Chongming County is the only county of Shanghai which has three islands. Chongming, ChangXing and Hengsha. Chongming island is the second largest island in Greater china, formed by the silt carried by the mighty Yangtze river.
Dongtan Nature Reserve is located at the southern end of the Island, which is my destination for a winter day’s birding. The main reason for visiting the reserve is for the wintering “Cranes”. New year’s Eve, no beer, no pizza’s but arrangements were made for a big day.
New year’s day. I met Mark at Wenshui road subway station and we took the bus from the Gonghexin central bus station to Chongming’s Chenjiazhen bus station. There is a bus for Chongming every 20mins with a 12 RMB fare. Mr. Yin (+86 13918467168) picked us up at the bus station and we headed towards the Nature reserve. Mr. Yin knows the whereabouts of the Crane, tide times. He also knows the route to the fish ponds (duck rich ponds) and the far eastern sea wall for waders. His fee varies from 200-400 RMB depends on the negotiation and he doesn’t speak English.
We entered the nature reserve from a dirt/muddy/water clogged road on the western side. We scanned the sea wall and there were few Black-faced Buntings along the dirt track. No signs of the cranes. We decided to move further towards the main area of the nature reserve to check the ducks and come back later.
In a short while, we located the “Hooded Cranes” and “Common Cranes” were feeding in an area where there is a landscaping going on for fish/shrimp ponds.
After some brief views of the mixed flock of the cranes we moved to the board walk n tourist attraction centre of the nature reserve. Black-crowned Night Heron and Grey herons gave a warm welcome for us into the board walk. A Great Bittern took a brief flight before landing again in the reed beds.
Mark was keen scoping in the wing-tagged Mongolian Gull “AJ 53”. Sadly, the fella was covered with oil slick. It was one of the 170 adult mongolian gulls tagged by Andreas Buchheim on 19/05/2012. Eurasian Wigeon, Northern Pintail, Northern Shoverlers were as usual far away from the board walk preeening, dabbling, romancing? 😉 The highlight of the board walk is 4 Black-Faced Spoonbills. Two of them preened each other added touche before we left the board walk.
We hit the Fish ponds looking for ducks. Majority of them were the Eastern Spot-billed Duck. Mark set-up his scope and was searching for some varieties among those group and immediately he figured out a lifer for me. First for the new year “Common Goldeneye“. An uncommon duck around Shanghai. Sooner, a flock of Common Pochards flew past the fish pond.
We left the fish pond and made our way back to the reserve for one final survey. 4 Spotted Redshanks were having a evening bath gave some terrific bathing poses. A Common Greenshank was also bathing close to the redshanks but it was shy to the photos. When we were reaching the end of the dirt road on the western side, i located 4 Common Mergansers in the stream adjacent to the dirt track. One more lifer to end the new year’s day.
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