemics and endemic breeders are also highlighted.

 

 

Daurian Partridge

2

4

 

Perdix dauurica

Japanese Quail               

1

3

(H)

Coturnix japonica

Chinese Bamboo Partridge

1

10

H

Bambusicola thoracica

Blood Pheasant

1

4

 

Ithaginis cruentus

Temminck's Tragopan

4

4

(H)

Tragopan temminckii

Koklass Pheasant             

3

1

 

Pucrasia macrolopha

Common Pheasant              

7

6

 

Phasianus colchicus

Golden Pheasant (endemic)

5

10

 

Chrysolophus pictus

Swan Goose   EN

3

12

 

Anser cygnoides

Greylag Goose

3

5

 

Anser anser

Common Shelduck              

3

30

 

Tadorna tadorna

Gadwall                      

3

40

 

Anas strepera

Falcated Teal                

1

8

 

Anas falcata

Eurasian Wigeon              

1

8

 

Anas penelope

Mallard                      

4

50

 

Anas platyrhynchos

Chinese Spot-billed Duck*

4

15

 

Anas zonorhyncha

Northern Shoveler            

3

10

 

Anas clypeata

Common Pochard               

3

40

 

Aythya ferina

Ferruginous Pochard   NT

2

2

 

Aythya nyroca

Grey-capped Pygmy Woodpecker       

1

1

 

Dendrocopos canicapillus

Darjeeling Woodpecker

2

2

 

Dendrocopos darjellensis

Great Spotted Woodpecker     

8

3

 

Dendrocopos major

Grey-headed Woodpecker       

4

1

 

Picus canus

Eurasian Hoopoe              

5

4

 

Upupa epops

Common Kingfisher            

3

2

 

Alcedo meninting

Black-capped Kingfisher      

1

5

 

Halcyon pileata

Crested Kingfisher

2

4

 

Megaceryle lugubris

Large Hawk Cuckoo            

4

2

 

Hierococcyx sparverioides

Indian Cuckoo                

4

7

(H)

Cuculus micropterus

Common Cuckoo                

7

10

(H)

Cuculus canorus

Oriental Cuckoo              

3

3

(H)

Cuculus saturatus

Lesser Cuckoo                

5

4

(H)

Cuculus poliocephalus

Asian Koel

4

8

 

Eudynamys scolopacea

Common Swift                 

6

150

 

Apus apus

Fork-tailed Swift

5

50

 

Apus pacificus

Eurasian Eagle Owl

1

1

 

Bubo bubo

Himalayan Wood Owl*

1

1

H

Strix nivicola

Little Owl

2

4

 

Athene noctua

Grey Nightjar              

2

1

 

Caprimulgus indicus

Rock Pigeon

11

50

 

Columba livia

Hill Pigeon

1

1

 

Columba rupestris

Speckled Wood Pigeon

1

10

 

Columba hodgsonii

Oriental Turtle Dove         

9

20

 

Streptopelia orientalis

Spotted Dove                 

6

6

 

Streptopelia chinensis

Red Collared Dove              

1

2

 

Streptopelia tranquebarica

Eurasian Collared Dove                

1

2

 

Streptopelia decaocto

Great Bustard   VU

1

2

 

Otis tarda

Red-crowned Crane   EN

1

1

 

Grus japonensis

Ruddy-breasted Crake         

1

2

 

Porzana fusca

Common Moorhen               

3

10

 

Gallinula chloropus

Black-tailed Godwit          

3

10

 

Limosa limosa

Eurasian Curlew              

3

20

 

Numenius arquata

Spotted Redshank             

1

2

 

Tringa erythropus

Common Redshank              

3

30

 

Tringa totanus

Marsh Sandpiper              

3

5

 

Tringa stagnatilis

Wood Sandpiper               

2

1

 

Tringa glareola

Common Sandpiper             

2

5

 

A