Just back from Beidaihe (east China) - for bird race commemorating 20th anniversary of team including me pitching up for first survey since 1940s. Was in China 10-16 May; as well as Beidaihe, also made it to Happy Island.

Some info here, as just sent to my family, which I hope will be of interest. Plan to do more, inc for this website.

Following suggestion from Dr George Archibald, director of International Crane Founation, I mentioned idea for another survey, inc cranes. Didn't push for it - wasn't much time given all other things going on; but I have a few ideas. Maybe a mix of some Chinese birders, who mostly I hope might have some free time from work (weekends), and perhaps see if can encourage some overseas birders to stay for a while.

Here is a little advice on writing. The various recommendations aren't original - they're drawn from various sources I've read - but this summarises the advice I've found most useful in writing for magazines including Reader's Digest, as well as occasional books, and web pages. I hope you find it useful.

What a great pleasure this is, to invite myself to introduce the welcome rerun (Surely, totally unnecessary rehashing - ED) of Not BB, and to have this chance to reminisce about its rise and fall, which surely represented a golden era in British birding comedy. As my old friend Steve Hassles Holloway would say, "Halycon days."

While we planned our second trip to Beidaihe in China, Simon Stirrup, Dan Duff and I used to drive up to the Norfolk coast and chat about British Birds' penchant for letters about corpse-eating Turnstones, and articles like the renowned Toyland Story. What a lark it would be, we thought, to produce something wry, almost as wry as Private Eye was wry.

Of course, back in those days you could still get bread pudding at NancyBoy's, where you were often interrupted by the ringing of the nation's birdline. Those were indeed halycon times, when you took bird photos using proper cameras loaded with real, grainy film, A Man Called Roy was almost reinventing the grapevine, I had to wrestle with my scope just to open the thing. As I sat in my student house on warm evenings, typing Not BB on a friend's Amstrad, I (get on with it! - ED)
(Read on for Vol 1.)

Martin and Maya Williams

During afternoon of 24 September, we covered sections of the lake shoreline of the lake - also written Ulansuhai Nur.

On 25 September, with the help of Mr Chang Long (a local who knows many of the birds). we took a boat ride on the lake, and again covered stretches of shoreline, including in a reserve.

On 26 September, during the return to Hohhot, we called in at Hasuhai, a smaller lake, with fishponds and fields along the edge.