JUN-8 Shangkouzi Environmental Tourist Area
I tagged along with some acquaintances on a typical Chinese tourism outing yesterday. About what I expected with the vague idea about how to get where they had heard was scenic, getting lost, driving around in circles (me asking why we were driving in circles and my wife telling me to be quite 8-P) as the phone navigation app took us to the wrong places, all with the same or very similar name, etc. We finally did find the Shangkouzi Environmental Tourism area, which is along the Liaohu river, where we were promptly denied entry. As usual, no explanation, just no.
Not to be denied, we took the normal Chinese approach and since we had a Land Cruiser, we found a way through a tiny village to a narrow rutted dirt trail up onto the top of the river dike. That was followed to another narrow trail down to another village from where we found the narrow paved road into another back entry right on the river. Nobody at the gate ticket booth so we admitted ourselves.
What few people were around were obviously surprised to see anyone, much less a laowei. Actually looked like a potentially productive area for birding during migration seasons. There were boat rides for rent during season, but although there were some people lounging about and one of our party members tried to rent a tour, no one was ambitious enough to actually take a boat out on the river. From what I gathered, it was obviously the wrong season.
The area's "hook" is crop art. It was explained to me that the rice was actually planted for the crop art and was to attract tourists in the fall as, there was "Nothing to see" right now. I went up the observation tower anyway and it looked pretty good to me.:t:
Everyone was enjoying themselves and hence being quite loud so birding had to be done around that, but it still produced well for this time of year. Unfortunately, shortly into actual birding, my camera stopped working. I de-mounted the lens, changed lenses, cleaned the contacts, all to no avail. Only just as we were finishing up did I realize the battery door had come unlatched. Close it back up securely and everything was fine again. 3
It was one of those days as I also had left my binoculars setting on the desk at home, so had to do it the old fashioned way, MK-I eyeball. Good ID practice at least.
The
Yellow Bittern were in surprising numbers on one small pond and some
Black-Napped Oriole were responding to my whistled call, which overly impressed everyone in the group. Just as we were leaving, the
White-Cheeked Starling started congregating in a few trees for their evening roost. I had a couple of interesting calls that I would guess to probably have been thrush, but although I got fairly close to them I never managed to get a visual for an ID.
All in all an interesting area and even my wife said we should try again in the fall.
Shangkouzi Village Ecology Tourism, Liaoning, CN
Jun 8, 2018 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Protocol: Traveling
2.0 kilometer(s)
14 species
Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) 1
Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) 4
Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) 1
Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus) 6
Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) 2
Black-naped Oriole (Oriolus chinensis) 3
Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica) 3
Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 10
Red-rumped Swallow (Cecropis daurica) 8
Chinese Penduline-Tit (Remiz consobrinus) 8
Oriental Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) 20
White-cheeked Starling (Spodiopsar cineraceus) 26
White Wagtail (Motacilla alba) 4
Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) 10
View this checklist online at
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S46405418