SE China Tour Report 2015

2nd - 15th May 2015

TOUR HIGHLIGHTS:
Either for rarity value, excellent views or simply a group favourite.

White-necklaced Partridge Chinese Bamboo Partridge Cabot’s Tragopan Silver Pheasant Elliot’s Pheasant Black-faced Spoonbill Chinese Egret Pied Harrier White-faced Plover Little Curlew Grey-tailed Tattler Spoon-billed Sandpiper Saunders’s Gull Chinese Crested Tern Northern Boobook White-throated Needletail Pied Falconet Blyth’s Shrike-Babbler Japanese Paradise-Flycatcher Japanese Waxwing Manchurian Bush Warbler Asian Stubtail Kloss’s Leaf Warbler White-spectacled Warbler Grey-crowned Warbler

Marsh Grassbird Grey-sided Scimitar-Babbler Dusky Fulvetta Huet’s Fulvetta Chinese Hwamei Courtois’s Laughingthrush Buffy Laughingthrush Short-tailed Parrotbill Grey-headed Parrotbill Reed Parrotbill Indochinese Yuhina Spotted Elachura Siberian Thrush Pale Thrush Blue-and-white Flycatcher Siberian Blue Robin Rufous-tailed Robin Siberian Rubythroat Yellow-rumped Flycatcher Narcissus Flycatcher Fork-tailed Sunbird Pechora Pipit Asian Buff-bellied Pipit Yellow-breasted Bunting Pallas’s Reed Bunting

SUMMARY:

SE China provides a wonderful all-round birding experience with some amazingly rare birds, stunning endemics and the exciting spectacle of Spring migration at some of Asia’s prime birding hot-spots. We began at the migrant meccas of Nanhui and Yangkou near Shanghai where Little Curlew, Japanese Paradise-Flycatcher, Asian Stubtail, Grey-crowned Warbler and a superb male Siberian Thrush were the highlights. We also found 5 Spoon-billed Sandpipers along the coast, along with 41 other species of shorebird. We then moved on to Wuyuan and a breeding colony of the very rare Courtois’s Laughingthrush, and we also found Short-tailed Parrotbill and Pied Falconet in the same region. The wonderfully scenic forested mountain of Emei Feng gave us several Cabot’s Tragopans and the shy Elliot’s Pheasant also showed well. A visit to the Minjiang Estuary produced one of the rarest birds on the planet, Chinese Crested Tern, and ended at Fuzhou Forest Park where White-necklaced Partridge was found. There were just so many quality birds seen on this tour and you just have to read the full tour report. This was definitely China birding at its best!

 

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