The Shanghai Student (1 Viewer)

Hi guys! I'm also based in China, though where I am the birds aren't particularly interesting. The most common are Collared Doves, a sort of egret, I think the Chinese egret, blackbirds and bullfinches. There are also some wagtails, and of course sparrows. Well, some of them are interesting, the collared doves though seem to be sort of plain and they are very common. It saddens me that there's just so much city and we only get the birds adapted to city living, the only stretch of nature near me is a small canal on which the egrets live. They can sometimes be seen from my window, and sometimes they even fish in my compound because my compound has a lot of fish in it, but I've never seen them nest on the canal. Haha, I'm sort of rambling now.

A Bird in the Hand...

Found a window-stunned Woodcock at school today. Checked up on it routinely between classes, and eventually captured it from a rather insecure location and released it into a shrubby area beyond the school fence. It did to appear to have any mortal injuries (at least that one could see), it could apparently fly somewhat (according to a friend), and it was strong enough to at least scuttle around. Hopefully, it will be able to return to its twilight world without too much of a hassle.

StarBurst6 said:

Hi guys! I'm also based in China, though where I am the birds aren't particularly interesting. The most common are Collared Doves, a sort of egret, I think the Chinese egret, blackbirds and bullfinches. There are also some wagtails, and of course sparrows. Well, some of them are interesting, the collared doves though seem to be sort of plain and they are very common. It saddens me that there's just so much city and we only get the birds adapted to city living, the only stretch of nature near me is a small canal on which the egrets live. They can sometimes be seen from my window, and sometimes they even fish in my compound because my compound has a lot of fish in it, but I've never seen them nest on the canal. Haha, I'm sort of rambling now.

Click to expand...

Hey StarBurst! Where in China are you exactly? There are certainly almost no Bullfinches in Shanghai (vagrants), and I imagine your Chinese Egret may be Little Egret? Those are the more common of the species we get here in Shanghai, and they are predominantly found on the coast during migration season, and sometimes in the summer. Maybe you're farther north of us, if you're seeing Eurasian Collared Doves? I only saw those when I visited Qinghai and Inner Mongolia..

well done, Larry. That one goes into your good karma bag.

Thanks Dev! Here's to the hope that the little guy survives and pushes onwards to wherever he might be headed. B

A half-day's trip down to Chongming over the weekend bagged a substantial amount of quality sightings, including, but not limited to:

-Both Hooded and Common ('Grey') Cranes scattered in small family groups throughout the preserve, including what appeared to be at least one hybrid between the two species.
-Closeup sightings of Eastern Buzzard and Eurasian Kestrel, two species I hadn't seen much of this year.
-A flock of around 5-6 female Greater Scaup (confirmed via photos later on) relatively close to the seawall road in a manmade canal. When they took flight, a Little Grebe that had been foraging with them attempted to follow them, then seemingly realising that it couldn't keep pace, simply dropped back into the canal with a plop
-Large numbers of other duck species, including Mallard, Chinese Spot-billed, Shoveler, Gadwall, Wigeon, Falcated, Pintail, and Common Pochard. Good numbers of Great Crested and Little Grebes, as well as Coots and Moorhens, were also seen.
-A relatively close sighting of a Eurasian Bittern- seeing one of them close by, one can truly appreciate their size!
-A possible Whooper Swan, quite the rare record for SH; will confirm soon.

Had Whooper's for two straight winters in Nanhui. Last winter and the winter before. I had a posting here somewhere, will dig it out. I posted the sighting in birdtalker but the report was never approved and i haven't gone to the site after i started using ebird.

Hey Dev! Yeah, I remember seeing them on your website, was quite surprised but based on the size differences and the bill, those were definitely Whoopers. I was honestly more surprised at the Shanghai birders' reactions to my calling it out as a Whooper- that it was impossible, Whooper was way out of range (it really isn't, especially when stuff like Purple Swamphen has turned up in the past), that kinda thing. I think that Whooper really probably isn't as uncommon as people claim it is, just that people aren't really open-minded enough sometimes to consider it (as well as several other species). Bird talker is notoriously slow. I've tried using it, didn't work at all, unfortunately.

Pelican Pals

Popped down to Nanhui today, sadly dipped Slavonian Grebe, the current celebrity bird down there, but did manage to enjoy the aerobatic flips and turns of two displaying Peregrines and an unexpectedly high scaup count (around 10-11 birds by the end of the day). Also saw that the by-now-well-known escapee Dalmation Pelican has got him/herself a friend! Not sure if the new bird is from the same institution, but according to the local rangers, the new one turned up only a few days back, and has been moving with the older bird ever since.