March 10, 2017 - Gedalou Reservoir
The weather being perfect with 15 C, clear skies and very light wind I decided to make a day of it and see if Gedalou Reservoir had warmed enough to clear the ice yet. It proved a good choice even though it was still about 50% ice covered. My wife accompanied and since the family car is used during the day for business (the son-in-law is a district manager), we decided to splurge on hiring a car as I had never made it all the way around the 9km or so. Our daughter used a phone app to acquire the car and I noticed as he opened his logging and map app that it was labeled as 'Uber'. As we arrived he told me to just tell him when I wanted to stop and unlike any taxi driver we have had before he did indeed very cooperatively stop and patiently wait anytime I spotted something I wanted to investigate, which was often. In fact he even quickly figured out what I might be interested in and helped with spotting.
Immediately on arriving I stopped for a scan of the lake and was greeted with hundreds of gull, grebe and geese resting on the edge of the ice. The lake was approximately 50% ice covered and large flocks were concentrated along the edges of the ice out in the middle of the lake. Luckily I had decided to include the 1.4 tele-converter as in many cases the closest we could get was an estimated 500m-800m. We slowly made our way around with me snapping 650+ shots. Those proved invaluable as later at home I was able to zoom in and verify id's and even discover a few that I had missed at the time. Initially, it was perfect conditions, but the seeing deteriorated as the reed and rice beds were being burnt off in the area and a smoke haze and our trek around the lake deteriorated the quality of my photos as the sun swung around from directly behind me to directly in front.
Of particular delight to me were the new ticks for me of
Smew, Slaty-backed Gull, and Bean Goose. The
Great-Crested Grebe and Goosander (Common Mersanger) were also putting on quite a show with territorial and mating behavior being evident. The
Grey Heron made for the earliest I have seen any Heron or Egret arriving.
Gedalou Reservoir, Panjin, Dawa County, Liaoning, CN, Liaoning, CN
Mar 10, 2017 11:15 AM - 12:45 PM
Protocol: Traveling
5.0 kilometer(s)
Comments: aprox. 15 C Lake aprox. 50% ice covered
12 species
Taiga Bean-Goose (Anser fabalis) 30
Smew (Mergellus albellus) 100
Common Merganser (Mergus merganser) 49
Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus) 54
Gray Heron (Ardea cinerea) 5
Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra) 20
Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) 205
Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) 445
Slaty-backed Gull (Larus schistisagus) 12
Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica) 12
Little Bunting (Emberiza pusilla) 2
Rustic Bunting (Emberiza rustica) 8
View this checklist online at
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S35098989
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (
http://ebird.org)
Gedalou Reservoir, Panjin, Dawa County, Liaoning, CN, Liaoning, CN
Mar 10, 2017 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM
Protocol: Traveling
5.0 kilometer(s)
Comments: aprox. 15 C Lake aprox. 50% ice covered
5 species
Taiga Bean-Goose (Anser fabalis) 500
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) 15
Smew (Mergellus albellus) 12
Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) 200
Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) 100
View this checklist online at
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S35099006
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (
http://ebird.org)