Panjin Birding by the Old Fat Man (1 Viewer)

Owen Krout said:

I've been keeping in touch with Lancy via WeChat today. I guess it does serve some useful purpose. 8-P Sounds like he's doing well.

Rain was threatening here so I just hit some of the local patches this morning. Indeed at times I could see where it was raining just to the south. My limited outing was productive however. Right off the bat I spotted a couple of Shrike that I initially thought were Brown Shrike but the 'beefier' look with 'no neck' and the slightly smaller size proved to be the less common Bull Headed Shrike. I thought I could hear a few Chinese Penduline Tit in the same locations where they were seen last week, but never got a look at them this time. Hanging around hopefully means they will nest here this year. While trying to get a look at them I came across a bird that puzzled me and later at home still just didn't quite fit with any of the field guide illustrations. Finally an Oriental Bird Club image proved it to be a Female White-Throated Rock Thrush. That was a new tic and a good ID photo as well, which was enough to make it a good outing.

However, a short distance later when I diverted to a small wetland area to try to get a good look at the Ring-Necked Pheasant I could hear crowing in there, I ran across a male and female Yellow-Rumped (aka Korean) Flycatcher. The female stayed well under cover, but I did manage my first good ID shots of the male.

I briefly glimpsed a Eurasian Kestrel zooming by and landing on the flat top roof of the Electric Co. building. Couldn't see, but from what I could hear I would surmise that it had some nestlings up there that it was feeding.

Red-Rumped Swallow have made several attempts at nesting in our apartment complex but the Barn Swallow have always drove them off. Last fall the management actually did some maintenance on the buildings and cleaned out all the old BS nests. I noticed this morning that a few mud nests under the awning in front of the little shops looked different than the typical Barn Swallow nest and sure enough, I caught a R-RS working on building up one of the nests. Maybe they will manage to establish a colony.

Panjin, Dawa County, Liaoning, CN, Liaoning, CN
May 17, 2018 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Protocol: Traveling
2.0 kilometer(s)
9 species

Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) 2
Eurasian Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) 1
Bull-headed Shrike (Lanius bucephalus) 2
Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica) 1
Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 30
Red-rumped Swallow (Cecropis daurica) 5
Korean Flycatcher (Ficedula zanthopygia) 2
White-throated Rock-Thrush (Monticola gularis) 1
Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) 20

View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S45757766

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Dong Bei said:

Wow, lots happening here. Love it! Lancy, the best quick field observation to separate Green from Wood Sandpiper is that the supercilium looks like it extends well behind the eye in Wood Sandpiper but terminates at the eye for Green.

Owen, that is a good photo of a very hard bird to find -- female White-throated Rock Thrush.

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Owen Krout said:

Now for the mystery Tern. Do not adjust your screens, it's really that bad.

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Owen Krout said:

Not to brag Lancy, (OK bragging) but Little Egret, Saunder's Gull and Black-Headed Gull in one picture.

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Owen Krout said:

Little Bunting. And do you mean Long-Toed Stint -Calidris subminuta? Not as likely but possible. I would have probably said Wood Sandpiper, but now that you bring it up the legs do look shorter.

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Owen Krout said:

Since I missed my connection with Lancy this morning, I decided to go east instead of west in the Wetland Park and explore new territory. I was running late due to getting distracted by what I thought might have been a Black Drongo near the bus stop and wandering off to try and verify it. No joy.

First of all I should say that trying to direct someone without being onhand at the Panjin Wetlands Park is really difficult since the Google map doesn't even look remotely like the reality. Also in the last 20 years I have never found anywhere in China that you could get accurate maps showing any detail. The best I have is an old Nelles paper map of North East China from 2009 that is too coarse on detail and too out of date to help on local navigation. Plus the map names more often than not don't match with the common local names. For instance the Shangtaizi He is commonly called the Lao He locally. Today's outing was typical. After getting home it took great effort to try and figure out where I had been on Google.

All that aside, it was an interesting outing. I ended up going all the way around the east end of the lake. The usual Black-Headed Gull were in the majority, but I did find a few Common Tern, one Little Tern and a mystery that even the ID forum is passing on so far. A tern with a very dark body, almost pure black. Unfortunately, every shot I took of them was blurred or not in focus. Very quick moving with sudden changes in direction. I'll post them following this and maybe someone here can ID them.

The Black-Crowned Night Heron were poaching fish from the nets stretched across the lake and I managed a decent pic of a Purple Heron as he flushed and then dropped back down into cover. A few Little Egret were showing their yellow toes on a bar in the middle of the river along with numerous gull and tern.

A few Chestnut-Flanked White Eye Were hiding in the cover of the recently leafed out trees, but I managed to get one to peek out long enough to ID it.

I had one other mystery with what I first took to be a Purple Martin mixed with some Barn Swallow. It hovered on the wind right over me briefly and just as it dawned on me, "Wait a minute, Purple Martin in China?" it broke away and disappeared. Basically swallow like, maybe a little bigger and what I could only describe as purple all over. No pic as it didn't occur to me that it was odd until just as it disappeared.

Panjin Wetland Park, Liaoning, CN
May 18, 2018 9:45 AM - 1:45 PM
Protocol: Traveling
5.0 kilometer(s)
17 species

Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) 1
Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus) 4
Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea) 1
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) 8
Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) 10
Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) 30
Little Tern (Sternula albifrons) 1
Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) 10
Oriental Cuckoo (Cuculus optatus) 1
Brown Shrike (Lanius cristatus) 4
Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 30
Red-rumped Swallow (Cecropis daurica) 3
Light-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis) 3
Yellow-browed Warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus) 6
Oriental Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) 50
Chestnut-flanked White-eye (Zosterops erythropleurus) 2
Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) 10

View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S45788336

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Lancy Cheng said:

We enjoyed a wonderful trip to Honghaitan and Yingkou wetland. Thanks to Owen for arranging it. Befoe I post a full report probably tonight (or Owen will do as he was taking notes while I doing nothing), I would appreciate some ID help. We had a godwit from a distance. We did not get much detail without a scope. I'm leaning towards Bar-tailed due to the up-curved bill.
I can't decide what these small peeps could be.

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Dong Bei said:

Hi Lancy and Owen,

I second Bar-tailed Godwit and Red-necked Stint. Nice stuff!

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