On February 3rd my father arrived for a two week visit coinciding with Spring Festival... he's a hardcore birder, and this is our tale of woe and redemption! :t:
Date: Feb 8th through 14th
Area: Shenyang Qipanshan, Benxi, Benxi Countryside, Dandong Environs
地区：沈阳棋盘山，本溪市，本溪农村，丹东附近
Weather: -10C ~ -25C
Location 1 - Shenyang Qipanshan:
We have a new house - half a duplex - just a km or two north of the International Horticultural Gardens (aka "Expo Gardens"). We closed on it in December and will decorate and furnish this spring and summer. On the Friday before LNY proper we took my father out to have a look and did a quick bit of birding in the neighborhood...
- 5 x Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica)
- 10 x Carrion Crow (Corvus corone)
- 1 x Great Tit (Parus major)
- 16 x Oriental Greenfinch (Chloris sinica)
Location 2 - Benxi City Park:
My dad has spent the last 35 years of his life in sunny south Florida. He was deeply worried about dealing with two weeks of NE Chinese winter. I encouraged (punished?) him by making him walk the Benxi City Park at 0800 in -25C weather... a wise decision in the end!
- 5 x Azure-winged Magpie (Cyanopica cyanus)
- 10 x Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica)
- 1 x Coal Tit (Periparus ater)
- 10 x Great Tit (Parus major)
- 20 x Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea)
- 1 x Naumann's Thrush (Turdus naumanni)
- 10 x Common Rosefinch (Carpodacus erythrinus)
- 10 x Pallas' Rosefinch (Carpodacus roseus)
- 1 x Yellow-billed Grosbeak (Eophona migratoria)
- 30 x Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus)
I had been to the park once previously and seen exactly one nuthatch. This time it was almost silly how many there were. Once we got to the upper elevations almost every moving bird was a nuthatch. 20 is a conservative tally. Astounding.
Location 3 - Benxi Geology Museum:
This is adjacent to the far better known Benxi Water Cave. While the museum itself was freezing (no heat, inexplicably) the fossils were awesome. 5 minutes in the parking lot and we bagged...
- 3 x Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica)
- 3 x Coal Tit (Periparus ater)
- 1 x Great Tit (Parus major)
- 2 x Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea)
- 1 x Varied Tit (Sittiparus varius)
My first varied tit! All it took was a bit of a jaunt outside the urbanization. So far the trip was going well... decent species counts for very little effort.
Part 2 - Dandong!
Mind you, our forum friend DongBei had just been through this exact area the week before and went home with a stunning array of species sighted. I spent the entire first week of my dad's visit talking up our two-day trip... big mistake! There's only one Tom and I ain't him! The plan was to visit the Hushan Great Wall the first afternoon, then hit the famous wetlands on the second morning...
Location 4 - Dandong Hushan Great Wall:
- 5 x Common Merganser (Mergus merganser)
- 1 x Gray-faced Woodpecker (Picus canus)
- 3 x Brown-eared Bulbul (Hypsipetes amaurotis)
- 7 x Yellow-throated Bunting (Emberiza elegans)
The weather was poor - hazy and a bit cold - but the wall was beautiful and we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. A somewhat disappointing species count, though we were excited about the bulbuls until we got home and realized we had seen some in Japan back in '06. Nevertheless, a new species for the China list.
Also, being cheeky bastards, we spotted a Eurasian Magpie sitting in a tree over the border in DPRK and I dutifully recorded it. I am now ranked
5th on the list of DPRK eBird members with my solitary sighting. :king:
Location 5 - Yalu River Wetlands Park:
On the second morning we got up early and drove down to the famous Yalu river mouth wetlands park. Tom is probably chuckling to himself as he reads this... we discovered that in mid-February the wetlands park is pack-ice as far as the eye can see. No water, of course, means no waterfowl. That was a huge screw-up.
So we loaded back in the car and began winding our way along the coast towards Dandong. By 1000 the only noteworthy avifauna spotted was a flock of Eastern Spot-billed ducks in a
ditch.
By 1030 we had returned to the outskirts of Dandong proper and were basically packing it in and making plans to return to the hotel and checkout, utterly defeated. On a lark I suggested we hop over to Moon Island （月亮岛） and see if we can get a gull or two at the downstream point. Our fortunes were changing...
- 20 x Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
- 20 x Common Merganser (Mergus merganser)
- 5 x Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica)
- 10 x Siberian Stonechat (Saxicola maurus)
- 40 x Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus)
- 1 x Monk Vulture aka Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus)
We literally nearly stumbled over the Monk Vulture. At the southern extremus of Moon Island is a low stone wall and then a flat area overlooking the tidal point. This massive, hulking bird was crouched down on the south side of the wall out of sight of anyone in the yard. My father and I had progressively worked our way through the yard watching stonechats and such and were only 2 meters from the wall (by now looking at the ducks out on the water) when he popped his head up. Talk about a shock! :eek!:
We froze, and then I whistled for my father-in-law to scurry over with our telezoom so I could snap some photos. In the end we realized that this was a rather tame specimen, not the least bit threatened by us and perhaps even somewhat disappointed we hadn't brought it some sausages.
The Korean peninsula seems to be the very easternmost reaches of its range, and the global numbers aren't so good. The possibility remains that this is a zoo escapee, or perhaps even some rich Chinese's humorous idea of a pet... but however it came to be in the area, it was very much a wild bird and a stunning one at that.
So, while our final Dandong trip count was a paltry dozen or so species, it ended on a very high note and my father will not soon forget suddenly being eyeball-to-eyeball with one of the largest raptors in the world!
