Band-bellied Crake, 8 June 2016, Boli, Heilongjiang, China. Photo by Craig Brelsford.

Band-bellied Crake in Heilongjiang!

by Craig Brelsford
Founder, shanghaibirding.com

Found today, 8 June, in Boli, Heilongjiang, China: Incredible Band-bellied Crake. A near threatened species, Band-bellied Crake Zapornia paykullii breeds in the Russian Far East, where it apparently is still locally common, and in Northeast China, where it is almost surely declining. It winters south to Indonesia.

This graceful and little-known rail is far and away Elaine’s and my Bird of the Heilongjiang Breeding Season Trip and a life bird for both of us.

Band-bellied Crake
Band-bellied Crake stunned Elaine and me with its beauty. I achieved this image using my Nikon D3S and 600 mm F4 lens. I shot in manual mode with the following specs: F9, 1/1000, ISO 1250. My camera and lens were mounted atop my Manfrotto 055 Carbon Fiber Tripod and MVH502AH video head. Sun, photographer, and bird were nearly perfectly aligned. (Craig Brelsford)

Elaine and I scouted out new birding sites yesterday, and Band-bellied was the payoff today. The crake called spontaneously at 06:00 as Elaine and I were breakfasting near a stream at a site we discovered yesterday. Here is the call I recorded (00:10, 2 MB):

Elaine and I searched up- and downstream for four hours, finding no other crakes. We returned to the breakfast spot at 10:10 and found our crake again. Was he the only one?

Almost totally given over to agriculture, eastern Heilongjiang offers less and less habitat suitable for crakes and dozens of other environmentally sensitive birds. A trip through farming areas such as those we passed through yesterday shows dramatically what has been lost. Miles and miles of the formerly endless northern temperate forest here have been torn down and plowed under, in places down to the very last square inch.

Band-bellied Crake
Band-bellied Crake. (Craig Brelsford)

Elaine happens to be from one of the best areas left for forest birding in this part of Heilongjiang. The place where we found the crake is an area of poor to good habitat just 15 km south of Elaine’s home village. Xidaquan, the large forest reserve with much good to excellent habitat, is just 21 km away.

My wife Elaine Du and I are on a 17-day trip to her hometown of Boli in eastern Heilongjiang. Our trip started 26 May. We birded the area twice last year, and I wrote this report.

EDITOR’S NOTE

This post is part of a series on birding in Manchuria and the Russian Far East. See also:

Northeast China

Boli, Heilongjiang at the Height of Breeding Season
Birding Northern Inner Mongolia and Eastern Heilongjiang
Birding Northeast China in April & May

Russian Far East

Sikhote-Alin: A Place Unparalleled for Experiencing the Birds of East Asia

Featured image: Band-bellied Crake Zapornia paykullii, Boli, Heilongjiang, China. (Craig Brelsford)
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Craig Brelsford

Craig Brelsford is the founder of shanghaibirding.com. Brelsford lived in Shanghai from 2007 to 2018. Now back home in Florida, Brelsford maintains close ties to the Shanghai birding community and continues his enthusiastic development of this website. When Brelsford departed China, he was the top-ranked eBirder in that country, having noted more than 930 species. Brelsford was also the top-ranked eBirder in Shanghai, with more than 320 species. Brelsford’s photos of birds have won various awards and been published in books and periodicals and on websites all over the world. Brelsford’s Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of China, published in its entirety on this website, is the most Shanghai-centric field guide ever written. Brelsford is a graduate of the University of Florida and earned a master's in business administration at the University of Liege, Belgium.

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