China: The South in Winter
-
Jan 10-25, 2027
Paul Holt and Wang Qingyu
Tour Price to be Determined
Tour Price to be Determined
Understandably given its huge size, China has a massive variety of habitats and an equally varied and fascinating avifauna. We’ve been offering tours to China for more than two decades and this recently revised tour is a major overhaul of a WINGS favorite – our winter waterbird spectacular. We still visit Poyang Hu National Nature Reserve, an outstanding site with its fabulously evocative cranes of four, occasionally five, species including the mythical Siberian and White-naped. The supporting cast has included a world-class list of waterbirds and we expect to see thousands of Swan Geese, hundreds of Falcated Duck and at least a few Baikal Teal, while nearby we stand a good chance of encountering reasonable numbers of Scaly-sided Merganser at the world’s most reliable wintering site. Other specialties should include huge parties of Oriental Stork, the spectacular Mandarin Duck and the diminutive Pied Falconet. We even have a chance of seeing the rare Baer’s Pochard, and perhaps even a Japanese Waxwing or with luck a wintering Swinhoe’s Crake!
Our radically revamped itinerary now includes visits to two sites on tropical Hainan Island, Nonggang Nature Reserve in Guangxi, and some birding in Beijing, China’s historic capital and political center. We’ll spend several days on Hainan Island, where we’ll target the islands endemics – Hainan Leaf Warbler, Hainan Partridge and Hainan Peacock-pheasant. Other species in the rich tropical forests include Large Scimitar and Spot-necked Babblers, Eyebrowed Wren-Babbler and both Rufous-cheeked Laughingthrush and the monachus form of Black-throated Laughingthrush. Further north on the island we have a very good chance of seeing the critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper at one of its most accessible regular wintering sites. That area also hosts a fascinating selection of night birds including Bay and Eastern Barn Owls. Leaving Hainan, we’ll visit Nonggang reserve in Guangxi, a site that shot to ornithological fame early this century with the discovery of the aptly named Nonggang Babbler. Comprehensive surveys have shown it to be rare, but it’s relatively easy to see at the photographic blinds that enterprising locals have built. After Poyang Hu and a couple of neighboring sites we’ll return to Beijing where we’ll search for species such as Siberian Accentor, Pallas’s, Chinese Beautiful and Chinese Long-tailed Rosefinches and Güldenstädt’s Redstart.
China has come a long way in the past few decades. Besides hosting an increasing number of comfortable hotels, this fascinating country now boasts a truly impressive transport infrastructure, which we’ll make good use of on this unusual tour.
Day 1: The tour begins this evening in Beijing. Night in a hotel near Beijing Capital International airport.
Day 2: We’ll fly south to Sanya at the southern tip of tropical Hainan Island. Well known for its gorgeous beaches and as a winter tourist destination for mainland Chinese, the area's been developing at break-neck speed in recent years, but fortunately for birders, sites not too far away still hold some impressive forests and a rich array of highly sought-after species. We’ll visit the very best of these, Jianfengling, where a National Nature Reserve protects an extensive area of upland native forest. A comfortable resort and forest boardwalk give us ideal access and we’ll spend three nights and two full days here searching for our target species, including three island endemics - Hainan Leaf Warbler, the elusive island Hainan Partridge and extremely elusive Hainan Peacock-pheasant. The warbler is common and relatively easy to find, while a couple of photographic blinds here have hugely improved the chances of connecting with the two shy gamebirds. Night at Jianfengling.
Days 3-4: We’ll spend two full days at Jianfengling, ample time to look for other specialties in the rich forest. These include a variety of nightbirds such as Mountain and Collared Scops Owls as well as the impressive Brown Wood Owl. Both Red-headed Trogon and the grouchy sounding Blue-bearded Bee-eater are regular and rather vocal, but the demure Silver-breasted Broadbill far less so. Other vociferous species should include Sultan Tit, Clicking Shrike-babbler, Streak-breasted and Large Scimitar Babblers, Spot-necked Babbler, Eyebrowed Wren-Babbler and both Rufous-cheeked and the monachus form of Black-throated Laughingthrushes. The diminutive Yellow-billed Nuthatch, a species whose disjunct range is otherwise restricted to a handful of mountains in Vietnam and south-eastern Laos, is often fairly common close to our guest house as is White-crowned Forktail. Hainan is the winter home to variety of mostly skulking thrushes that could include Orange-headed, Japanese and Eyebrowed, as well as flycatchers including Hainan Blue, Pale Blue and Mugimaki. Nights in Jianfengling.
Day 5: After a final morning we’ll leave Jianfengling and drive north, about halfway towards Haikou, the provincial capital. Danzhou Bay on the island’s west coast has recently been found to hold a tiny number of wintering Spoon-billed Sandpiper, one of the world’s rarest and most enigmatic waders. The coastal mudflats, just a short distance from our hotel, are now arguably the best site in the whole of China, and one of the most accessible and reliable on the planet for the species. The extensive areas of heavily corrugated, sandy mud flats exposed at low tide appear to be irresistible to "Spooners" and as many as a dozen have been found here in recent winters. With the first individuals of this superbly distinctive species probably arriving in mid-September, and a few remaining into early May, our tour is perfectly timed to coincide with the period when this diminutive shorebird is at its most dependable. Night in the Danzhou Bay area.
Day 6: Large numbers of other shorebirds, hopefully including the very localized White-faced Plover, recently split from Kentish Plover, and east Asian specialties such as Greater and both Siberian and Tibetan Sand Plovers, Great Knot, Broad-billed Sandpiper and Red-necked Stint. Other target species include King (or Blue-breasted) Quail and an impressive array of poorly known owls - Eastern Barn, Eastern Grass and Oriental Bay. Night in the Danzhou Bay area.
Day 7: After a final morning in the Danzhou Bay area we’ll continue north on to Haikou before flying a short distance north to Nanning in southern China’s Guangxi Province. From there we’ll drive east to Longzhou and on to Nonggang. Night there.
Day 8: Nonggang Babbler, a species only discovered at the start of the current century, will be our primary target in Guangxi. It’s rare, with a world population recently estimated at less than 1300 individuals, but luckily for us it’s locally common and easy to see in its namesake nature reserve. We’ll be in an area that’s rather remote, very close to the Vietnamese border and surrounded by spectacular limestone karst scenery, just as dramatic as that around the world-renowned Guilin. Here lush forests cling to seemingly impossibly steep massifs that rise abruptly from the flat and intensively cultivated valley floor. Enterprising locals have established a series of photographic bird blinds that have proved hugely attractive to both birds and local bird photographers, and it’s in these bird blinds that we’ll spend much of our time. Regular visitors include Blue-rumped Pitta, Indochinese Green and White-winged Magpies, Black-throated Laughingthrush (here of the nominate chinensis form), and Hainan Blue Flycatcher. Night in Longzhou.
Day 9: Depending on the flight schedule we'll expect to spend most of a second day in the Nonggang Nature Reserve searching for species we might have missed such as Chinese Barbet, White-browed Piculet, Long-tailed Broadbill, Black-crested Bulbul, Limestone Leaf Warbler, Buff-breasted Babbler, Streaked Wren-Babbler and David’s Fulvetta. In the afternoon we’ll drive back to Nanning and fly north to Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province. Night at Yugan near Poyang Hu.
Days 10-11: Our hotel is very close to the world-renowned Poyang Hu and we’ll spend two full days exploring this fabulous reserve. Poyang Hu is subject to huge annual fluctuations in its water level: the lake covers up to 2,000 square miles during the summer rainy season, but water levels can fall by as much as 50 feet by the end of the winter, shrinking the lake to an area less than 10% of its summer maximum. The result is a mosaic of shallow residual lakes, and it’s the combination of these along the fairly mild winters that creates ideal conditions for tens, even hundreds of thousands of waterbirds.
One of the most important wetlands in the world, Poyang Hu holds the planet’s largest concentrations of several threatened or endangered species. The magnificent Siberian Crane is undoubtedly the reserve’s star attraction, with more than 95% of the world population (3,200 birds) wintering here along with even larger numbers of the equally majestic White-naped Crane. Hooded Crane is decidedly scarcer, but if the weather is good, we should be able to find one or two of them among the huge flocks. Thousands of Tundra Swan and Tundra Bean, Greater White-fronted, and Swan Geese spend their winter here, alongside hundreds of Oriental Stork and huge swirling flocks of Spotted Redshank and Pied Avocet. Other, less conspicuous species include Marsh Grassbird and Baikal Teal. With a great deal of luck, we might even find a Swinhoe’s Crake. Night again near Yugan.
Day 12: After a final few hours around Poyang Hu we’ll then drive east to Wuyuan, a picturesque small town in the northeastern corner of the province, and home to several more target species including the tiny Pied Falconet, Mandarin Duck and Red-billed Starling. Night in Wuyuan.
Day 13: We’ll spend the day around Wuyuan, searching for the area’s other specialties with the rare Scaly-sided Merganser one of our main aims. Up to sixty birds have been counted wintering here in recent years, and we’re likely to find a few parties of this attractive “sawbill”. Other species along this stretch of river could include Long-billed Plover and Black-collared Starling, while elsewhere around Wuyuan we’ll look for Yellow-browed Bunting, that magnificent songster the Chinese Hwamei, and, with luck, Japanese Waxwing. Other species that we'll search for include Chinese Bamboo Partridge, Grey-sided and Streak-breasted Scimitar Babblers, Gray-chinned Minivet, and with luck, a Spotted Elachura or Short-tailed Parrotbill, along with any species we might have missed the day before. Night again in Wuyuan.
Day 14: We’ll leave Yongxiu early and drive back to Nanchang airport for our flight back to Beijing. Night near Beijing Capital International Airport.
Day 15: We’ll depart early on our drive into the mountains west of the Chinese capital. Being significantly further north, Beijing boasts a very different avifauna to those at our previous sites. Our destination holds extensive stands of berry-laden Sea Buckthorn that frequently attract large numbers of thrushes, predominantly Red-throated, Dusky and Naumann’s, as well as the gorgeous Güldenstädt’s Redstart and Chinese Beautiful, Pallas’s and the recently split Chinese Long-tailed Rosefinches as well as both Bohemian and, if we’re lucky, Japanese Waxwings. Red-billed Chough, Plain Laughingthrush, Beijing Babbler, and both Godlewski’s and Meadow Buntings are usually common while other species could include Cinereous Vulture, Spotted Nutcracker and perhaps even a Northern Shrike.
Leaving in the early afternoon we’ll make a couple of stops in the lowlands as we head back to the bustling metropolis, including a visit to a wetland on the city’s western flank where we hope to find a party of Daurian Jackdaw, the near-endemic Chinese Grey Shrike, Reed Parrotbill and/or Bearded Reedling. Night in Beijing.
Day 16: The tour ends this morning at Beijing Capital International Airport.
Note: The information presented below has been extracted from our formal General Information for this tour. It covers topics we feel potential registrants may wish to consider before booking space. The complete General Information for this tour will be sent to all tour registrants and of course supplemental information, if needed, is available from the WINGS office.
ENTERING CHINA: United States citizens will need a passport valid for at least six months from date of departure and with at least two blank pages for entry and exit stamps. A tourist visa is also required to enter China.
Citizens of other countries may need a visa and should check their nearest Chinese embassy. If required by the embassy or visa-granting entity, WINGS can provide a letter for you to use regarding your participation in the tour.
COUNTRY INFORMATION: You can review the U.S. Department of State Country Specific Travel Information at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/China.html
Review foreign travel advice from the UK government here: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice and travel advice and advisories from the Government of Canada here: https://travel.gc.ca/travelling/advisories.
PACE OF TOUR AND DAILY ROUTINE: This is not a particularly strenuous tour. There is a reasonable amount of travelling between one site and the next and a couple of the days are long and tiring. However, at this time of year the days are fairly short (the sun rises on average at about 07h00 and sets at about 17h15) and consequently the time we can spend in the field is fairly limited. Even so on a number of days we will leave our accommodation early, possibly shortly after 05h00, about 1.5 hours or so before we can see, and most days we will have picnic breakfasts in the field. It’s likely that we will also have a large number of picnic lunches in the field throughout the tour, but we will return to our accommodation for all of our evening meals.
At Jianfengling NNR on Hainan, we will rarely be more than two kilometres from our accommodation and most mornings we expect to have a picnic breakfast before we head out to walk on the circular boardwalk that starts and finishes beside our guest house. We expect that 2.5 km walk to take all morning and we will return in the late morning. We will usually have a sit-down lunch and head out again mid-afternoon returning for dinner. During our time in the Danzhou Bay area and at Nonggang Reserve in Guangxi we also expect to have a picnic breakfast near the day’s first birding site and we are very likely to also have picnic lunches in those same two areas. At several of the sites we will visit around Wuyuan and at Poyang Hu National Nature Reserve (NNR) we will typically leave the hotel for a full-day’s birding sometime between 05h30 and 06h15 and will take a picnic breakfast with us.
The birding site in the mountains to the west of Beijing is about a three-hour drive from our hotel and we expect to leave early, possibly as early as 05h30 in order to be on site shortly after sunrise. We will have a picnic breakfast and a picnic lunch on site.
We try to make as many of our birding excursions as possible optional, so that if you find the pace too tiring it is possible to take some time off and relax. Essentially, we aim to provide dawn to dusk birding for those who want it and as many opportunities as possible to opt out for those who wish to pursue other interests or simply relax.
HEALTH: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all travelers be up to date on routine vaccinations. These include measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, varicella (chickenpox) vaccine, polio vaccine, and your yearly flu shot.
They further recommend that most travelers have protection against Hepatitis A and Typhoid.
Please contact your doctor well in advance of your tour’s departure as some medications must be initiated weeks before the period of possible exposure.
The most current information about travelers’ health recommendations can be found on the CDC’s Travel Health website at https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/traveler/none/china
Altitude: The majority of the tour will be spent at altitudes of less than 250 metres or 820 but at Jianfengling National Nature reserve on Hainan island we are likely to spend most of our time between 900-1100 metres or 2950-3600 feet. In Beijing we will drive up to about 1600 metres or 5250 feet. We will be doing quite a lot of walking, perhaps especially at Jianfengling and at Poyang Hu, and some of this might be on flagged steps or through reasonably long grass that can be a little tiring. This said such ‘grassland walks’ will be short and none of our walks will be particularly strenuous.
Miscellaneous: Very few biting insects are active in South China in winter, but there still may be isolated concentrations of day-flying mosquitoes at one or two sites. We recommend that you bring an insect repellent and, if you are sensitive to bites, an antihistamine.
Tap water is not safe to drink anywhere in China. Bottled water and soft drinks are widely available and your room will normally be supplied either with a large thermos flask of boiled water or a kettle with which you can make tea or coffee. We provide bottled water in the vehicle during the day.
Smoking: Smoking is not allowed in the vehicle, nor at meal times or when the group is gathered together for the checklist. If you are sharing a room with a non-smoker, please don’t smoke in the room. If you smoke in the field, please stand down wind of the group. If any lodge, accommodation or location where the group is staying or is gathered has a more restrictive smoking policy than WINGS’ policy, the more restrictive policy will prevail.
Note: None of the hotels that we’ll use have designated non-smoking rooms so the rooms we use might have been previously occupied by a smoker. While the bed linen will certainly be clean, cigarette odors in the bed rooms are fairly common.
CLIMATE: The weather on this tour will vary enormously. South China is typically quite sunny and dry from October through to the end of January. It is likely to be significantly warmer at the sites that we will visit on Hainan and in Guizhou. Temperatures at Sanya in southern Hainan are likely to range from about 18 - 26°C (64 - 79°F) while in the forest slightly further north at Jianfengling (where we’re likely to spend most of our time between 900-1100 metres or 2950 – 3600 feet) they’re likely to be slightly less than this – perhaps ranging from about 10-26°C (50 - 79°F). It will be humid here and at Nonggang in Guizhou. Our rooms at Jiangfengling do not have heating and can feel cold but all the beds have an electric blanket and thick duvet. We will be in the forest most of the time while at Jianfengling but the same will not be true at our next destination, the Danzhou Bay area in northern Hainan. There’s far less shade at several of the sites that we’ll visit in that area. January temperatures there and in Haikou range from 15 - 23°C (59 - 73°F). At Nanning January temperatures typically range between 10 - 17°C (50 - 63°F) and those at Nonggang will be essentially the same. Since this is a winter trip, temperatures at Poyang Hu are likely to be cold, especially at night. Early morning temperatures during our time there and near Wuyuan will normally be around 4-5°C (39 - 41°F) rising to a maximum of about 12-13°C (54 - 56°F) midday, but possibly as high as 16-17°C (61 - 63°F). However, even in those area it can be colder than this, perhaps especially in the hills near Wuyuan and we should be prepared for early morning temperatures to occasionally drop to perhaps 5-7°C below freezing (19 - 23°F). It is important to remember that it can feel much colder if the wind is blowing. In southern China in winter the humidity can be quite high and unfortunately there is a reasonable chance of early morning fog at Poyang Hu. There is also a reasonable chance of rain at some time during the tour and again this is perhaps most likely around Poyang Hu.
Beijing will easily be the coldest place that we will visit. Temperatures in the city range from about 0 - 14°C (0 - 32°F) during January but it is likely to be significantly colder than that in the mountains. On that day we will drive up to about 1600 metres or 5250 feet where early morning temperatures could be a low as minus 15°C (5°F). Even midday temperatures are unlikely to climb much above a frigid minus 7°C (19°F). If it is not windy multiple layers of clothing, including a jacket to keep out any breeze, a warm hat and thick gloves, will suffice. Wind chill can significantly affect our perception of the temperatures. In Beijing we will never be very far from our vehicle and will have regular access to hot drinks.
ACCOMMODATION: Varied. We will spend the first night of the tour in a clean and comfortable hotel very close to Beijing Capital International Airport. Ranked as an international 4-star hotel, the rooms are clean, warm and comfortable. The hotel has several restaurants, a bar and spacious lobby lounge. It also offers room service, an express laundry service and most amenities that you’d expect from a hotel of an international 4-star ranking. We will spend two more nights at this same hotel at the end of the tour. We spend the next three nights of the tour in a decent guest house at Jianfengling on Hainan. This guest house is very close to the birding and the boardwalk where we will spend most of our time starts right beside it. All the rooms are clean, and all have en suite bathrooms with western toilets and showers. We will also have our evening meals in the hotel’s restaurant. Moving on from Jiangfengling our next stop will be near Danzhou Bay in north-western Hainan. The hotel there is better. A new hotel, it’s a Chinese 4-star standard (roughly equivalent to a 3-star establishment in the west). We will spend two nights in that hotel and expect to have both of our evening meals there. Moving on again we will spend the next two nights in a hotel near Nonggang Reserve near Longzhou in Guangxi. The guest house there is older, and about a 2-star equivalent. Once again, all the rooms have on suite facilities including a western toilet and shower, and once again the rooms are clean and warm. Leaving Longzhou we will spend three nights in a comfortable small hotel near Poyang Hu National Nature Reserve. Recently refurbished, it is of a good standard and the best in the area. All the rooms are clean and warm and each has a television and en suite facilities including a shower and western toilet. We will eat in a restaurant beside the hotel. After that we will spend the following night in a comfortable four-star hotel in Wuyuan. We will also have our evening meals in the hotel’s restaurant.
Internet and Mobile Phone Access: As you would expect an ever-increasing number of hotels that we use have internet access and WIFI is available in the rooms of our hotels in Beijing, Danzhou Bay on Hainan, in Nonggang, near Poyang Hu and in Wuyuan. It is also available at most of the domestic airports that we will visit. There is currently no WIFI at the guest house where we spend three nights at Jianfengling, Hainan. Participants should be aware, however, that internet access is occasionally suspended in China – perhaps because of floods, landslides, or political issues. Please note that a modest number of western websites, such as Facebook, YouTube, Dropbox, the Google search engine, and Gmail accounts are actively blocked by the Chinese government. Mobile phone coverage is superb over most of China and, while not all foreign mobile operators have agreements with the Chinese carriers, many do. You are advised to contact your mobile phone provider in advance of the trip to confirm this. Mobile phones can be useful while on tour but keep in mind that many countries operate on a different cellular technology. Your phone may be incompatible with the local system, so please check with your local carrier. Fortunately, with the advent of smartphones, it is easy to download applications such as Skype or Google Voice, which can make calling home free or very inexpensive. Note however that most of these are also actively blocked by the Great Firewall. Another option is to replace the data (“SIM”) card in your phone in-country. The SIM cards, including data can be very cheap. If you wish to use this option, you will need to check that your smart phone has a SIM card slot.
FOOD: Western food will only be available in our hotel in Beijing. In the more remote areas, we will of course be eating Chinese food, which on the evidence of past visits is often excellent and generously supplied. Green tea and soft drinks, mineral water or beer are served with the main meals. Chinese breakfasts are typically unpopular with Western tourists, and we will usually have picnic breakfasts provided by our ground agent. In these past, these have consisted of items such as western cereals, milk, fruit (often bananas, oranges, and apples), yoghurt, chocolate bars such as Snickers, sachets of instant coffee (normally with milk and sugar already included since ‘untainted’ coffee is less widely available), tea, rice crackers and biscuits. We also expect to be having quite a number of picnic lunches and these are often eaten out in the field. These lunches consist of many of these same items often supplemented by boiled eggs, instant noodles, peanuts, and sometimes boiled potatoes. On a few occasions (where fresh bread is available) we will also have jam, peanut butter, cheese and/or ham sandwiches. Both instant coffee (with sugar) and English-style tea are now quite widely available in China but nevertheless, you might like to bring tea bags, instant coffee (without sugar) and powdered milk. These last two items are also useful for converting congee, a watery rice gruel often served at sit-down Chinese breakfasts, into rice pudding. You might also consider bringing Muesli bars, Mars bars, packets of soup, instant noodles etc. Our ground agent will provide a number of large thermos flasks that will be useful for making hot drinks and noodles for our days in the field. We expect to have a sit-down breakfast on only a couple of occasions – in the hotels that we will use near Nanning airport and in our Beijing airport hotel on the very first and last mornings of the tour.
The Chinese way of eating food differs from the western way. A selection of different dishes is shared by those sitting at the same table and chopsticks are used. Food is almost always plentiful. Outside of Beijing very few, if any, restaurants will provide knives and forks. Instead chopsticks, sometimes even disposable wooden ones, are used. If you are not used to eating with chopsticks, we suggest you start practicing right away, or bring your own cutlery.
WINGS tours are all-inclusive, and no refunds can be issued for any tour meals participants choose to miss. While we will try to do what we can to accommodate the requirements of all participants, please note that we cannot guarantee all causes of food allergies can be avoided at every destination. Many restaurants offer set menus and are unable to accommodate all special requests within a group. Thus, participants with significant food allergies or special dietary needs should bring appropriate foods with them for those times when their needs can, regretfully, not be accommodated. Our tours are carefully scheduled to ensure the best possible birding experience and although the leaders will do all they can to make sure the group eats at a reasonable time, sometimes early or late lunches and/or evening meals cannot be avoided. Any participants who need to eat at specific times may need to bring supplemental food with them.
Drinks: Bottled water and/or a soft drink or a beer is provided at lunch and dinner, as is coffee or tea. All other drinks or ”personal” drinking water for use in your room, etc., are the responsibility of the individual. Bottled water will be provided during the day in our tour vehicles.
TRANSPORTATION: Transportation is mostly by a variety of small buses. Some of the minibus rides may last for up to five hours, but we will, of course, make regular stops along the way to stretch and to bird watch. While most road journeys will be made along paved or hard surfaced roads, in some areas the roads will be rougher. This is especially true of some of the minor roads at Poyang Hu and around Wuyuan. The leader will arrange a seating rotation. Participants should be able to ride in any seat in tour vehicles.
We will also have four internal flights. The flights that we will be taking on Chinese airlines are of an international standard. Note however that the security requirements for domestic flights in China differ from what we are used to in the west, for instance, batteries of any kind CANNOT go in checked luggage and ALL BATTERIES need to be taken in your carry-on luggage. Passengers are allowed to carry to lithium ion power banks in their carry-on luggage but each such battery must have a watt-hour rating not exceeding 100 Wh. Such batteries must be kept switched off throughout the entire flight meaning that mobile phones etc. cannot be charged during the flight.
2026 Narrative
Just a few years ago there would have been absolutely no way that the near mythical Hainan Peacock-pheasant would have won the end of trip ‘Bird of the Tour’ poll. We simply wouldn’t have seen one! Had we been lucky we might have heard a bird purring off in the distance but the chances of actually seeing one were vanishingly small. Attesting to that after four previous visits and a total of more than two weeks in the right area Paul had glimpsed two - but for a total of probably less than a second! Hainan island’s endemic partridge was almost as tough to see. Decades of persecution had made these birds vanishingly rare while those that remained were extraordinarily shy. Fortunately for us, and the birds themselves, the recent advent of the Jianfengling bird blinds had changed all of that. The local farmers and guest house owners could now make money by protecting these birds and their habitat, they’d invested in bird blinds and actively protected the forest and its wildlife. Consequently we’d see the peacock-pheasant on both of our full days there in January 2026 having superb, prolonged looks at three different males and a female. Surprisingly Hainan Partridge was actually more of a challenge this year than the peacock-pheasant but our perseverance eventually paid off – and we saw that species spectacularly well, too. What a stunning creature it is! Other goodies in the Jianfengling rainforest included the island’s third endemic, Hainan Leaf Warbler; remarkable numbers of, often aggressive but still magnificent, Silver Pheasants; a pair of demure Red-headed Trogons; several of the island endemic faber subspecies of Chinese Barbet; stunning looks at a Blue-rumped Pitta; umpteen Indochinese Green Magpies, Sultan Tits, Rufous-cheeked, monachus Black-faced and both Lesser and Greater Necklaced Laughingthrushes; great looks at several Yellow-billed Nuthatches, Large Scimitar Babbler, Hainan Blue Flycatcher, Rufous-tailed Robin and a very inquisitive Eye-browed Wren Babbler. Jianfengling was a beautiful place, too and we’d been blessed to have been able to stay in a comfortable lodge in the heart of the forest.
Moving on from Jianfengling we drove a couple of hours north up to Danzhou, a very different site on Hainan island’s west coast. Initially we concentrated on finding a few specific shorebirds and, with help from a skilled local guide, it didn’t take very long to locate our primary target - the near mythical Spoon-billed Sandpiper. The tragically (and terminally?) declining Spooner, as the species has affectionately become known, is now one of the world’s rarest birds with recent estimates putting their number at somewhere between 330 – 340 individuals – an embarrassingly tiny total in anyone’s book. The bird we saw was close, and was soon joined by a second bird – both of which were busily scurrying back and forth, frantically feeding in one of the many beach pools exposed at low tide. We watched our quarry intently for about 30 minutes before moving on to find other species. We’d see both Spooners again in that very same area the following day. Other goodies on the Danzhou mudflats included White-faced Plover, all three species of sand plover, up to 18 Broad-billed and four Terek Sandpipers, 73 Red-necked Stints and three Ruff. We eventually found a Nordmann’s Greenshank which remained disappointingly distant but a couple of immature Saunders’s Gulls offered some compensation. Fabulous looks at an Oriental Bay Owl was the undoubted highlight of the evening excursion.
Some paddy fields close to our hotel yielded a few more shorebirds, chief among them two Long-toed Stints, as well as up to four Black-faced Spoonbills; a Peregrine Falcon; three species of kingfisher; two obliging Oriental Skylarks; Oriental Reed, Dusky and an elusive Lanceolated Warbler; several Bluethroats, Red-throated and Richards Pipits, lots of wagtails, a couple of Chestnut-eared Buntings and an uncooperative Siberian Rubythroat. Our skilled local guide took us back out night birding on our second evening near Danzhou – and wasted no time in showing us a King Quail, a Grass Owl and an Eastern Barn Owl! Brilliant!
We’d spent just about enough time on Hainan Island to connect with most of our target species but flight schedule changes meant that the same couldn’t be said of our third destination, Nonggang, close to the Vietnam border in eastern Guizhou province. We were definitely under time pressure here but, after an intense morning of searching, a couple of hard-working local guides eventually found us our primary target – the recently described Nonggang Babbler. Again we saw it, and the area’s White-spectacled and Limestone Leaf Warblers, well. Spending the afternoon in a bird blind yielded four White-winged Magpies, two Buff-breasted Babblers, five Black-breasted and an elusive Japanese Thrush. Most of us overlooked the latter. It wasn’t all plain sailing however – we heard three Streaked Wren-babblers and three Grey-throated Babblers, a Bar-backed Partridge, a dozen Pin-striped Tit-babblers and a very close Blue-rumped Pitta but didn’t see any of them. We simply ran out of time…
We spent more time at our next destination – the fabulous Poyang Hu National Nature Reserve along the central portion of the mighty Yangtze River in Jiangxi province. Tens of thousands of waterbirds, including the vast majority of the world’s Swan Geese and Siberian Cranes, spend the winter around this huge water body and, despite being hampered by strong winds, snow and hail on our first day we’d find most of our targets with one Bar-headed, up to 10 Lesser White-fronted and two Taiga Bean Geese among the thousands of Greylag, Swan and Tundra Bean we encountered. Looking at and searching through the thousands of Tundra Swans, Northern Shovelers, Falcated Ducks, Eurasian Wigeon and Eurasian Teal for scarcer waterfowl kept us busy and we’d eventually find three Baikal Teal, up to five Smew, seven Ferruginous Ducks and a fabulous male Baer’s Pochard, the latter arguably Asia’s most rapidly declining duck. We visited Baihezhou (literally ‘White Crane Bay’) twice and were treated to spectacular, in-our-face, looks at up to 860 majestic Siberian Cranes on both occasions! A slight dampener was the fact that our views of this, the site’s flagship species, revealed woefully small numbers of young birds – with just 4.7% of the 847 birds that we aged on the 20 January being second calendar years with even fewer (just 3.4% of the 746 aged) the following day.
Other highlights around Poyang Hu included several Brown Crakes, up to 14 White-naped and 80 Common Cranes, thousands of Great Cormorants, up to 99 Oriental Storks and another Black-faced Spoonbill, a rarity here, among a small flock of Eurasian. Songbird highlights included our first enchanting, inquisitive flock of Black-throated Bushtits, five species of pipit including up to 80 Siberian, a flock of over 200 Brambling, over 40 handsome Chinese Grosbeaks and several species of cooperative buntings.
Despite the initially inclement weather we’d had a great time at Poyang Hu and had managed to avoid the fog that can plague the area so after two full days (and three nights in our comfortable guest house) we left Poyang Hu and headed east. We arrived at our next destination, Wuyuan, a picturesque backwater still in central China’s Jiangxi province, before midday. The habitat changed from open grassland and lakes to areas of cultivation, dense woodland and rolling hills and consequently our day total, with 103, marked our highest species tally of the entire tour. We dove straight into our primary targets as soon as we arrived rapidly finding a flock of 35 exquisite Mandarin Ducks and six fabulous Scaly-sided Mergansers at our first spot. That same site yielded our only Crested Kingfisher and Grey-sided Scimitar Babblers of the tour plus some spectacular looks at a flock of gorgeous Collared Finchbills as well as both Chestnut and Mountain Bulbuls.
Day two around enchanting Wuyuan started at the exotically named ‘Longteng Ecological Birdwatching site’ where we encountered our first Eurasian Jays, Swinhoe’s White-eyes and Rufous-capped Babblers but it was our second site, the historic village of Chaguan, that produced the highlight - a pair of hole nesting, diminutive Pied Falconets. We’d been told what time they would appear from their hole and they did exactly that, right on the button. And they performed superbly! Also here a Little Forktail showed for a lucky few, while we all connected with the first of the day’s five Brown Dippers and heard our only Chinese Hwameis of the tour. Oh, and then there was the Water Buffalo Bridge...Moving on from Chaguan we eventually found a solitary Long-billed Plover and a short distance further on were blessed with a spectacular performance from a patrolling Black Eagle.
Another timetable change for our fourth and final domestic flight actually worked in our favour and delivered us back to Beijing earlier than anticipated, enabling us to visit a park in the centre of this massive city. Here among the thousands of tourists, many bedecked in traditional Chinese costumes, we found the wintering flock of waxwings. It contained several Bohemian and slightly more Japanese Waxwings and, after a day of travelling, was well appreciated.
We went to Lingshan, Beijing’s highest peak, to the west of the city on our last full day but the birding was a little slow and while we connected with Willow and Coal Tits, Plain Laughingthrushes, Beijing Babblers and Silver-throated Bushtits only a few of us saw the male Chinese Long-tailed Rosefinch and even fewer the fly-over Pallas’s Rosefinches. Still, we had nice views of a couple of Cinereous Vultures and stumbled across two male Eurasian Chaffinches, a local rarity, on our way off the mountain. Our last stop of the day was a brief one at a wetland back on the edge of the city. Reed Parrotbill graces the spine of John Mackinnon’s Field Guide to the Birds of China and is arguably the most attractive parrotbill on the planet and, luckily for us, they were close and performed brilliantly.
I wrote after a previous China tour ‘How many of us knew, in advance of our trip, quite what to expect in modern day China and how many of us went home with altered opinions as to where the Middle Kingdom’s heading? Now more than ever China’s a land of incredible contrasts and accelerating social change, a land of considerable personal wealth juxtaposed with near grinding poverty, a land of thriving elitism, rampant ambition, and a populace with an enviable work ethic. Right now’s the time to visit China and we were privileged indeed to see some of the more impressive parts of it’. In these days of a major global economic downturn and renewed rivalries all this still holds true…
Numerous people view the WINGS South China in Winter tour as a waterbird special and in many ways it is – the spectacle of tens of thousands of geese, swans and ducks at Poyang Hu must be one of Asia’s premier avian attractions. But the tour’s much, much more than just a waterbird special. And while the final bird list was short of 300 species and isn’t huge this tour boasts an impressive array of specialty species that included all three Hainan endemics, a fabulous variety of shorebirds including Spoon-billed Sandpiper and Nordmann’s Greenshank, some spectacular nightbirds, plus Scaly-sided Merganser, Pied Falconet, Japanese Waxwing and Siberian Accentor.
- Paul Holt
Maximum group size nine participants with two leaders. Both leaders will accompany the tour irrespective of group size.
More Tours with these Leaders
