By Ken Sng
Ken Sng is an occasional birder based in Singapore. In recent years, he has included birding on his overseas travels. If you are visiting Singapore and need some tips on birding places, feel free to reach out.
I had the opportunity to visit Datong in Shanxi in late March with my wife and her friend from Shanghai. As I had a day to myself, I looked up the Internet for a place to do some birding not too far from Datong. I found the Sangganhe National Wetland Park and decided to hire a car to get there on Sunday, 29 Mar.
The drive from Datong city takes about an hour and is itself quite interesting as it will bring you through corn farms and farming villages. Scenes quite different than those you will find in Datong city.
Alas, the park was closed. The visitor centre was empty, and the lone chap we found there told us we couldn’t proceed beyond the barrier and that he had no idea when it would reopen.
This is a screenshot from Google Maps of the area I was in. For reference, the Wetland Park visitor centre is at the bottom of the map.
This is what the map of the park, displayed at the entrance, looks like.
No matter, the birds don’t respect park boundaries, I told myself. I asked the driver to proceed along the river in the direction of Cetian Reservoir. Before too long, I saw a cliff overlooking the river and could see a lot of gulls flying. I decided to try my luck there. This is area A on the map. A very breezy spot and still a bit cold (probably 10-12 °C) in the morning.
Turned out to be quite productive. I managed to spot and photograph the following :
Great-crested Grebe
Black-headed Gull – Not all of them have a full black head; some have just spots of black, maybe juveniles or non-breeding
Eurasian Coot and Herring Gull.
And as I headed back to the road for the car, I saw a hawk circling over the fields. Turned out to be a White-tailed Eagle. I was feeling lucky.
During the drive, I had spotted a road that was almost on the same level as the river, near a bridge with wetlands on both sides. I decided to head there. This is area B on the map.
I ended up spending the rest of the morning here; it was a very productive area. I saw
Bean Goose
Dalmatian Pelican
Gadwall
Ruddy Shelduck
Bearded Reedling, Eurasian Spoonbill, Great Cormorant, Grey Heron, Golden Eagle, Little Egret, and Little Grebe.
I am far from being an expert birder. My motto is “shoot first, ask later”. So, there was quite a bit of homework to be done back at the hotel. Thank goodness for Google Lens – I was able to identify most of the birds.
For those that I can’t identify, I have to seek the goodwill of the online birding community, which is what led me to Kai and the 10000birds.com site. If you find any errors in my identification, feel free to point them out.
This is my first time birding in China and my first visit in almost 30 years since my work trips back in the 1990’s. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe it is not quite birding season. But I surely enjoyed the solitude out in the wilds, especially after battling crowds at tourist spots for the previous few days!
I will surely be returning to China to do more birding and spend more time researching on 10000birds.com!
Ken, the bean geese you saw appear to be Taiga Bean Geese of the race middendorffi. The bean geese are a complex family of closely related birds, and middendorffi may possibly be a full species. According to AviList, more work is needed to determine whether species status is warranted.
Well done with your outing and photographs. Some interesting birds.
Finding parks closed for no apparent reason is becoming increasingly frustrating in China. What is worse is when they tell you “no foreigners allowed” again for no apparent reason! I’m sure Kai can relate to the frustrations of birding in certain areas of China.
Absolutely, Brian.
I still have this weird idea, only to be pursued if I were super rich (I mean, Elon Musk-level rich, not just having a few million here and there).
I would try to find a small unimportant museum, maybe in Germany. Maybe the (made up) “Museum of mining in Lower Saxony”. The museum would be very close to having to shut down for lack of funds and general public interest. I would then offer them a donation of ten million dollar or Euro – under one condition: They need to have a sign stating that access to the museum is prohibited for Chinese. (Disregarding the fact that no Chinese has ever visited the museum nor has any interest in doing so).
Next, I would somehow anonymously inform some stupid Chinese nationalist blogger about these “unjust and outrageous” restrictions to Chinese nationals. And wait for the shitstorm to break lose. Only to point out then that this is exactly what the Chinese government is frequently doing the same thing to foreigners here in China.
(The reasons why it needs to be an unimportant museum are two: one, they need to accept my condition for the donation. Two, the restriction should not actually hurt any Chinese individuals – this would be about making a statement, not about reciprocality)