Chengdu Birding – chengduuk@hotmail.com - Chengdu, Sichuan, the gateway to Tibet - to see more travel pics of Sichuan go to my travel blog at - http://chengdutravel.blogspot.com/

In that last entry I gave you the John Cleese of the bird-world – our Yellow-legged Buttonquail and its very silly walk – nature does give us a laugh at times. Yesterday’s birding was no exception – a trip to nearby Qingcheng Mountains giving us this odd looking fellow


'allo, 'allo - whats goin' on around here - a Spot-breasted Parrotbill

That head sticking out the bush isn’t a computer generated character drawn-up for some Disney cartoon – it’s a real flesh and feathers creation – the Spot-breasted Parrotbill. It took us some time to get photos of this lovely bird – we were constantly hearing them – but it was darn difficult to get our eyes on one. However we were determined – we’d just lost a brief, but close quarters – face to bill - chance to get some nice snaps of three Moustached Laughingthrushes that I’d whistled up from the scrub (these birds will sometimes come and investigate calls). Birding is sometimes a story of the hunted disappearing into thin-air (or should that be tangled-bush) long before your equipment is ready!!!! But our funny Parrotbills were sticking around – it just took a bit of time before one decided to show itself in that comic pose.


Fancy paint job!!!!!!

And it doesn’t seem to be just the birds that we can imagine as clowns – here’s some kind of bug that surely must be off to a fancy-dress party – where did he get those threads??? (Anybody know what kind of bug this is?)

In the next couple of days we're planning to set-off again on our travels – this times we want to head west onto the start of the grasslands while the passes are still easy to negotiate. These areas have been restricted during the Olympic Games – but we’re now hearing reports of folk getting through with no problems.


Its high up here - over 4,000m - and it can be cold and icy - the zheduo pass about an hour a half outside Kangding.

We were lucky to “sneak” up there just at the beginning of June – but I was guiding at the time, so wasn’t able to take any pics. That part of the trip brought us among other stuff - White-eared Pheasant, Blood Pheasant, Grandala, and Giant Babax (this isn’t supposed to be here – we brought out the birds using playback). However at the first mountain pass there was snow and ice at 4,000m, which meant the road was blocked by a queue of trucks heading in the direction of Lhasa - we had to turn around and sneak back out.
Lets hope for slightly better luck this time round.


Himalayan Rubythroat - got this beauty at the top of that pass, just over a year ago.