Beidaihe^ China: East Asian hotspot Paul I. Holt, Graham P. Catley and David Tipling China has come a long way since 1958 when 'Sparrows [probably meaning any passerine], rats, bugs and flies' were proscribed as pests and a war declared on them. The extermination of a reputed 800,000 birds over three days in Beijing alone was apparently then followed by a plague of insects (Boswall 1986). After years of isolation and intellectual stagnation during the Cultural Revolution, China opened its doors to organised foreign tour groups in the late 1970s and to individual travellers from 1979 onwards. Whilst these initial 'pion­ eering' travellers included only a handful of birdwatchers, news of the country's ornithological riches soon spread and others were quick to follow. With a national avifauna in excess of 1,200 species, the People's Republic offers vast scope for study. Many of the species are endemic or nearly so, a majority are poorly known and a few possess an almost mythical draw for European birders. Sadly, all too many of the endemic forms are either rare or endangered. Initially, most of the recent visits by birders were via Hong Kong, and concentrated on China's mountainous southern and western regions. Inevitably, however, attention has shifted towards the coastal migration sites. Migration at one such, Beidaihe in Hebei Province, in Northeast China, had been studied and documented by a Danish scientist during the Second World War (Hemmingsen 1951; Hemmingsen & Guildal 1968). It became the focus of renewed interest after a 1985 Cambridge University expedition (Williams et al. 1986). Beidaihe, a holiday resort on the Gulf of Bohai at the northern end of the Yellow Sea (39°47'N, 119°27'E) has risen quickly to become China's best-known and most-visited birding venue. The area's geography, with the juxtaposition of an inland range of hills, a narrowing coastal plain and a roughly north-south oriented shoreline, effectively combine to funnel migrants through a bottleneck. This, together with the wide variety (for China) of habitats immediately around the town, makes Beidaihe an excellent place to study migrants. Lying less than 280 km east of Beijing, and connected to it by a direct rail link, Beidaihe (pronounced Bay-die-her) has all the essential tourist infrastructure: a good- quality hotel, a bank and a number of excellent restaurants serving a variety of tasty, if not always identifiable, dishes. Last spring, the busiest to date, saw over 150 foreign birders staying at Beidaihe at any one time, including British, Irish, Swedish, Finnish, Belgian, German, American and Japanese disciples. A perusal of the region's bird-list demonstrates the town's attractions. With only 11 resident Plates 11-24 were all taken at Beidaihe, China, in April/May 1993. G. P. Catley: 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23. David Tipling: 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24. The inclusion of these colour plates has been subsidised by sponsorship from 'Sunbirder', the birdwatching package-holiday branch of SUNBIRD. For details of 'Sunbirder' trips to Beidaihe in April-May or September-October, write to Sunbird, PO Box 76, Sandy, Bedfordshire SG19 IDF. 94 [Brit. Birds 88: 94-103, February 1995] 11. Female Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus. 12 & 13. Above, Radde's Warbler Phylbscopus schwarzi; below, Dusky Warbler P. fuscatus. 14. Asian Brown Flycatcher 15. Grey-streaked Flycatcher 16. Siberian Flycatcher Muscicapa dauurica. M. griseisticta. M. sibirica. 17 & 18. First-summer male and female Siberian Blue Robins Luscinia cyane. 19. Below, male Yellow-browed Bunting Emberiza chrvsophrvs. 20. Little Curlew Numenius minutus. 21 & 22. Above, Pechora Pipit Anthus gustavi; below, female Siberian Thrush Zoothera sibirica. 23 & 24. Male Siberian Rubythroats Luscinia calliope, lower bird for sale in market. British Birds, vol. 88, no. 2, February 1995 99 bird species out of a regional list of over 407, most birders obviously concentrate on Beidaihe's more regular migrants. Virtually all of the Far Eastern vagrants to the Western Palearctic occur. Many, such as Oriental Pratincole Glareola maldivarum, Oriental Turtle Dove Streptopelia orientalis, Pacific Swift Apus pacificus and Siberian Accentor Prunella montanella, can be common at the right season. Indeed, the Beidaihe list boasts approximately 40% of the species on the British & Irish List. Thus, the region is now firmly established as the best place in the world to watch and study many of these Eastern Palearctic specialities. A testament to the region's attractiveness to seekers of European vagrants lies in the fact that the most frequently used field guide is not The Birds of China (Meyer de Schauensee 1984), but Lewington et al. (1991, A Field Guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe). Numerous identification articles have already featured photographs taken at Beidaihe. In British Birds, these have recently included Pechora Pipit Anthus gustavi (81: 452-463); Blyth's Pipit A. godkwskii (87: 136-142) and Radde's Phylhscopus schwarzi and Dusky Warblers P. fuscatus (87: 436-441). The 14 photographs included here present portraits of 12 species that a birdwatcher spending the first two weeks of May in Beidaihe could fully expect to see, several of them repeatedly. Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus (plate 11) is a very common late-spring migrant, usually first appearing in late April, with passage reaching a peak in mid to late May. Daily counts in excess of 150 are not uncommon. Females reach a peak perhaps a week later than males, and a few pairs remain to breed. Return passage is usually obvious from late July and reaches a peak towards the end of August; few are noted after the start of October. In spring at least, the nominate subspecies easily predominates, though these birds probably include both cristatus and the quite similar confusus. 'Individuals with the characters of lucionensis, with a pale grey forehead and concolorous supercilia which gradually merge into the grey-brown rear crown, are not uncommon from mid to late May, and apparently form a high proportion of those oversummering. Radde's and Dusky Warblers (plates 12 & 13) are common during spring and autumn. Note the supercilium difference highlighted by Lars Svensson (Brit. Birds 87: 626-627). Dusky usually predominates numerically in spring; passage generally starts in mid April and lasts into early June. In spring, Radde's has a more concentrated migration period: the first are often not noted until the start of May, and passage is frequently over within that month. Numbers of both species generally reach a peak around the middle of May, when day-totals in excess of 50 are not exceptional. Both species are very vocal, and migrants frequently sing. With practice, we find their respective calls readily distinguishable (contra Bradshaw Brit. Birds 87: 436-441). The autumn passages of both species are more protracted: many are on the move by mid August, though both reach their peaks around the last week of September or the first week of October. Radde's is rare after the third week of October but Dusky has occurred into November. Including two new members of the Pallas's Leaf Warbler P. proregulus complex—the recently described Chinese Leaf Warbler P. sichuanensis (Alstrom et al. 1992) and the recently split Lemon-ramped Warbler P. chloronotus (see Alstrom & Olsson 1990)—there are records of 14 species of Phylhscopus at or near Beidaihe. Yellow-browed Warbler P. inomatus inomatus is often abundant, 100 Beidaihe, China: East Asian hotspot and from mid April onwards is usually the most common grounded migrant. Pallas's Leaf Warbler is an earlier spring migrant, though records can continue throughout May. The other species, in descending order of abundance, are: Greenish P. trochiloides plumbeitarsus, Arctic P. borealis, Eastern Crowned P. coronatus, Blyth's Leaf P. reguloides and Pale-legged P. tenellipes (but see Martens 1988 for a suggestion, based on vocalisation studies, that the last of these should be split into two species, both of which could potentially occur at Beidaihe).* There are also single records of Buff-throated Warbler P. subaffinis and of the (essentially Chinese) form of Yellow-browed Warbler P. inornatus mandellii, which some authorities have treated as a subspecies of Hume's Yellow-browed Warbler P. (inornatus) humei. Blytii's Leaf Warblers probably breed on Old Peak (Lao Ling), a mountain approximately three hours' drive north of Beidaihe. This represents a significant range extension to that given by Cheng (1987). Yellow- streaked Warbler P. armandii also breeds on Old Peak, and tiiere are a few recent records around Beidaihe itself, but its true status is still poorly known. There are 18 species of bunting on the Beidaihe list, of which only three— Meadow Emberiza cioides, Yellow-throated E. elegans and Eastern Rock Buntings E. godlewskii—breed at, or near, the town. Lapland Longspur Calcarius lapponicus, Pine Bunting E. leucocephalos and Rustic Bunting E. rustica are essentially winter visitors to northern China (though Pine has a disjunct population, the race E. I. fronto, which breeds in Qinghai Province, North-central China); Lapland and Pine are both noteworthy at Beidaihe after the end of March, Rustic after mid April. Rustics occasionally return in the last few days of September, the other two rarely before mid October. Pallas's Reed Bunting E. pallasi is another common migrant and winter visitor in the Beidaihe area. Two spring passage periods are sometimes discernible, the first in late March, the second in mid to late April. This latter passage may well involve those which have wintered farther south in China. This species becomes rare after the third week of May, returning by mid September and usually reaching a peak in mid October. Those at Beidaihe are apparently E.