Right here is an excerpt of what Wikipedia has to say about Poyang Lake:
Poyang Lake is the most important freshwater lake in China. The world of Poyang Lake fluctuates dramatically between the moist and dry seasons, however lately the dimensions of the lake has been reducing total. In a standard yr, the realm of the lake averages 3,500 sq. kilometers. In early 2012, drought, sand quarrying, and the follow of storing water on the Three Gorges Dam lowered the realm of the lake to about 200 sq. kilometers. The lake gives a habitat for half one million migratory birds and is a favourite vacation spot for birding. Throughout the winter, the lake turns into house to many migrating Siberian cranes, as much as 90% of which spend the winter there.
Now, you’ll in fact anticipate this put up to be concerning the Siberian Crane – however it’s not (that’s the topic of a separate put up). As a substitute, that is concerning the different fowl species I noticed right here on January 15 and 16.
However first, a confession. Whereas I’ve been birding at many locations in China, I had by no means been to Poyang Lake as this isn’t my favourite type of birding – seeing giant birds far-off in open nation. As a substitute, give me small colourful birds shut by any day (be at liberty so as to add an owl, in the event you actually like me).
Nonetheless, being a author for 10,000 Birds means writing about life (properly, about birding life – I cannot write about my cats or my music preferences, although I generally try this as properly) – whether or not you want that life or not.
So, once I was at Poyang Lake, the water degree was certainly fairly low – from the roads I drove on, many of the lakebed gave the impression to be dry. This low water degree apparently was additionally one of many causes for the autumn of China’s Yuan dynasty – within the Battle of Poyang Lake in 1363, the big ships of the dynasty had been defeated by the smaller ones of the insurgent forces because the low water degree diminished the maneuverability of the previous. Finally, this naval defeat introduced the Ming dynasty to energy. And sure, I do know that this has nothing to do with birds, however it’s type of attention-grabbing anyway, isn’t it?
Poyang Lake reportedly has 4 species of cranes – the Siberian Crane (separate put up), the Frequent Crane …
the Hooded Crane (straightforward for me to see on Chongming Island however rarer at Poyang Lake) …
… and the White-naped Crane.
Just like the Siberian Crane, this species is affected by the lake’s low water ranges – one paper discovered that the habitat suitability for White-naped Cranes reached its lowest level throughout the exceptionally dry winter of 2022-2023, and advocates guaranteeing the preservation of the annual flooding cycle of the lake.
The White-naped Crane inhabitants has declined by two-thirds (supply), and particular person cranes have even switched their wintering web site to 1 in Japan. You may learn the story of a person feminine crane named Borzya right here.
The species is listed as Susceptible, lately primarily affected by habitat loss, looking and results of warfare (HBW). I’m not certain to what extent attempting to find meals remains to be an element, but it surely should have been previously – the reason the HBW gives for the “vipio” within the scientific identify Antigone vipio is “Balearic identify for a sort of edible crane (Antigone).”
The genus identify Antigone relies on a mistake – it ought to have been Gerana, if I perceive the HBW rationalization of the identify appropriately: “Antigone, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy, who was metamorphosed right into a stork for presuming to match herself to the goddess Hera. Linnaeus confused this delusion with that of Gerana, princess of the pygmies, who was turned into a crane by Hera for committing the identical lèse-majesté“.
So, Antigone would have been an okay genus identify for the Oriental Stork – however its scientific identify is Ciconia boyciana, not as attention-grabbing because the crane’s identify (Ciconia simply means stork).
This stork is listed as Endangered, with a worldwide inhabitants of 1000–2499 mature people (HBW).
For some motive, I discover it exhausting to get very enthusiastic about geese, despite the fact that they’re fairly uncommon in Shanghai. At Poyang Lake, they don’t seem to be. My impression is that the Tundra Bean Goose is the commonest right here.
Whereas listers will hope that the Taiga and the Tundra Bean Goose will stay considered separate species, some current analysis signifies that they need to be higher considered subspecies, as the 2 met of their evolutionary historical past and now signify a continuum reasonably than two distinct peaks of traits.
The identify bean goose apparently comes from the birds foraging in agricultural fields and feeding on the seeds of beans.
Better White-fronted Goose should have been round for some time. Apparently, the primary recognized reference to this species comes from work contained in the tomb of an Egyptian Prince round 2550 B.C., whereby two Better White-fronted Geese are depicted feeding in a subject of grain with 4 different geese (HBW). You may see the portray right here.
This species maintains household bonds longer than different species of geese – in keeping with one paper, 76% of juveniles frolicked with their mother and father, 32% of yearlings, and 15% of two-year-olds and older (supply) – apparently it’s much less embarrassing for a juvenile to be seen with its mother and father than it’s for a human teenager.
Much like people, Better White-fronted Geese dwelling within the US could also be susceptible to weight problems, if I interpret the next sentence from a scientific summary appropriately: “Geese in California fed totally on excessive power cereal grains, whereas in Europe they subsist on inexperienced vegetation which has comparatively much less digestible power than cereal grains.”
The journal “Professional Techniques with Functions” has a paper titled “Greylag Goose Optimization: Nature-inspired optimization algorithm”. It proposes “a brand new nature-inspired optimizer referred to as the Greylag Goose Optimization (GGO) algorithm. The proposed algorithm (GGO) belongs to the category of swarm-based algorithms and is impressed by the Greylag Goose.” In different phrases, bullshit that’s reasonably irrelevant for birders.
The Greylag Goose is the ancestor of the home goose in Europe (supply) – perhaps a motive for my low total curiosity in geese. Then once more, whereas there appear to be fans for essentially the most boring fowl households – let’s say gulls, or pipits – I’ve but to come across anybody really obsessive about geese.
Not true. There’s an precise e-book titled “The Social Lifetime of Greylag Geese“. Which makes it sound prefer it could possibly be changed into a multi-season TV collection stuffed with tales on the ups and downs of a bunch of younger city upstart geese.
Sadly, the subtitle is little bit of a downer: “Patterns, Mechanisms and Evolutionary Perform in an Avian Mannequin System”. That sounds much less like a Netflix success.
And the only evaluation of the e-book on Amazon is a one-star one and sounds reasonably embittered: “The subject material may be very heavy going and I’m struggling to see or perceive what actual relevance it has to something aside from one man’s obsession with the Western Greylag goose which isn’t uncommon and in lots of places a really messy nuisance!!! I purchased the e-book as a reference ‘device’ so as to add to a library, as a result of I preserve a set of decorative geese, however realised in a short time it has little to no relevance to me or my birds!!”. Possibly the client didn’t learn the subtitle when ordering the e-book.
Or perhaps he doesn’t need to admit that his geese additionally present gay habits. The e-book has a bit titled “Different social and reproductive methods”, which incorporates the commentary “In our flock, 49% of the males engaged in heterosexual pair bonds with females solely, whereas 37% of the males shaped pairs with each men and women over the course of their lives. The rest of the males (14%) solely paired with different males”.
Lastly, there’s the Swan Goose. It’s listed as Endangered.
Completely different from Europe, it’s the ancestor of geese domesticated in China (supply).
Some scientists appear to not be very assured about their very own analysis (or perhaps very modest) – why would one in any other case write a paper titled “A potential distribution map of wintering Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides) within the center and decrease Yangtze River floodplain, China”?
Nevertheless, no matter sympathy I felt for the authors instantly evaporated when studying the sentence “This research used the utmost entropy method to mannequin a distribution map of this species”.
Different researchers deal with weightier issues such because the distinctive intestine microbial neighborhood construction in wild and farmed Swan Goose. Given the significance of this subject, it’s not shocking they conclude that “The marked variations of genus degree group-specific microbes create a baseline for future Swan goose microbiology analysis and make a precious contribution to forming relationships between intestine microbiota and home fowl replica”.
Then, at Poyang Lake there are some species which might be both straightforward to see elsewhere or not very attention-grabbing within the first place, or each. Equivalent to:
Black-headed Gull …
… Daurian Redstart …
… Eurasian Spoonbill …
… Gray-capped Greenfinch …
… Little Bunting …
… and Slaty-backed Gull.
That leaves the Tundra Swan.
There’s a wintering inhabitants of 40000–110000 distributed at Poyang Lake, accounting for 13 % to 36 % of the worldwide whole, making it some of the vital populations of Tundra Swans worldwide (supply).
The HBW in its ordinary America-centric perspective states that the literature on Tundra Swans in North America is surprisingly restricted – whereas Google search brings up principally papers on precisely these swans reasonably than on the European or Asian inhabitants. I suppose that American ornithologists have higher entry to grants.
General, I felt I used to be proper in my deprioritization of birding Poyang Lake – it does have birds, and plenty of them, however not the species I get pleasure from seeing most. After spending just one.5 days there, I moved on to Wuyuan, which turned out to be higher – however that’s the topic of a unique put up.
