Mokka mit Schlag

Tuesday, Day #6, Beth was playing hooky from the electronic music at the conference, so I took her to visit the New Summer Palace (the one the Empress Dowager Cixi built after the Old Summer Palace was destroyed by the British and French Allied Forces around 1860.) In the cab ride over I saw two more of my “White-winged Starlings” (that I suspected were Crested Mynas) but once again I didn’t see them long enough or well enough to be sure.

The Summer Palace itself is very pretty: lots of people, temples, and palaces. We didn’t see half of them. Not many birds though, despite the large lake. (Lakes and water features are usually surefire bird attractors, but in Beijing most water was shockingly bird free except at the Old Summer Palace. The only water birds we saw at the New Summer Palace were a few Mallards in the lagoon at Suzhou Street.) Aside from the ubiquitous Black-billed and Azure-winged Magpies, most of the birds were painted:

There was a Hall of Listening to Orioles (for opera, think “nightingale” in English) but we didn’t see or hear a single oriole the entire trip. :-(

We climbed up to the Buddhist Temple of the Sea of Wisdom, then walked down the back. There aren’t many hills in Beijing, and the emperors seemed fond of putting temples on top of the few hills they have. I don’t think we saw one hill the whole trip that didn’t have a temple on top.

Walking down the hill, we headed toward Suzhou Street. On the way I heard a really raucous cry. I’d heard this same cry the day before at The Temple of Heaven Park, but hadn’t been able to track the bird down. This time I got luckier. It was a Red-billed Blue Magpie! I only saw it briefly, and didn’t get a photo, but it was unmistakable. This is a really impressive bird. In fact, after finding it inside the field guide, I realized it was also the bird on the cover:

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Green Heron, Butorides virescens
Dana Point, 2008-05-10

Saturday morning (Day #3) Beth was attending the conference so I decided to do some local birding. It took a bit of doing, but the kind folks at the registration desk managed to write “Please take me to the Old Summer Palace” on a piece of paper I could give to a cab driver. The disadvantages of a non-alphabetic language: they knew how to say the Chinese name of the Old Summer Palace, but it’s an uncommon name so no one knew how to write it. They ended up copying it out of my guide book. Nor did the first cab driver I tried no how to read it. Fortunately, the second cab driver understood it; and eventually I got there, paid my $10 Yuan admission, and walked in.

The first bird I spotted was a Black-billed Magpie, but soon after I found a different magpie, the Azure-winged Magpie, my first life bird of the day. This is very pretty bird, with an unusual distribution. They’re found in Spain, but then, for some reason no one understands, there’s a huge gap in their distribution until the middle of Asia. I didn’t get any good photos of Azure-winged Magpies thast day, but here’s one froma couple of days later at the Zoo:

Shortly after spotting the magpie, I met a Chinese birder, the first and only one I saw the whole trip. He was as excited to see me as I was to see him. Unfortunately his English extended as far as my Chinese: I could say “Nihao” and he could say, “Hello” and after that our conversation degenerated into a lot of pointing at trees and field guides. However in this process we were able to find a Great Spotted Woodpecker, and he was able to tell me that the crows we were seeing were indeed Thick-billed Crows, Corvus macrorynchos, not Carrion Crows. That made them life bird #412 for me. He also found a Great Spotted Woodpecker for me, and tried to teach me the Chinese word for Woodpecker (Sicha, I think if I’m remembering correctly). I tried to teach him the English word for “Magpie”. I’m not sure how much of that stuck with either of us, but it was the most significant interaction I had with a non-Anglophone Chinese the entire trip.
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Wooly Darkling Beetle, Eleodes osculans
Bolsa Chica, Orange County, CA, 2008-03-30, dusk

Eared Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis
Shoreline Lake, Mountain View, 2008-05-06

1. If you see a small, non-descript gray bird and you don’t know what it is, it’s a Bushtit.
2. If you see a medium-sized, non-descript brown bird and you don’t know what it is, it’s a
   California Towhee.
3. If you see a small, non-descript yellow bird and you don’t know what it is, it’s an Orange-crowned Warbler.