Bulletin 305 - China #5 - Plovers, Rails and Oystercatcher
I had an 8 day birding to trip in eastern China with a wonderful guide Lin Zhang based in Shanghai. He is perfectly fluent in English. We visited 5 different locales. His website is here. FYI making contact within China by email is a problem as the government blocks some email accounts coming in including gmail. So I had to contact him using MS Outlook. His email is zhanglinas@hotmail.com.
I got photos of 3 new plover species..all lifers of course. The 14" Grey-headed Lapwing (Vanellus cinereus) is a tall plover with a gray head, brown back, yellow legs and white underparts.
The 6" Long-billed Plover (Charadrius placidus) in an east Asian bird. It is similar to others of this genus.
The 6" Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) is similar to our Snowy Plover with only a partial breast band. In fact until a dozen or so years ago, they were considered to be the same species. There was a huge flock way out on the mud flats.
The last plover species is the 6" Little Ringed Plover (Charadrius dubius). I had seen this bird in Hong Kong, but obtained a better photo this trip.
We also saw a Northern Lapwing as long way off in the reeds and no photo was possible. This was also a life bird.
The rail family consists of rails and coots and gallinules. Rails are always shy and retiring, so it was nice ti see this 11" Brown Crake (Amaurornis akool). It looked similar to our Sora with the short yellow bill. It has a brown and gray body. We saw 2 of them an open area.
The 15" Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra) is an easy ID with the gray body and white bill. It is the only coot in eastern China.
The 13" Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) is another easy ID as similar to our Common Gallinule.
The last bird for this bulletin is the 17" Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus). Again this bird is an easy ID as a large black and white shorebird with the long bright red bill.
I have put the different bird families in single folders for easy viewing
I have photos of 15 of the 67 species of plovers
I have photos of 14 of the 138 species of rails and coots
I have photos of 3 of the 11 species of oystercatchers
Happy birding and photography,
David McDonald
dkmmdpa@gmail.com
photos copyright 2006 - 2018 David McDonald
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