Saturday 21st April 2012: Yangshan and Nanhui
0330 and the alarm woke me. 0330? Who's idea was that then? Shower, dress and out the door by 0355 (surprising our doorman having a crafty ciggy) and a short walk to Dapuqiao Metro station where I stand on the street waiting for Dev and our taxi driver to arrive. Which they duly do and hello's exchanged we head south of the river to rendezvous with Jocko for a few hours birding on the Yangshan island of Xiaoyangshan followed by a return visit to Nanhui reedbeds and Holiday Inn Express car park...
Xiaoyangshan Island is one of a group of islands reached by a 30km bridge but...Zhang Lin's website explains it all far better than me so head there for more details...
http://www.shanghaibirdingtour.com/hotspot/Yangshan.htm
We arrive as dawn light arrives. There is a fog/mist/cloud cover above and we park on a gravel track to the east of the road with some seemingly abandoned building set in a small wooded valley...it looks promising and the promise is immediately revealed as the first bird Jocko calls is a male
Blue and White Flycatcher...so begins the run of cracking lifers this day will bring! Lots of tsee-oo-weets from the many
Yellow-browed Warblers punctuate the air. Slowly we explore and a
Red-flanked Bluetail gives itself up briefly; a
Kingfisher zooms in, perches above a small man-made pool and then off again in a flash of Azure...
Buntings tic constantly:
Black-faced Bunting and
Tristram's Bunting in the main but the morning will also add 1
Chestnut Bunting and 2
Yellow-browed Bunting to our score. A lone
Great Tit brings a more familiar note to proceedings although this is the pale, washed-out Great Tit not that I'm used to back home in the west. A few
Eastern-crowned Warblers and
Pallas's Warblers present themselves for inspection and the second lifer of the morning pops up to give brief but stunning views by the very obviously still in use outdoor “facilities”...try not to think what the buckets looked like eh?! The second lifer? An
Asian Stubtail...supercilium bigger than the bird itself, no doubt compensating for the lack of tail...As we move up the “valley” a larger shape flushes several times and we piece together a
Brown Hawk Owl! A few
Pale Thrushes are about too.
Feeling we are starting to see the same birds (hello Mr
Blue and White Flycatcher) we head back towards the car so we can move to the western “hills” overlooking the massive port area. As we do Dev points out a
flycatcher...I see a bright, clean, yellow rump; greenish overall hue and a “Nike symbol” shaped white wing patch. We fail to get reference pictures or much clearer views but it looks interesting. We scour the surrounding area but fail to relocate the bird. The green colouration and yellow rump suggest
Elisae/Green-backed/Chinese Flycatcher (Ficedula elisae) but I don't like the white wing pattern.
Ryukyu Flycatcher has a better shaped white wing area but would be a great prize here, The more common
Yellow-rumped Flycatcher is surely most likely but the overall greenish hue doesn't sit well with Jocko or me. It goes onto the “wish we'd had more luck nailing that one” pile...
Across the road we scramble up the low rocky hill pushing
Black-faced Buntings and a pair of
Siberian Stonechat ahead of us. Once we've scaled the heights we have views of a modern container port to our right and a damp, scrubby valley overlooked by an old but lived in temple and a weather station to our left. We begin working the ground and quickly bump into 3
Chinese Pond Herons that quickly decide they don't like the look of us and flap off.
Olive-backed Pipit and
Red-throated Pipit are flitting about as we work our way to the head of the valley.
Another flash of orange and yellow grabs our attention and after several minutes of cat and mouse, Jocko locates a smart male
Narcissus Flycatcher perched up across from us. Nice...another new bird, the second flycatcher of the day. A pale-legged warbler teases us but won't call or respond to either
Pale-legged Leaf Warbler or Sakhalin Leaf Warbler played for it's benefit.
Yellow-browed Warbler are also much in evidence over here and a
Greenish Warbler is new for the morning.
Eastern-crowned Warbler also show again.
Moving back to our initial site east of the road we retrace our steps up the valley there and it's apparent that new birds have arrived in the short time we have been away. Male
Blue and White Flycatcher poses for us. The
Chestnut Buntingand
Yellow-browed Buntings are seen at this time.
Asian Brown Flycatchers are new.
Barn Swallows are much in evidence overhead.
Chinese Bulbuls are, of course, present around the buildings as are the inhabitants, just waking up.
Manchurian Bush Warbler calls loudly and clambers through the scrub. Higher up Jocko points out the call of
Brownish-flanked Bush Warbler but this one fails to come down and present himself. A
Grey Wagtail drops down, flits forward and then scoots off back into the skies.
Jocko and I are further up the path when a medium-sized black thrush whizzes down past us...hmm..it has a white belly...it perches up with it's back to us and that's enough to identify my lifer male
Japanese Thrush (a bird Jocko had been watching the previous Saturday up in Yangkou whilst I was scoping
spooners...) The bird dropped a bit further down the path for Dev to get views and allow him and I to rattle off a few shots before it disappeared.
Time to relocate ourselves too so we headed north back over the bridge to the waiting marshes of Nanhui. First stop was the sunken, sheltered car park adjacent to the bizarrely (to me anyway...although with me birder's hat on...perfectly..!) located Holiday Inn. As we swing in to the deserted lot the first 3 birds we see are thrushes...1
Eye-browed Thrushis good...2
Brown-headed Thrush is very good...lifer number 5 of the morning is watched and captured in pixels before we park and begin searching this small oasis of trees and bushes on an otherwise featureless seawall and sea of marshy reeds and grasses.
It becomes clear quite a bit of stuff is moving about and the next nice surprise is an
Ashy Minivet that poses for us in the trees. While we enjoy that there are
Yellow-browed Warblers zipping about and
Asian Brown Flycatchers are sat low down in trees. Then a large shape flies in and it takes a few seconds for us to eliminate birds of prey in favour of
Grey Nightjar. It settles briefly before flapping off on further circuits of the small car park. It's arrival has woken up an irate
Long-tailed Shrike who doesn't fancy sharing the air space with the nightjar and scolds it. Another brief landing and then it's away over the hedge.
The thrushes re-appear on the scene and let me get better pictures than I was able to from the car earlier (wrong side see...) A small flock of birds overhead call giving themselves away as
Japanese White-eyes...confirmed by Jocko who had much better views than I but I was feeling quite pleased with myself for doing them on call and moved to the car for celebratory choccy biscuits. Dev meantime called us over to an interesting warbler...interesting indeed...bright yellow underneath, greenish mantle, yellow face with neat black line through the eye and a stripy black and yellowish head...ooh...very interesting indeed...”
Sulphur-breasted Leaf Warbler” exclaimed Jocko putting a name to this stunner moments before my brain connected the dots in the same conclusion...well, he does have a lot more China experience than me! Lifer number six and a cracker at that!
Time for another attempt at celebratory biscuits, uninterrupted this time and then the decision is to head north along the seawall to some isolated bushes and then to drive one of the “reedbed roads” to see what waders may be hanging out in one of the reserves more open areas. The trees added a few things such as
Blue and White Flycatcher; female
Daurian Redstart;
Plain Prinia in the reeds at the base of the landward side of the wall;
Eastern-crowned Warbler; many
Barn Swallow and good numbers of
Red-rumped Swallow overhead and, sadly, squashed on the road.
Pale Thrush and male
Grey-backed Thrush put in elusive appearances.
A quick scan over the seaward side of the wall at a small jetty found a small wader flock: 3
Terek Sandpipers,
both sandplovers,
Sanderling and one each of
Grey Plover and
Kentish Plover. Waders gave us the impetus to move back to the car and begin driving along one of several roads through the reedbeds. Within 100m a channel to our right, just past a block of accommodation – who or what they are and do remains a mystery to me, we find another male
Blue and White Flycatcher exposed at the base of a small shrub on the bank and then several
Black-winged Stilts interspersed with
Marsh and
Wood Sandpipers.
We move along slowly and a
Kingfisher ignobly perched on the concrete road allows me a shot through the car windscreen to add to my growing collection of, frankly, crap pictures of the bird! Two
Common Snipe pose on the other side of the car and we hear
Reed Parrotbill calling along with one of the big acros –
Oriental Reed Warbler is a good guess. Turning the car to retrace our route in preparation for our return to the city and more waders are stood at close quarters so we snap way at
Sharp-tailed Sandpipers,
Red-necked and
Long-toed Stint, and a lone
Whimbrel. The day has two more nice surprises in store however as Jocko spots what looks like a
Yellow Wagtail but as we get closer and he gets a proper look declares to be a
Citrine Wagtail. More pictures ensue!
We stop once again by the huts and while Jocko works his navigator I look to my right and get lucky...right by the hut and above the noisy domesticated geese are a pair of
Reed Parrotbills who pose for Dev and my cameras before melting away.
That seems a suitable point to depart back to “civilisation” so off we trundle. Eventually after a mysterious road hold-up (when we get to it the police are just reversing along the road ahead of us to an exit ramp where it becomes clear they will swing the car around and join us speeding north. Don't ask or question it just accept it!!)
Eventually Jocko drops Dev and me in quick succession – Dev close to his place and me a convenient Metro and the day is done. Cheers guys!!!
Photos to follow soon...