I first visited Beidaihe, a resort on China's east coast, in spring 1985, and have returned each year since, mostly as leader or co-leader of migration surveys and birding tours, a couple of times for a holiday. In all, I have spent over a year at the town, garnering a Beidaihe list with over 300 Asian migrants, and experiencing superb spells of birding. In addition, trying to stimulate conservation work — it was partly on my urging that, in spring 1990, the town established an unimpressive nature reserve.

Unimpressive without landscaping work, that is. I remember waxing lyrical about the reserve's potential to Dr George Archibald, Director of the International Crane Foundation. Given the numbers of birds traveling the flyway over Beidaihe, I said, the reserve could host bird densities as high as the best migrant traps in North America. "Yes," replied Archibald. "But these are megaticks."

Beidaihe Megaticks, and Migration Corridor

Megaticks such as Oriental White Stork (Ciconia boyciana), which is virtually restricted to eastern Russia and China; most of the world population of perhaps 3000 migrates over Beidaihe in autumn. Megaticks like three endangered cranes that are unique to the Far East — Red-crowned (Grus japonensis), Hooded (G. monacha) and White-naped (G. vipio) — as well as Siberian Crane (G. leucogeranus), which hangs by a thread in Iran, yet numbers close to 3000 in the Far East, and passes Beidaihe in the hundreds. And Saunders's Gull (Larus saundersi), world population perhaps 2000, Relict Gull (L. relictus) (4000-5000), and Nordmann's Greenshank (Tringa guttifer) (1000), which have all graced the small estuaries at the town — Relict Gull is regularly seen on migration only at Beidaihe.

Then, too, there are the species that have megatick status for many birders, even though they are not rare and endangered worldwide: the species which, in Britain, I knew as `Sibes'. Listed as vagrants in many field guides, the Sibes have always held a certain mystique, as wayward strays from far-off, hard-to-visit lands. Even when they make landfall, they seemingly favor the farthest-flung localities, such as Britain's Shetland Isles, and, in North America, those remote chunks of rock known as Attu and Saint Lawrence islands.

Beidaihe now ranks as the place to see east Asian migrants. Pick any of the Asian vagrants to North America and, chances are, it occurs at Beidaihe. Oriental Pratincole (Glareola maldivarum)? Siberian Blue Robin (Erithacus cyane)? Siberian Rubythroat (E. calliope)? Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)? Lanceolated Warbler (Locustella lanceolata)? All are common. Fork-tailed Swifts (Apus pacificus) pass over in thousands. The estuaries are visited by flocks of Mongolian Plovers (Charadrius mongolus). Wood Sandpipers (Tringa glareola) and Long-toed Stints (Calidris subminuta) prefer damp paddyfields, which in late spring are the places to search for Pechora Pipits (Anthus gustavi).

The town [from the Yanghe north to Qinhuangdao] checklist currently runs to some 389 species; over 300 of these may be seen in a year, only perhaps 14 occurring year-round — the rest are at least partial migrants. The diversity stems chiefly from Beidaihe's location (map). Lying 280 kilometres east of Beijing, Beidaihe is on the edge of the Bay of Bohai, the northernmost extent of the East China Sea. Several flyways converge in the area, linking winter haunts in southern China, Australia, Thailand and even — for Amur Falcon — south-east Africa, and breeding grounds ranging from north-east China to arctic Russia.

Also important is the variety of habitats. Though the resort has mushroomed since my first visit, the estuaries remain, along with wooded hills and gullies, coastal plantations, and two areas of freshwater marsh. All lie on or near a roughly triangular headland that protrudes from an otherwise smooth coastline, and is itself eroded into smaller headlands — magnets for songbirds and other migrants traveling over the sea. The Beidaihe triangle is largely fashioned from granite, which also forms the low (153m) Lotus Hills, the main vantage for watching visible migration.

Birds overflying the area chiefly follow the coastline, or the narrow plain between the bay and mountains to the west. Leading from Beidaihe to the south of what was once called Manchuria, this plain apparently serves as a migration corridor — especially for birds of grassland and wetland, such as geese, bustards, and cranes.