I made a couple of quick trips out to the wetland near home in the last week. The first trip on Aug 4 didn't yield much of interest other than a number of
Chinese Pond Heron flying low. Eventually I figured out that they were trying to cox young out of the nests in the reeds and into the air with them. I saw a couple of fumbling short flights in response.
Yesterday's outing, August 8, found only one
C. Pond Heron, but several other families out on the small area where I can still find an only partially obscured view of the water. As many of the pictures I took show, I was trying to peek through reeds even then. It did give the advantage of giving me a natural blind affect.
It started off with a rather sad discovery of a pair of
Spot-Billed Duck still patrolling the area near where I had spotted a nest in previous outings. The sad part was that people have started dumping the rubble from apartment renovations into the area including right on top of their nest! Apparently their young got buried under the rubble. Most of that seems to be coming from the high end luxury (by Panjin standards) apartments in the compound where we live.
More encouragingly, I also found two other family groups of SBD still together, one group of nine and one of eight. One of the youngsters apparently hadn't practiced it's landings enough yet, as it came in and flared out it didn't lean back enough and flipped over going head first into the water.
I also found a pair of
Little Grebe families out on the water. Mom and Dad were in the general area, but leaving the youngsters mostly to themselves. Total of 10 LG.
I heard a couple of other
Moorhen complaining about my presence just below me as I stood on the bank but managed to get a few shots of one Moorhen and her two chicks before she noticed me and hustled them back into the reeds.
A single
Pond Heron soared over and I managed a decent shot despite the white bird against bright white clouds. I updated the Firmware on my Canon 7D MkII the night before and it seemed to help a little with the auto focus & exposure in the very challenging conditions.
Panjin, Dawa County, Liaoning, CN, Liaoning, CN
Aug 8, 2018 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Protocol: Traveling
0.5 kilometer(s)
9 species
Eastern Spot-billed Duck (Anas zonorhyncha) 19
Little Grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis) 10
Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) 1
Chinese Pond-Heron (Ardeola bacchus) 1
Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) 1
Eurasian Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) 8
Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 10
Oriental Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) 1
Daurian Starling (Agropsar sturninus) 7
View this checklist online at
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S47732978