Beidaihe and Happy Island are now widely accepted as being among the best places in the whole of Asia to witness eastern Palearctic migrants traveling to and from their breeding grounds in northern China and eastern Siberia. There are always birds to see and with the right conditions, falls of migrants can be truly spectacular. Even without a massive fall a “typical day” around Beidaihe produces thrushes, flycatchers, warblers, pipits and buntings in profusion.
Scanning the skies may reveal good numbers of raptors: Eastern Marsh Harrier can be common while an encounter with a magnificent male Pied Harrier is always something special. Oriental Honey-buzzards, Japanese Sparrowhawks and Amur Falcons also pass through in good numbers, as do those magnificent aerial masters, White-throated Needletails. Though we stay in only four different hotels throughout the entire trip, we can still expect to see over 240 species including such sought-after gems as Red-necked Stint, Saunders’s and Relict Gulls, Siberian Thrush, Siberian Rubythroat, the recently described Chinese Leaf-Warbler, Pechora Pipit and Pallas’s Bunting.
We’ll also spend two days on Old Peak, a wooded mountain north of Beidaihe where fabulous forests hold a number of species that we are unlikely to encounter on the coast such as Blunt-winged Warbler, Chinese Nuthatch, Gray-sided Thrush, Chinese Flycatcher and Chinese Leaf-Warbler. We’ll round off our Chinese adventure with sightseeing visits to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Whether you are interested in eastern vagrants or are looking for an introduction to birding in this incredibly bird-rich country, a tour to Beidaihe is guaranteed to please.
Day 1: The tour begins this evening in Beijing. Night in Beijing.
Day 2: We’ll visit Tiananmen Square, one of Beijing’s most famous landmarks, and the Forbidden City. Home to the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Forbidden City has the largest and best-preserved cluster of ancient buildings in the nation, and among the day’s birds are sure to be many Azure-winged Magpies. Night in Beijing.
Day 3: We’ll make an early start on our long drive east of Beijing to the seaside resort of Beidaihe, our base for the following five nights. On arrival we should have time for an initial exploration of at least a couple of Beidaihe’s migration hotspots. Unlike midsummer, when Beidaihe is thronged with Chinese escaping the oppressive heat of Beijing and Tianjin, the town will be largely devoid of tourists, save for the occasional foreign birdwatcher. Night in Beidaihe.
Days 4-7: Situated on the Gulf of Bohai at the northern end of the Yellow Sea and sandwiched between there and the mountains and deserts of northern Hebei and Chinese Mongolia, Beidaihe and nearby Happy Island are now the destinations for seeing Asian migrants that occur as vagrants in western Europe and North America. Throughout the spring the wooded gardens and gullies of the town, the rocky outcrops and estuaries along the coastline, and the low-lying wooded hills a little way inland act as magnets to thousands of birds migrating north.
The more common migrants during early May include Marsh and Terek Sandpipers, Red-necked Stint, Oriental Pratincole, Richard’s and Olive-backed Pipits, Eyebrowed Thrush, Radde’s, Dusky and Yellow-browed Warblers, Chinese Penduline Tit and both Little and Black-faced Buntings. Scarcer species that we should also see include Lesser and Greater Sand Plovers, Long-toed Stint, Pechora and Blyth’s Pipits, Siberian Rubythroat, Pallas’s and Pale-legged Leaf-Warblers, Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and Tristram’s, Chestnut, Yellow-browed and Yellow-breasted Buntings.
As with all migration watch points, the birding is strongly influenced by the weather. Even on quiet days there should be good numbers of migrants around, but it is the falls of grounded birds and the waves of passing migrants that make a visit to Beidaihe so memorable. In recent years we’ve had such remarkable daily counts as 18 Von Schrenck’s Bitterns, 26 Baillon’s Crakes, 150 Olive-backed and 70 Red-throated Pipits, 200 Brown Shrikes, 250 Siberian Blue Robins, 260 Chestnut-flanked White-eyes and 100 Yellow-browed, 35 Radde’s, 49 Lanceolated, 82 Black-browed Reed and 44 Thick-billed Warblers. Waves of passing birds have included 140 Pied Harriers, over 1000 Crested Honey-buzzards, 667 Pacific Golden-Plovers and 276 Little Whimbrels! This really is migration birding at its very best.
There is no set daily itinerary for our field trips; instead each day’s route will be designed to ensure the best birding, given tides, local weather conditions and recent sightings. We’ll cover all the main sites around Beidaihe as well as venture to other areas such as the Yanghe and Qilihai rivers to the south. Nights in Beidaihe.
Days 8-10: At the start of the second week we’ll begin a four-day stay at the appropriately named Happy Island. En route we’ll visit a couple of mainland sites, one of them recently named the “Magic Wood” by birders stunned at the incredible variety of birds it contained! Then we’ll take a 40-minute boat ride over to Happy Island itself. The island isn’t large, stretching just over four kilometers from one end to the other and just under half this at its widest point. However, its attraction to migrants and the recently improved accommodations make it a wonderful place to go birding. The surrounding sea is shallow and the intertidal mudflats are an internationally important staging post for migrating waders. Recent tours have produced over 45 species of waders including Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Asiatic Dowitcher, Great Knot and Little Whimbrel. We should see a few oversummering Relict Gulls, and Saunders’s Gull breeds nearby and is normally seen daily. When not scouring the mudflats, we’ll be searching for passerines, perhaps the premier attraction of Happy Island. Siberian Rubythroats, Rufous-tailed Robins, Two-barred Greenish and especially Yellow-browed Warblers can be common to abundant while past rarities have included the elusive Fairy Pitta. Nights at Happy Island.
Day 11: Leaving Happy Island around midday we’ll slowly head back to our original base at Beidaihe, where we’ll spend the following four nights.
Days 12-14: Things will have changed since we were last at Beidaihe. A new group of birds will have arrived and we’ll concentrate on searching for these later migrants. On one day we’ll visit the Great Wall north of Beidaihe, and besides walking on this magnificent structure we’ll search for species not found at Beidaihe such as Plain Laughingthrush, Yellow-streaked and White-browed Chinese Warblers and Vinous-throated Parrotbill. Nights in Beidaihe.
Day 15: We’ll leave Beidaihe early to drive to Old Peak, which at 1424 meters is the highest nearby mountain. We first explored the protected remnant forest here in the early 1990s. It was then (and still is) one of the very few patches of forest on the entire Chinese eastern seaboard! The lower, scrub-covered slopes hold small populations of Blunt-winged Warblers and Manchurian Bush-Warblers and we hope to see both before we head higher up. Our recent visits have also produced Koklass Pheasant, Large Hawk, Lesser, Indian and Oriental Cuckoos, the endemic Chinese Nuthatch and near-endemic Yellow-bellied Tit, Hair-crested Drongo, Chinese Song Thrush, White-bellied Redstart and the recently described Chinese Leaf-Warbler, as well as Blyth’s Leaf-Warbler and Yellow-throated Bunting. The mountain’s two top avian attractions are Gray-sided Thrush and Chinese (or Elisae’s) Flycatcher. Both are globally threatened and known to breed at only a handful of sites in northeastern China, with Old Peak being the best known. We’ll stay in a newly refurbished two-star hotel surrounded by woodland, right in the heart of the best forest and the best birding. Night at Old Peak.
Days 16-18: After another exciting birdsong-filled morning on Old Peak we’ll return to Beidaihe for three nights, pausing on the way to search for Long-billed Plover, Red-billed Chough and Eurasian Crag Martin. We can expect the mix of species at Beidaihe to have changed noticeably, and birds that are more likely now will include Chinese Egret, Von Schrenck’s Bittern, Baillon’s Crake, Gray-tailed Tattler, Oriental Reed, Thick-billed and Lanceolated Warblers and Dark-sided Flycatcher. Nights at Beidaihe.
Day 19: After a final few hours on the coast we’ll drive back to Beijing, stopping off at the magnificent Summer Palace. We’ll search these former royal gardens for Yellow Bittern, Ruddy-breasted Crake and Manchurian Reed and Pallas’s Grasshopper Warblers before heading to our hotel. Night in Beijing.
Day 20: The tour concludes this morning in Beijing.
Prices
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Notes
Maximum group size 12 with one leader. This tour is organized by our British company, Sunbird.