Always Bring Binoculars

A Bearded Reedling at Yeyahu National Wetland Park

Birding Beijing, China and surrounding area

This blog is rarely a place for breaking birding news. My trip reports generally come weeks, if not months or years, after the outings they recount. This one here comes more than 5 years later. And it’s mostly an indulgence. I was recently looking at photos of the 2-week trip I took to Beijing, China in May 2017 and was delighted by the memories it brought back. It was a work trip, but I brought my son with me for what I hoped would be an amazing adventure. And it was. My son was, at 10, the perfect age to travel with – enthusiastic, curious, and independent.

While we were there for 2 weeks, I was teaching Monday-Friday, in the mornings, so there wasn’t as much time for birding as I would’ve liked. On top of that, getting to good birding spots was a real challenge. Beijing is a city of 21 million people, with roads and buildings as far as the eye can see. We didn’t have a car, and we didn’t speak or read Mandarin. In addition, we had a lot of cultural destinations, like Tiananmen Square, and hutongs and Houhai and restaurants to visit that weren’t always bird friendly. Still, we managed to squeeze in a couple of good trips and some afternoon visits to parks. Like everywhere else in the world, if you looked around, you could find some birds.

Yellow-billed Grosbeak

Oriental Magpie

Crested Myna

Oriental Reed Warbler

Our first excursion was to Olympic Forest Park. It was built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It’s where the Beijing National Stadium (aka the Bird’s Nest) is located. It’s huge, and has a nice combination of grassy fields, trees and bushes, hills, and a lake with some reeds. We saw Yellow Bittern and Gray Heron. A Common Kingfisher was catching fish as large as its body. Azure-winged and Oriental Magpies were abundant. We saw them, and Eurasian Tree Sparrows, more frequently than we saw anything else. We spied a Great Spotted Woodpecker and a Vinous-throated Parrotbill. Besides birds, we were getting our first taste of life in China, including a large group of people singing songs, which was fun. From some of the reactions my son was getting, some locals were getting their first views of a California white kid with long light brown hair.

The class I taught was held on the campus of the University of International Business and Economics, which is north-northeast of central Beijing but well within the city. There were some birds in the trees on campus, especially the ubiquitous Azure-winged Magpie and Eurasian Tree Sparrow. A nearby spot we visited a couple of times was the Yuan Dadu City Wall Ruins Park. The park preserves a section of an earthen city wall that encircled the 13th century capitol of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. You can walk along the 25-foot tall wall, which is mostly covered in trees. We found some good birds in this long, thin slice of a park, including Gray-capped Pygmy Woodpecker, Arctic Warbler, Yellow-browed Warbler, Crested Myna, and Chinese Blackbird. Owing to the muddy conditions, we came back from the park with some of the centuries-old earthen wall stuck to the bottom of our shoes.

Arctic Warbler

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Gray-headed Woodpecker

Azure-Winged Magpie

We also picked up some birds visiting places like Temple of the Earth, Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, and the Old Summer Palace (aka Yuanmingyuan Relic Park). At the Old Summer Palace, we made friends with some local Chinese birders and walked around with them for 20 minutes and shared a mutual pleasure in seeing the birds despite our inability to talk to each other. The more memorable parts of those visits included all the dragons carved on the temples, some small boat rides with my son as Captain, an impromptu hide-and-seek game my son played with some local kids, a crazy sport that combined soccer and badminton but without a net or goal, and a conversation at the Temple of Heaven’s Echo Wall. Across the street from the Temple of Heaven was the Hongqiao Pearl Market, which included a shop called Toy City, where my son bargained for a knock-off Pirates of the Caribbean lego ghost ship.

Bird + Dragon = Happy Dad and Son

Birding the Great Wall of China

One of the highlights of the trip was an excursion to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. It’s just over an hour from campus in Beijing. The experience from beginning to end was amazing. To get to the wall from the parking/ticket area, you can walk or you can ride a cable car up. We obviously chose the cable car (like a ski lift). From there, you are dropped off to a well-preserved and restored section of the Great Wall. The wall is an astounding absurdity. You’re beyond the city in what feels like the middle of a remote mountain range. And there, zig-zagging out in two directions is a 20-30 foot tall rock wall. Where all the rocks came from, how they got them to the site, and how the assembled the wall are crazy questions to ponder as you stand there. This section of the wall was apparently first built in the 6th century. The wall as you visit it to day was built in the 16th century.

There are some concessions stands along the wall, and we enjoyed a delicious ice cream snack. At one point, my son went off ahead (or, more likely, I straggled behind). I had to use my binoculars to find him. When it was time to meet back up with our group, I had to yell out to him across a valley, from my tower to his. Unbeknownst to us, our already great visit was about to get a perfect finish. To get back down to the parking area at Mutianyu, you can walk or you can take a one-man wheeled toboggan down a one-mile long metal slide. We definitely chose the toboggan. It was so much fun. My son even saw goats along the track as we went down (I missed them somehow). When you get off at the bottom, two old dudes in ancient Chinese warrior outfits pose with you for pictures. I haven’t visited any other section of the wall, but I can’t imagine any of them beating Mutianyu.

When I wasn’t dumbfounded, I managed to see a few birds. I heard more birds than I saw, down in the trees and bushes below the wall, but had no chance of doing sound IDs. Of the birds I got my eyes on and could ID, there were Large-billed Crows and Oriental Magpies. I managed an out-of-focus photo of a Chinese Sparrowhawk (it looked to me like a Cooper’s Hawk. I also saw a Japanese Tit, a Daurian Redstart, a Pere David’s Laughingthursh, and a Godlewski’s Bunting. You can check out a really helpful birder’s guide to the Great Wall here.

Large-billed Crow

Daurian Redstart

Birding Yeyahu National Wetland Park (aka Wild Duck Lake)

The last of our adventures that involved a bunch of birds was a day trip out to Yeyahu National Wetland Park (aka Wild Duck Lake). It’s a big wetland just over an hour’s drive from Beijing, past the Great Wall. Through the help of someone at the university, we hired a driver to take us out there early in the morning (after stopping at the amazing dumpling place, as we did almost every morning). Our driver didn’t speak any English, which created a couple of challenges later in the day. But he took us where we wanted to go, and waited for us while we wandered around. We arrived at Yeyahu an hour before it opened (which was news to us). No matter, a guy at the entrance allowed us to buy tickets and enter.

Since this was new habitat (all we’d experienced so far was urban parkland), there were lifers everywhere. We saw a few ducks (Eastern Spot-billed, Ferruginous Ruddy Shelduck) and an apparently non-domestic Graylag Goose. There were little Grebes and Great Crested Grebes working the water. Perhaps the best sighting of the trip was a Ruddy-breasted Crake that made a quick appearance before disappearing into the reeds. We spotted Northern Lapwing and Gray-headed Lapwing, LIttle Ringed Plover and Common Sandpiper. There were a bunch of Gray Herons and Purple Herons, and we spied a single Chinese Pond-Heron and Yellow Bittern. Some Eurasian Spoonbills flew by.

In the reeds, bushes, and trees, we saw a bunch of Bearded Reedlings and Oriental Reed Warblers, a Marsh Tit, a Black-faced Bunting, and a Beijing Babbler. IN the skies, we saw several Amur Falcons (which migrate in massive flocks between China and southern Africa), an Eastern Marsh Harrier, an Eurasian Hobby, and Oriental Pratincole. We ended the day with 43 identified species at Yeyahu.

Great Crested Grebe

Amur Falcon

Eastern Marsh Harrier

Beijing Babbler

One of the highlights of Yeyahu is its massive birding tower. It’s the biggest, and sturdiest, birding tower I’ve ever seen. We made our way to the top, and enjoyed our lunch and the view. We were way too high to make out anything on the ground except a Ring-necked Pheasant, but were entertained by Amur Falcons flying by at eye-level. My son needed a break from birding, so he pulled out his iPad and did some reading and played some games while I stared like a dork through my binoculars.

Observation Tower

A break from birding

We had planned to visit some forest habitat after Yeyahu, but when our driver took us to the spot that had been recommended to us, a sign (surprisingly in both Mandarin and English) said it was closed for the day. That was a bit of a bummer, because a whole new set of birds awaiting us in the mountain trees. We were not far from the Badaling section of the Great Wall, so we headed over to the parking lot. We didn’t pay to visit the wall, but instead wandered around the area. There wasn’t much birding action, but we got to do a little impromptu exploring of a non-tourist area, which was nice. After about 90 minutes, we decided to call it a day and return to town.

If you’re headed to Beijing, definitely check out birdingbeijing.com. It’s a great blog by a British guy who lives in Beijing and has all kinds of helpful information about sites, the birds, and conservation efforts in the area.

The first Sedge Wren ever spotted in Los Angeles County

L.A. County First Record of Sedge Wren

Despite a Saturday morning plan for some birding, I nevertheless expected to end the day feeling like I had missed out. Just yesterday, L.A. County’s first-ever Cerulean Warbler was found on Catalina Island. Dozens of birders were headed out on the ferry this morning to add this distinctly un-vagranty and delicately beautiful warbler to their life and county lists. I, however, would be doing no such thing. Devoting six hours and spending $80 to chase a non-lifer outside my 5MR just isn’t my jam. I love my LA County life list, but I’m also cheap and a little lazy.

Instead, I was planning to bird a closed landfill in Griffith Park that reeks of burping methane and requires an arduous walk up a super, super, extremely steep hill to access. My target was a lifer Chestnut-collared Longspur. The method here is to walk back and forth across the landfill and hope you flush a longspur, be ready to take flight photos and record flight calls, and pray the bird lands somewhere in view. The odds of success were low, but my friend and fellow 5MR enthusiast Andy had spotted one on two occasions this month here. After a couple of zig zags that produced mainly Savannah Sparrows, I came upon a patch of dried-out cocklebur that had a few birds moving around it, so I stopped to check it out. What I would find inside this bush turned me from a nameless bird chaser into a legendary bird finder.

Unassuming cocklebur patch where I achieved birding glory

One of the birds I saw inside the bushes was a tiny wren. It was generally skulky, but active. The quick views I got were of a tiny wren with a streaked upper back and a cocked tail. In these parts, that would be a Marsh Wren. But this habitat was decidedly wrong for a Marsh Wren. This place is bone dry (except the liquid methane gurgling through the PVC pipe all around), and is dominated by pokey scrub bushes, not bright green reeds. Sensing the oddity, I snapped a couple of pictures and resumed my search for longspurs. An hour later, I was back at the cocklebur, having failed to flush any longspurs or anything else super interesting. The tiny wren was still moving around and occasionally giving a slurpy chewp call that I didn’t associated with Marsh Wren. This prompted me to check my bird guide app to see what else it might be. The only other option was Sedge Wren – similar in size and appearance, but with a few distinctions that I could look for. Sedge Wren is a bird of the Upper Plains (in summer) and American South and northwest Mexico (in winter). One had never been reported in L.A. county in eBird. As a firm believer in the notion that a bird is most likely to be a likely bird, I was probably looking at a juvenile Marsh Wren.

But my binocular looks and photos seemed to show the distinguishing characteristics of a Sedge Wren. The bird lacked the obvious brown patches on the shoulders of a Marsh Wren. Instead, it had streaks and patterns all over its back and wings. The bird also lacked a prominent eyebrow of a Marsh Wren. Instead, it had a very inconspicuous line above its eye. Its tail was grayer than the rufous brown tails of Marsh Wrens. Its crown was streaky. Its belly had a brown wash, unlike the white belly of Marsh Wren. I was becoming convinced I had found a Sedge Wren, but I wasn’t confident enough to call the ID myself. It was time to reach out to experts. I sent some photos to my friend Andy, an excellent birder who is also often quick to respond. Sure enough, I heard back from him right away (he was on Catalina failing to find yesterday’s Cerulean Warbler). He said possibly a juvenile Marsh Wren, but it could be a Sedge. He asked for better head shots.

I then spent 15 minutes trying to get this skulky bird to put itself in view and stay there long enough for a decent headshot. I also used the Merlin app to see if it would identify the calls as a Sedge Wren. Despite that app’s astoundingly improved bird call ID feature, it didn’t identify any of the chirps as Sedge Wren (but it was correctly calling out the meadowlarks and pipits and swallows and sparrows that were around). I was able to get a few more photos. Andy’s response was “shit, it might be Sedge.” I shared the photos with others, and the consensus was that it was really good candidate for Sedge Wren.

The first person to show up was a bird wizard named Marky. We stood next to the cocklebur patch, and to my dismay, nothing moved or chewp’d. This bird had been in the same patch of bushes for over three hours. It had to still be there. After 10 or 15 minutes, it called from the bush, and Marky identified it as a Sedge Wren. It was much less active, and much more quiet, than it had been earlier in the morning. But patience produced good views. Confirmatory word went out to all the nerds.

I left at 12:30, tired, hungry, and with a dead phone battery. Happily, the bird stayed faithful to its little patch, and a stream of birders who made the trip up the hill were rewarded with looks at the Sedge Wren all afternoon. This was my second lifer Sedge Wren sighting. I first saw a Sedge Wren in Central Mexico in 2017. That Sedge Wren is now called a Grass Wren, having been split in 2021 as a distinct species, making the Sedge Wren sighting in Los Angeles a new lifer.

When I got home I checked eBird and this really is the first-ever report of a Sedge Wren in L.A. County. That makes it bird species #530 on eBird for L.A. County. It’s been an incredible fall here in Los Angeles for vagrants. Just this month there have been 4 county first records (Sedge Wren, Cerulean Warbler, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, and Wood Warbler). Despite that flurry, new county birds are typically only a once or twice a year phenomenon. In the last 5 years, L.A. has added 9 birds to its list. Six of them were spotted on Catalina Island or San Clemente Island, or at sea. Only three – the Sedge Wren, the Wood Warbler, and a 2017 Dusky Warbler–were found on the mainland.

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Birding Beijing, the Great Wall, & Yeyahu (in 2017)