A vagrant to Alaska, Siberian Rubythroat can be common to abundant in May on Happy Island. Photo: David Fisher.
Beidaihe and Happy Island are widely considered among the best places in the whole of Asia to witness eastern Palearctic migrants on their way to and from the breeding grounds in northern China and eastern Siberia. Situated in eastern China on the shore of the Yellow Sea (or in the case of Happy Island, in the Yellow Sea), these sites always have birds to see, and with the right conditions, fallouts of migrants can be truly spectacular. Even a “typical” day in this area can produce raptors, waders, thrushes, flycatchers, warblers, pipits, and buntings in profusion.
We’ll also visit Xianghai, a huge reserve in Jilin Province near the border with Inner Mongolia, where we’ll search for scarce breeders including the enigmatic Jankowski’s Bunting; and Wulingshan, a wooded mountain northeast of Beijing, whose forests hold a number of species we are unlikely to encounter elsewhere.
China, while maintaining its allure and mystery, is now a very comfortable place to travel. Our accommodation on Happy Island is basic, but elsewhere we’ll stay in modern, comfortable hotels.
Day 1: The tour begins this evening in Beijing.
Day 2: Meeting up with participants arriving from London, we should have time to visit Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square before catching a comfortable overnight sleeper train north into what used to be called Manchuria. Night on the train.
Day 3: Arriving at Baicheng in the early morning, we’ll set out right away to search for birds, with the region’s specialty, Jankowski’s Bunting, high on our list. Just recently discovered here, this almost mythical species shares the extensive grasslands with a few Great Bustards, the attractive Mongolian Lark, Richard’s Pipit, and the scarce Pallas’s Bunting. Later we’ll drive about two hours to the Xianghai National Nature Reserve, our base for the next two nights.
Day 4: We’ll spend a full day at Xianghai Nature Reserve, a huge area dominated by reed beds, open water, and steppe, but also containing woodland, scrub, and agricultural fields. We’ll search for Swan Goose, Baer’s Pochard, Falcated Duck, Asian Dowitcher, and Japanese, White-naped, and Demoiselle Cranes, along with other water and grassland birds such as Daurian Partridge, Amur Falcon, the gorgeous White-winged Tern, Oriental Pratincole, and Chinese Gray Shrike. In the evening we’ll head to Kaitong and board an overnight sleeper train south to Qinhuangdao.
Day 5: Arriving at the port city of Qinhuangdao, we’ll take a short drive south to Beidaihe, where we’ll spend the next two nights. Unlike in mid-summer, when Beidaihe is thronged with Chinese tourists, at this season the town will be largely devoid of visitors except for the occasional foreign birdwatcher.
Day 6: Situated on the Gulf of Bohai at the northern end of the Yellow Sea, sandwiched between the sea and the mountains and deserts of northern Hebei and Chinese Mongolia, Beidaihe and nearby Happy Island are the destinations for seeing Asian migrants, some of which have occurred as vagrants in North America. All spring long, the gardens and gullies in town, the rocky outcrops and estuaries, and the low-lying wooded hills act as magnets to thousands of birds migrating north.
The commoner migrants in early May include Marsh and Terek Sandpipers, Red-necked Stint, Oriental Pratincole, Eyebrowed Thrush, Chinese Penduline Tit, Little and Black-faced Buntings, and Radde’s, Dusky, and Yellow-browed Warblers. Scarcer species that we should also see include Lesser and Greater Sand Plovers, Long-toed Stint, Olive-backed and Richard’s Pipits, Siberian Rubythroat, Pallas’s and Pale-legged Leaf Warblers, Yellow-rumped Flycatcher, and Tristram’s, Chestnut, Yellow-browed, and Yellow-breasted Buntings.
As at all migration watch-points, the birding is strongly influenced by the weather. Even on “quiet” days there should be good numbers of migrants around, but it is the fallouts of grounded birds and the waves of passing migrants that make a visit to this area memorable. Visits in recent years have produced such remarkable daily counts as 18 Von Schrenck’s Bitterns, 26 Baillon’s Crakes, 150 Olive-backed and 70 Red-throated Pipits, 200 Brown Shrikes, 250 Siberian Blue Robins, 260 Chestnut-flanked White-eyes, and 100 Yellow-browed, 35 Radde’s, 49 Lanceolated, 82 Black-browed Reed, and 44 Thick-billed Warblers. Passing birds have included 140 Pied Harriers, over 1,000 Crested Honey-buzzards, 667 Pacific Golden Plovers, and 276 Little Curlews.
Day 7: We’ll leave Beidaihe to head south for a five-night stay on Happy Island. En route we’ll visit a couple of mainland sites, including the “Magic Wood,” named by birders stunned at the variety of birds found there. Moving on from here, we’ll take a 40-minute boat ride to Happy Island.
Days 8-11: Happy Island stretches just two and a half miles from one end to the other; it is barely a mile across at its widest point. The surrounding sea is shallow, and the intertidal mudflats are an internationally significant staging area for migrating shorebirds: recent tours have produced more than 45 species, including Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Asian Dowitcher, Great Knot, and Little Curlew. We should see a few summering Relict Gulls, while Saunders’s Gull breeds nearby and is normally seen daily. When not scouring the mudflats, we’ll be searching for passerines. Siberian Rubythroat, Rufous-tailed Robin, and Two-barred Greenish and Yellow-browed Warblers can be common to abundant, while rarities have included Fairy Pitta.
Day 12: We’ll leave Happy Island around midday to head slowly back to our original base at Beidaihe, where we’ll spend the night.
Day 13: We’ll leave Beidaihe early to drive to Wulingshan, at nearly 7,000 feet the highest mountain in the vicinity of Beijing. The mountain’s top avian attractions are the globally threatened Gray-sided Thrush and Chinese (Elisa’s) Flycatcher, both known to breed at only a handful of sites in northeastern China, with Wulingshan one of the best. Our recent visits have also yielded Koklass Pheasant, the endemic Chinese Nuthatch and near-endemic Yellow-bellied Tit, Hair-crested Drongo, Chinese Thrush, White-bellied Redstart, the recently described Chinese Leaf Warbler, Blyth’s Leaf Warbler, and Yellow-throated Bunting. Our accommodation for the next two nights is a two-star hotel right in the heart of the forest.
Day 14: We’ll have a full day’s birding in the forests of Wulingshan.
Day 15: We’ll leave Wulingshan and descend to Miyun, an attractive satellite town north of Beijing. Miyun’s appeal for us is its reservoir and rivers, which harbor small numbers of Ibisbills and Long-billed Plovers. We’ll devote much of the afternoon to finding these enigmatic shorebirds. Night in Miyun.
Day 16: The tour concludes this morning at Beijing International Airport.
Prices
- 2009 price about $4,990
- Single Occupancy Suppplement $500
Notes
Maximum group size 14 with two leaders.
This tour is organized by our British company, Sunbird.