Blue Skies: Peiking Duck - Birding In China

I wrote this blog over a year ago, but because of a heavy travel schedule, interviewing for a new job, and other obligations, I just didn't sit down with my Birds of East Asia - China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Russia field guide by Mark Brazil and identify the few birds that I saw and had time to snap some pictures. It is Thanksgiving weekend 2013, so I had some time this morning to do so.

Police escort

As fortune would have it on a recent work trip to China, our hosts drove us through one of the premier birding areas in China - the Yellow River Natural Wildlife Reserve near Dongying. The provincial government officials met us at the airport, whisked us away in a bus escorted by police cars, and drove us to different agricultural development areas where there were expansive aquaculture farms and demonstration area where tracks of land formed from Yellow River sediment deposits have created new lands that are being drained of salts so crops can be grown. There is great pride on the behalf of the officials - even though this is eastern China, it could have been the

Recognized accomplishment

western San Joaquin Valley in California 90 years ago, just when intensive agricultural development began. There is nothing like having your own escort - it makes traversing cities so much easier without the nuisance of things like traffic lights, dedicated turning lanes, and staying to the right side of the double yellow line in the middle of the highway. I would have thought is odd a few years ago to see a large billboard sign recognizing a political official for his or her accomplishment bringing a development project to the area. But is really isn't much unlike the same thing we can see here in the United States - maybe the only the style of the presentation differs.

Regardless, I saw more birds in this one day than my two earlier trips to China all added together. It was a closed-60 tour - windows up and driving 60 miles an hour - but availability of birds was striking compared to the Beijing area and it surrounding environs, as well as the part of Inner Mongolia I saw two years ago.