Doomed Fish
Spend some time at the Beidaihe sandflats in the afternoon, despite the extremely low tide - it was the clearest skies we'd had in ages and I couldn't resist. I found out from a birder there that I had missed a group of 5 spoonbills by an hour or two - too bad, I've not yet seen one!
There was an interesting interaction between birds going on for 15 minutes or so. There was a group of six Common Mergansers pretty far up the channel (away from the sea) and they must have found a large school of fish (maybe concentrated because of the low tide). They were diving very shallowly and seemed to be catching quite a bit. They would sort of go from one side of the channel to the other, pursuing the school back and forth I suppose.
At the same time, there was a small flock of Little Egrets (about 8), which were standing on the shore and trying for the same fish, though the fish weren't coming to the shallow areas so much. Nevertheless, as the mergansers changes sides of the channel, the egrets would all fly across en masse and start trying from the other shore. I don't think they got as much to eat as the mergansers, but those fish were certainly trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, as the saying goes!
I saw the mergansers and egrets interact a little more directly, but no real damage done. The egrets seemed to be puzzling how to position themselves to get some of the bounty, but I didn't see any particularly successful. There were a couple of Little Grebes involved in the feeding party briefly as well.