Moving to Hangzhou - any advice appreciated (1 Viewer)

This summer I will be moving to Hangzhou, which is not far from Shanghai, where I will be starting work as a teacher at an international school. I have found a few useful posts here on Birdforum to start me off, but I would welcome any additional information to guide me towards places to go birding. I believe there is a Zhejiang wild bird society (Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang province), and Avibase shows a pretty impressive species list of 505 species for the province, so there must be some good birding sites around.
I would appreciate any suggestions
Thanks

Tom

Hi Tom,

The locals will be along soon, I'm sure, but I've birded in Hangzhou once. I found the Botanical Gardens to be quite birdy, especially once you get up the hillside on the west and away from the crowds. West Lake can be especially crowded, but there are some nicer forested areas around the SW corner. Other than that, I didn't get out of the city.

The other thing to consider is that Hangzhou is on major High Speed Rail routes heading SW to Jiangxi or SE to Fujian.

Thanks Jeff. I have already come across your report here on Birdforum of your 2010 trip, which is very useful. Its great to have a couple of sites and your bird list to start me off. Given the extensive list of birds found in the province, there must also be some great birding sites in the surrounding region. The Zhejiang Wild Bird Society seems active and has a website, but it is all in Chinese. Maybe there will be some English-speaking members I can contact.

Tom

Tom,

I know there's a decent number of BF members in the Shanghai area. i've birded with a few of them.

One of our usual birding sites, Xiao Yangshan Island, is actually in Zhejiang, but it's accessed via a birdge from Shanghai. It's a great place for migration fallout, being along the coast. I don't know how much sightings from there influence the size of the Zhejiang list.

EBird also lists a couple sites in the Hangzhou area.

The thing you'll also find is that birding in China is not the same as birding in the western sense. The birding societies in China are often more about bird photography, and not simply observing the birds like westerners often do. So often the data on general observations are somewhat lacking because the photographers focus on the killer photo and not the incidental stuff (or even a badly photographed mega).

Thanks Jeff
I took your advice and looked up birding in Shanghai, which gave me this (shanghaibirdingtour.com) useful website, which gives a number of birding sites in the region, including some in Zhejiang.

Tom