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Liaoning, Shenyang aka 辽宁沈阳 (1 Viewer)

And one lady kestrel watching me watching her to finish up the report! :t:
 

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Andrew, the last photo looks like a Dusky Warbler?
Your Mandarin drake shot beats my best attempt at a male. Nice looking ducks!
The habitat on your 4th picture looks great for passerines!
Tom
 
Congrats on Mandarin Duck Andrew. Looks like they prefer dirty pools from time to time. In Sichuan Birding thread, Sid has posted a similar habitat. In Hangzhou Botanical garden, i flushed a pair from a dirty pool and the pair came back to the same pool after sometime.

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=149725&page=31


Plenty of fresh Alexandrine Parakeets have arrived in the bird market next to my house. So far i haven't seen Derbyan Parakeet in the markets. So may be yours is a one who got escaped or released on a "Good Will".

Your lady kestrel looks like an immature male to me with the grey rump and uppertail coverts.
 
Andrew,

Looks to me like you are doing really well for Shenyang! This thread is getting stale, but thought I would see if you were still in Shenyang. I left there just last June after the Chinese government decided to start enforcing retirement age rules on foreigners. I was up in the Shenbei area north of BeiLing at Shenyang Aerospace University. The old campus until about 2005 or so was just west of BeiLing. Unfortunately, that was before I reopened an old interest in bird watching.

As of last June, there was at least three Common Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) on the SAU campus. I could often hear the male crowing when I was in my classroom.
 
May visit to Shenyang (and Yingkou)

Hi All,

I guess Andrew will not mind hijacking his thread as it has been very quit since last year.

I will visit my family-in-law in Shenyang next month, for a little over 2 weeks (9-25th), including a 1-day visit to some friends of my wife in Yingkou. This is my fourth time and I am not having any illusions anymore of doing some serious birding, being with my family all the time. In addition it is a very short period. But I do as much as possible observations 'on-the-way' (mostly to the shopping malls ;) ) as I can.

The nice thing about this time will be the fact that it will be the first time I will be there in the best time of the year, May. I think I will be able to do one or two trips (with family) to some forested area's like Beiling Park and/or the parks to the east of Shenyang. I wondered if some of you would know which (common) song birds I should look out for in that period of the year, so I can try gathering and learning sounds for ID.

I assume there is no chance I could hire an (broken) English speeking birdguide for the day I am in Yingkou? Preferrably with some transportation and a scope.

If I see more than just the most common (tree sparrow, magpie, barn swallow, japanese tit,...) I will leave a note with my observations in this thread. I Hope I will be writing here again...


Bart
 
Bart, It will be tough to find an English speaking guide in Yinkou but there is one only a tiny bit further south :) You will be in the area for a very good time of the year for sure. In Beiling Park look for all of the flycatchers, Tristram's, Yellow-browed, Chestnut, and Yellow-breasted Buntings. Probably Yellow-browed Warbler in large numbers. Perhaps Chestnut-flanked White-eye, etc... I've never been there in May but have birded that park a few times in odd times of the year when in Shenyang for other business.

Perhaps I could meet you near Wafangdian for a day or half day trip around the wetlands there?

Tom
 
Hi Tom,

Thanks so much for your feedback! That will be of great help. Compared to last time (2012) I have a smartphone which I can use to create a shortlist with soundbits of these birds. I am also excited about having a recording app that can make good enough recordings for IDing afterwards. Hopefully I can post some here in a couple of weeks.

Also thanks very much for your invitation. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a realistic option for me. My family are really not keen on me travelling by myself. I am not sure yet how much of the a day I can spend in Yingkou. Probably we will already travel half a day from Shenyang to Yinkou and I will only have the afternoon. I will feel already very lucky if I can reach the coast or the river from where our friends live.

Bart
 
Hi all,

I am back home since a couple of days from my family visit to Shenyang and I am glad to say I saw a little more than just the most common city birds. I believe more freedom and time to look around are the perks of having a young child that takes the attention away from myself (the older child ;) ).
In the end we didn’t go to Yinkou. Those friends came to Shenyang and we met at Beiling Park. Unfortunately, I just got some glimpses of this park as the outing was very social. I didn’t return afterwards. However, I did have a local patch of green (or cluster of greens) near my parents-in-law that I visited several times in the early mornings, namely on the grounds of Shenyang University and which had a good turnover of, although mostly very skulky, migrants. Besides that we made two short trips to family in the outskirts of Shenyang, where I had short look-arounds, a visit to a river side city park, an outing to the Qipanshan zoo and an overnight trip to Bingyu Valley near Zhuange. I couldn’t convince my family for a small detour along the coast however… After we just arrived in Shenyang, there was some talking of a trip of a couple of days to Dandong. I was already surfing around for a possible birdguide in that city, but because of the grandfather falling ill, the trip had to be replaced by a shorter one to Bingyu Valley.

As I told before, I was planning to and did extensively use sound recordings on my smarthphone for additional ID’s. In the meanwhile I made already many several ID’s like this of birds I was unable to see, but I still have lots of unknowns for which I hope some of you can help me. The recordings are raw, unedited materials with not rarely lots of background noise unfortunately, but I want to give it a try here.

I am still processing all my observations with the help of memory and recordings, filtering out the maybes from the certainties and I still need to do a full count of lifers, china list, etc. I will try to post a message of every birding instance and keep the counts at the bottom. It is all very modest. Before this year I had a list of 64 species for the whole of China (including travel to Yunnan). This time I added another 30 or so and still counting, hoping to still increase it a little bit with some additional ID’s, maybe reaching 100?

In the coming days/weeks I will add most posts to this thread as they are all from Shenyang, except Bingyu Valley. Any suggestions where I should put that trip report? New thread or in Gretchen’s “China Observations”?
I hope you can enjoy my posts to come.

Best Regards, Bart
 
Bart, looking forward to your reports. Please feel free to put any sighting from Bingyu Valley here on this forum. I'm happy to try to help with any recordings. Great that you got some birding done on your trip, even if it was only some small green areas. The time you were here was excellent and most green spaces would have things to see.

Tom
 
Date: 12-May-2015
Time: 13:30 – 15:10 (20 min break in between)
Location: Appartment complex on outskirts of Shenyang, incl. park area

The first few days after arrival in Shenyang (the 9th) I didn’t have any opportunity to see other birds than Three sparrow, Barn Swallow, Common Magpie and Azure-Winged Magpie. The birds that are the most common and noticeable around the apartment of my in-laws.

The first day I heard or saw something else than these birds, we went to a family’s residence in a walled apartment complex on the outskirts of Shenyang, between the centre of the city and the Dongling park area. I had been there before on previous trips but all in July and I didn’t see anything more than Three sparrow, Barn Swallow and Common Magpie until now. 12 May was a rainy day. At arrival some faint whistle higher up in a three caught my attention. It was impossible to get a good view, I just noted it was a small warbler. After making the best sound recording I could, I looked around for more green and immediately found more of probably the same species, but they kept on avoiding my field of view for a perfect view. I did make better recordings however. I later identified them to be all Yellow-Browed Warblers. After saying hi to the family, everybody was just resting, so I decided to go out for another hour or so to explore more of the surroundings, which I never did before.

I found a little park attached to the residence, with some stone edged ponds and thick bushes around a 5m high mount/ridge. On the other side of the wall there were higher threes and some rough grassy parts. The first birds I heard were Common Kingfishers. At the same time I noticed a heron flying away from the park. Probably a Grey Heron, but I cannot be sure because of the bad light that day. Slowly progressing through this area I had many calls were I couldn’t see the birds and I missed to make a recording. Other times I saw flashes of a bunting and a flycatcher without any possible ID. But I was lucky to have a good view of my first male Tristram’s bunting. Other ID’s were a Spotted Dove and Pheasant, both recorded over the wall, which I later found out was military property. Some calls were possibly Japanese bunting. I chased after a thrush-like call for a considerable amount if time but I didn’t find the bird. I do have a bad recording of it, 4 sec in the attached mp3. You probably have to listen to it with earpieces or headphones to hear it clearest. Maybe someone has a clue what it is?

Afterwards I tried some more recordings of the YB warblers. You can find all YB warbler recordings for that day in these places:
http://china.observado.org/waarneming/view/102099486 (first observation, faint)
http://china.observado.org/waarneming/view/102099485
http://china.observado.org/waarneming/view/102768313

Species list (excl. possible):
L = Lifer, C = New to China list, T = New to Trip list, P = New Patch addition
1 Common Pheasant - Phasianus colchicus P, T
2 Spotted Dove - Spilopelia chinensis P, T
3 Common Kingfisher - Alcedo atthis P, T
4 Eurasian Magpie - Pica pica
5 Barn Swallow - Hirundo rustica
6 Yellow-browed Warbler - Phylloscopus inornatus L, T
7 Eurasian Tree Sparrow - Passer montanus
8 Tristram's Bunting - Emberiza tristrami L, T

Life list: 335 (+2)
China list: 67 (+2)
Trip list: 9 (+5)
Patch list : 8 (+5)
 

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Bart,

I think the unknown recording is a Taiga (Red-throated) Flycatcher. Korean (Yellow-rumped) Flycatcher can sound similar though.

Tom
 
Tom,

I think this is the right direction, although I believe it is rather Korean in stead of Taiga Flycatcher. Just before the thrill call at 4s there is another call, that seems to match with this one. I also think I hear it in combination with the thrill call here. In contradiction, I can not find similar with recordings of Taiga flycatcher calls.

Still, it is too little to be sure I guess and I keep it as probable. So no formal Korean flycatcher thick, at least for that day ;).

Thanks
Bart
 
Date: 13-May-2015
Time: 10:00 – 11:30
Location: Shenyang University - part North of river

Nothing special was planned before lunch, so my father-in-law, wife, son and I went to some badminton courts at the Shenyang University. I remembered the campus from a previous trip (2012). I didn’t see that much back then because we were just using it as a shortcut to get home, but in those few minutes I at least saw some more than I was used to in that area of the city. The additional species I remember were Azure winged magpie, Brown shrike, some dove and even a great spotted or white-backed woodpecker. So I definitely wanted to bring my bino’s, although my father-in-law mostly wanted to hit the shuttle back and forth. While we were playing badminton I could hear the calls of Yellow-browed Warblers which I just got familiar with the day before. After a half hour or so, I was trying to figure out how to tell my father-in-law to stop the workout and that I rather wanted to have a look around for some birds. It was actually he who stopped the play to point out a bird that flew from behind my back to a tree on the edge of the court. I grabbed my bino’s from the bag and confirmed it was a white-backed woodpecker, mainly based upon the black face bar that didn’t touched the nape. From that moment my father-in-law knew he lost me and let me be. While he went back to the apartment to get some more water, I, my wife and son went to explore more of the campus.

First we went to the back of the athletics field. It had a double row of high trees with many, already familiar calls of more Yellow-browed Warblers. After spending some time to get better views and giving up in the end, a male Siberian blue robin showed a few times and was a first for me. At that point I thought this was the first clear migrant of the trip. After that bird was gone, we found the main park area. These are 4 ‘patio’s’ of maybe 50 by 50 meters with paths running through. These patio’s include rather mature trees and enough thick bushes underneath for migrants to hide in. I quickly could confirm previous sightings I had done in 2012 of Tree sparrow, azure-winged magpie, Brown shrikes and found Oriental turtle dove. These would be the usual suspects of later visits. After this I left my family on a bench and found even more Yellow-browed Warblers calling and even one singing I believe. Strolling through the last patio there was a lot of short calls and flashes of little birds. First the head of a bunting, no ID, I tried to follow but then some flycatcher flashed in my view, again trying to follow but found again another bunting, this time with enough visibility to finally put a name to a flash, Chestnut bunting. After I found Chinese grosbeaks in the tree tops, I heard a singing bird. You can find the recording in this post, which is I believe Raddes Warbler. I also had short views of the brownish phyllo foraging under a bush. Than it was time for lunch.

The fact that I could find so much more birds 5min walk from our apartment exited me to make more visits during the days I was in Shenyang. More excitingly, I found out later that most of those birds were actually not residents but short stay migrants. I still had my doubts that day which birds were resident and which ones were migrants. Except for the Chinese grosbeaks, which came part of the usual suspects, I only saw Chestnut bunting one more time on campus and some Yellow-browed warblers but in much lower numbers (e.g. 1 per visit). Even the singing Raddes warblers and the woodpecker were one-timers. I only realized at the second visit two days later this first time had to have been a fallout from the rains the day before (on the 12th), especially with the loads of Yellow-browed warblers that first day. Although without any rain, this site also had much to offer during later visits, with a high turnover. Although many times it was very challenging with many flashes and short callings without ID’s and even with ID’s, the birds were many times seen a few seconds and then gone, not to be found again.
Species list (excl. possible):

L = Lifer, T = New to Trip list, P = New Patch addition
1 Oriental Turtle-Dove - Streptopelia orientalis T, P
2 White-backed Woodpecker - Dendrocopos leucotos T, P
3 Brown Shrike - Lanius cristatus T
4 Azure-winged Magpie - Cyanopica cyanus T
5 Radde's Warbler - Phylloscopus schwarzi L, T, P
6 Yellow-browed Warbler - Phylloscopus inornatus P
7 Siberian Blue Robin - Larvivora cyane L, T, P
8 Eurasian Tree Sparrow - Passer montanus
9 Chinese Grosbeak - Eophona migratoria T, P
10 Chestnut Bunting - Emberiza rutila L, T, P


Life list: 338 (+3)
China list: 70 (+3)
Trip list: 17 (+8)
Patch list : 12 (+7)
Sounds:
1. Chinese grosbeak – calls
2. Yellow-browed Warbler – song?
3. Radde’s Warbler - song
 

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Wow, delighted to see someone else making use of this thread!

My trusty Monarchs completely fell apart during a trip to Cát Tiên National Park last summer and we didn't have money to get new ones until just now, so I haven't done much birding lately.

HOWEVER, I did drag my spotting scope down to the last bit of open water on the Hun river on January 1st. I was on the north bank out near Shen-Fu New City (沈抚新城) freezing my ass off looking at a huge mess of mallards when a White-tailed Eagle flew in. :eek!:

From my eBird note:

Was done scoping the ducks and actually headed up to the car when all hell broke loose. Turned around to see this beast gliding over the massive flock seated on the ice. The mallards were in a frenzy. After two slow passes he landed a fair distance behind them and was immediately mobbed by carrion crows. All key field markings clearly observed: white tail, heavy beak, brownish head, fingered wings, wing angle during flight, flight wingbeat pattern. Undoubtedly a white-tailed (sea) eagle and a tremendous record for this location!

I did a little happy-dance right there on the shoreline! :t:

Photos:

1) mobile phone shot of the scene from the shoreline, the black specks below the horizon are your mallards
2) mobile phone shot through scope (cropped, enhanced contrast) of eagle resting on ice
 

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Scoters!

(I apologize for not participating here these days. Nothing personal, y'all are great!)

This morning at the same location as the sea eagle above, I spotted a pair of female white-winged scoters (Melanitta fusca). I wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary, so ended up jogging back to the car to grab my phone so I could take a shot through the scope for evidence! :t:

At least within eBird's limited Chinese records, this is the first reported sighting for 2016 in all of China. Furthermore, it's only the 6th sighting for China on eBird.

Tom Beeke pipped me for the "first in province" award by a year, however! We all bow before ye! :)

eBird Checklist
 

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Fantastic, Andrew! You certainly picked up the right bird for the award.

Even, in Hokkaido, we had to sweat in -15C to find this one.

If you are curious about the recent records, there was a female bird recorded in Hangu, Tianjin on last sunday. Not sure if its been reported in ebird.
 
Hi all,

Every 2-3 years I cycle back to this forum when visiting my parents-in-law in Shenyang. Last time was in May 2015 and I realise now I still had to share a lot of sightings and undetermined calls/songs I recorded from back then. I am so dissapointed by myself! Maybe it can still be useful to add those sightings from 2015, especially because it covers patches that are not much mentioned here before and during prime migration. I think of Beiling Park and Bingyu Valley. I'll do my best!

This time my preparation is even worse then before, none at all. My head was all about work for months until this Wednesday. Now I am realising migration could also send some interesting observations this time around (coming 3 weeks). I hope I can report when I am still here to avoid last times reporting disaster.

One thing I am in particular looking into right now is the Siberian Cranes. I understand, at least a few years back, March-April is the time for them to stopover in Huanzidong Reservoir in Faku county. What a special thing it would be if I would still be able to get there in time without any preparation.

Does anybody know if there is updated information on the cranes at the lake? What are the better locations around the lake. I only have my binoculars, is it worth going without a scope? Is it a location a family could enjoy? Risking to sound to desperate: any locals from Shenyang or even Liaoning that are planning to go up there and I can tag along with? ;) BTW. sorry to see the thread of Dong Bei end after so many years. I have fond memories following his posts previous times.
 
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