Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

Information

SITE RANK

HABITAT Sea coast with offshore islands and mudflats; shallow freshwater lake with marshes and meadows; hills with rushing rivers; mixed forests

KEY SPECIES Oriental Stork, Red-crowned and White-naped Cranes, Scaly-sided Merganser, Mandarin Duck, Spectacled Guillemot, Styan’s Grasshopper Warbler, Azure Tit, Pechora Pipit

TIME OF YEAR Best April to July

Familiar from waterfowl collections the world over, the Mandarin Duck is found here in its natural home.

Ussuriland lies at the very south-eastern extremity of Russia, where the coast looks over the Sea of Japan, and where the hinterland borders the eastern edge of China. It is the richest area in the whole of Russia for birds, with over 250 species breeding and more than 400 recorded altogether, the diversity partly explained by the wide range of superb, often relatively untouched habitats, and partly by the mix of birds from northern and southern elements. Many common breeding birds from Siberia occur here, while a few species reach Ussuriland at the northern extremity of their world range. During the spring, when the trees are freshly in leaf and the meadows glow with wild flowers, there are few finer settings in which to watch birds.

A visit almost invariably begins at the dreary, if historically interesting, city of Vladivostok. Happily it is possible to take a boat out from here into Peter the Great Bay and visit Russia’s only marine reserve at Popov Island, where there are healthy populations of Spectacled Guillemot, Black-tailed Gull, Pelagic Shag and Japanese Cormorant, while Ancient Murrelet and Rhinoceros Auklet occur in much smaller numbers. Sailing around the area may also produce Streaked Shearwater and Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel (here at its only breeding site in Russia), although these birds come to shore only at night, to visit their burrows under cover of darkness. Another great rarity found here is the peculiar Styan’s Grasshopper Warbler, a bird that seems only to occur on offshore islands; the only way to see it is to land on one of the many small islets and wait for the bird to sing.

Going north from Vladivostok, flush to the Chinese border, the land flattens out into a broad, treeless plain, in which lies an immense, shallow freshwater lake, Lake Khanka, over 100 km wide. The sheltered waters here, together with the huge fringing marshes and vast acreages of meadows, support enormous numbers of birds, some of which are very rare. The reedbeds hold the bulk of the Russian population of two species of crane, the Red-crowned Crane – most famous as the national bird of Japan, with its mainly white plumage, black bushy tertials and neck and red crown – and the White-naped Crane, an altogether greyer bird with a white neck. Roadside trees provide nesting sites for the endangered Oriental Stork, while on the waters themselves are Falcated and Eastern Spot-billed Ducks, and occasionally the rare Baer’s Pochard and Swan Goose. The marshes are quartered by the smartly patterned Pied Harrier, while Reed Parrotbill and Pallas’s Grasshopper, Oriental Reed, Black-browed Reed and Thick-billed Warblers breed in the swamp or scrub. The denser patches of trees are good places to look for the angelic Azure Tit, while the meadows are good for Yellow-breasted and Pallas’s Reed Buntings. The thin margin of trees around much of the lake can be a superb site for migrants on a spring day, when it offers the only cover for miles around and can attract thousands of northbound passerine migrants.

The open grassland should not be neglected; where trees grow, it is well worth a look for Daurian Starlings, Rooks, Daurian Jackdaws and the splendid Amur Falcon, which incredibly is a summer visitor here in eastern Asia, having come from its wintering grounds in tropical Africa. Another interesting species of this habitat is the Pechora Pipit; birds of the isolated population found around Lake Khanka have different calls and song to the birds further north, and will probably soon be split as a separate species, Menzbier’s Pipit.

The central part of Ussuriland is dominated by the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, which run roughly north-east down to south-west, and spawn a number of large, fast-flowing rivers such as the Ussuri, Iman and Bikin. These rivers flow through a delightful landscape of forested hills at various heights; some of the woods are subtropical, while others are more reminiscent of the taiga belt. The former, with their growth of Manchurian Oak mixed with cedar and pine hold such delights as Forest Wagtail, Chestnut-flanked White-eye, White-throated Rock Thrush, Pale Thrush and Oriental Dollarbird, while the latter hold such species as Radde’s and Pale-legged Leaf Warblers, Mugimaki Flycatcher and Siberian Thrush.

Some of the rivers, such as the Bikin and Iman, have pristine gallery forest growing along their banks, with willow and alder next to elms, poplars and Manchurian welt-nuts, and these provide habitat for the tree-nesting Mandarin Duck as well as such conventional woodland species as Ashy Minivet, Eastern Crowned Warbler, Grey-backed Thrush, Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and Japanese Grosbeak. A few pairs of Blakiston’s Fish Owls occur in these valleys, too, while the rivers themselves hold good numbers of the rare Scaly-sided Merganser and their shingle banks support Long-billed Plovers. It often requires a boat trip to see many of these fabulous birds, and it can be a bumpy ride.

Down to the south-west, in the tiny piece of Russia that lies south of Lake Khanka, is still another ecological zone, in which the foothills of low, oak-covered hills are skirted with birch and interspersed with flower-filled meadows. The Barachny Hills lie in this area, where several predominantly southern species have a foothold in Russia. These include Lesser Cuckoo, Manchurian Bush Warbler, Von Schrenck’s Bittern, Yellow-legged Buttonquail and Vinous-throated Parrotbill. It is also a good spot for the rare Band-bellied Crake, although seeing both this and the buttonquail is no easy task. However, as you watch and listen to some of these subtropical Asian species, it is easy to appreciate that the Orient is not very far away.

The mighty Steller’s Sea Eagle is a scarce winter visitor to the coast.

Most of the Russian population of the highly endangered Red-crowned Crane breeds next to Lake Khanka.

The swamp-loving, powder-blue and white Azure Tit is fairly common in Ussuriland.