A winter home for migrating birds in Yanqing county

The Wild Duck Lake National Wetland Park. Photo provided to China Daily

For bird-watchers, Wild Duck Lake in Yanqing county, Beijing is one of the best places to have an autumn outing for its various birds and plants, and steady wetland ecology.

9:00 AM

The Wild Duck Lake National Wetland Park covers an area of 6,873 hectares, with 3,939 hectares of wetlands, making it the largest wetland natural protection area in Beijing. It has 280 species of birds, including 49 species of nationally protected animals.

10:30 AM

It's about an hour and a half's drive from the downtown. The natural oxygen bar is a good place to watch birds, jog, cycle and go fishing, and you can come home with trophies of carps, catfishes and bigheads.

Your journey starts at the Wild Duck Lake Wetland Museum, where you will get to know everything about wetlands and the importance of protecting them. In the lobby, you will see a giant stone globe, which shows the distribution of wetlands in the world.

The exhibit of birds and plants specimens, photos, videos and visual projections show the natural scenery of the Wild Duck Lake wetland. The advanced technology of interactive projections makes you feel you're in the wetland, and you can see the birds and hear the water flow.

You may want to watch a documentary on the different sceneries of the lake throughout the year. It took two years to shoot the documentary, which depicts the migration and reproduction of various birds in the lake.

In addition to the beautiful scenery, the documentary also features precious clips of wildlife such as squabs breaking through their eggs.