Can you do casual birding in China? RFI (1 Viewer)

[lockbreeze926]

I will be on an organised tourist trip (non-birding) to China in April and I wonder how feasible it would be to do some casual birding there when there were no other activities planned?

I understand that these are huge cities and transport arrangements could be difficult, so city parks and botanical gardens are likely to be good options.

Locations with down time would be –

• Beijing
• Xi’an
• Guilin
• Shanghai

 

[Andrew Whitehouse]

It should be fairly easy to do casual birding in cities and parks are likely to be quite accessible by public transport. In April, it should be good for migrants, which will make it more interesting. A lot passes through eastern China. Ebird is somewhat widely used in China, so it may be worth checking for sites and records there. I've been birding on my own at the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing and it's a good area that's easy to reach by metro. The Ebird bar charts give a good idea of what you might find there:

https://ebird.org/barchart?r=L7516823&yr=all&m=

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

Not sure where in Shanghai you'll be, but I've birded in a couple parks. My usual go to was Century Park on the PuDong side because it was near our usual hotel. If I had more time I'd go to Gongqing Forest Park, but it takes more effort to get to.

In Beijing, I agree that Olympic Forest Park is good. The Botanical Garden in Beijing is also good, especially if you go up the mountain at the far end of the park.

Just a warning - any park in China is going to be packed on a weekend.

 

[Tom Tarrant]

It should be fairly easy to do casual birding in cities and parks are likely to be quite accessible by public transport. In April, it should be good for migrants, which will make it more interesting. A lot passes through eastern China. Ebird is somewhat widely used in China, so it may be worth checking for sites and records there. I've been birding on my own at the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing and it's a good area that's easy to reach by metro. The Ebird bar charts give a good idea of what you might find there:

https://ebird.org/barchart?r=L7516823&yr=all&m=

Just a quick note of caution, when I was there last (2016) eBird was difficult to use properly as there was no access to Google services especially G.Maps and Gmail, I missed a return flight from Chengdu to Singapore as it was cancelled and didn't receive the warning-alert message on my Gmail account. Spent all night trying to get another-flight back to Oz.