Chengdu Bird guiding – [email protected] - Chengdu, Sichuan, the gateway to Tibet - to see more travel pics of Sichuan go to my travel blog at - http://chengdutravel.blogspot.com/
To see more of our birding pics go to - http://sichuanbirds.blogspot.com/
Apologies to readers in China - due to current censorship of Flickr picture storage, many of our blog pictures can no longer be accessed through the Chinese internet. Lets hope this problem soon disappears!!!!!!!!
Well here's that Red Panda on Wawu Mountain - four of us were searching for Panda, concentrating on the tops of the large pines - and three of us came to walk straight passed this animal. Luckily for us, Meggie was looking lower down - and saw this guy sitting on a much smaller tree - only about 25m away. It stayed there about 3 minutes, just showing the back of its head - and then languidly turning its stare on all those folk rudely taking snapshots of its back - it eyeballed us for about 30 seconds and then deftly slunk away into the seclusion of the bamboo understorey.
Vinaceous Rosefinch - this bird is easy to find on the top of Wawu - although the male, shown here, is obviously far easier to ID than the plain light brown female. The semi-erect crown feathers show that this bird is reacting to a call I'm putting out. The grey background gives witness to how damp it was - but it makes for a good pic and helps Meggie get around the usual exposure problems that occur with birds having plumage colors that contrast with flashes of white (that white eyebrow can be a pain for photographers in brighter weather).
A female Slaty Bunting - this is an endemic that all birders want to find during their Sichuan trip. In the winter it aint a problem - a couple of parks in Chengdu house small wintering populations - but in the summer Emei/Wawu/ and Wolong are the noted breeding locations on the usual birding route. If you know where to locate the birds - have the precise habitat - then it doesn't take long to find. On this last trip we called them in - it took under a minute for a pair to arrive - which was good, because it was raining heavily!!!!!
Just to get us further drenched - an Emei Shan Leaf Warbler also decided to join the party, which delayed our exit towards a dry-van.
By the way this pic is of a female we got at a close-by location during a rather drier day in May.
Moustached Laughingthrush - one we've seen a few times, but this is our first pic of the bird. This species occurs at Emei and Wawu - but we got this at Bi Feng Xia Panda Center (a kind of Panda Zoo - a place that's supposed to focus on Panda conservation - but only seems to do work on captive breeding rather than habitat conservation or the release of captive born animals into the wild) - it was in one of Panda enclosures. The pics aren't that good - but at least we've now got it recorded in wonderful technicolor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To see more of our birding pics go to - http://sichuanbirds.blogspot.com/
Apologies to readers in China - due to current censorship of Flickr picture storage, many of our blog pictures can no longer be accessed through the Chinese internet. Lets hope this problem soon disappears!!!!!!!!
Well here's that Red Panda on Wawu Mountain - four of us were searching for Panda, concentrating on the tops of the large pines - and three of us came to walk straight passed this animal. Luckily for us, Meggie was looking lower down - and saw this guy sitting on a much smaller tree - only about 25m away. It stayed there about 3 minutes, just showing the back of its head - and then languidly turning its stare on all those folk rudely taking snapshots of its back - it eyeballed us for about 30 seconds and then deftly slunk away into the seclusion of the bamboo understorey.
Vinaceous Rosefinch - this bird is easy to find on the top of Wawu - although the male, shown here, is obviously far easier to ID than the plain light brown female. The semi-erect crown feathers show that this bird is reacting to a call I'm putting out. The grey background gives witness to how damp it was - but it makes for a good pic and helps Meggie get around the usual exposure problems that occur with birds having plumage colors that contrast with flashes of white (that white eyebrow can be a pain for photographers in brighter weather).
A female Slaty Bunting - this is an endemic that all birders want to find during their Sichuan trip. In the winter it aint a problem - a couple of parks in Chengdu house small wintering populations - but in the summer Emei/Wawu/ and Wolong are the noted breeding locations on the usual birding route. If you know where to locate the birds - have the precise habitat - then it doesn't take long to find. On this last trip we called them in - it took under a minute for a pair to arrive - which was good, because it was raining heavily!!!!!
Just to get us further drenched - an Emei Shan Leaf Warbler also decided to join the party, which delayed our exit towards a dry-van.
By the way this pic is of a female we got at a close-by location during a rather drier day in May.
Moustached Laughingthrush - one we've seen a few times, but this is our first pic of the bird. This species occurs at Emei and Wawu - but we got this at Bi Feng Xia Panda Center (a kind of Panda Zoo - a place that's supposed to focus on Panda conservation - but only seems to do work on captive breeding rather than habitat conservation or the release of captive born animals into the wild) - it was in one of Panda enclosures. The pics aren't that good - but at least we've now got it recorded in wonderful technicolor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
