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Sichuan Birding (3 Viewers)

Well we're just between trips at the moment - I have a new birder coming on the 8th - so have a few mornings to check out the rice-paddies that lie just across from where I live.
The harvest is on - at the moment it's about 50% complete (at least on our local patch). Last night we had a lot of rain - so this morning was misty, which together with the harvest colors, made for nice landscape photography - but didn't do much for birding pics.

Although the big migration push hasn't stated - there were Common and Swintail Snipes - and we had the usual gang of Painted Snipe (there were 6 of then this morning). I saw a single White-breasted Waterhen chick slip into cover, which means, for some species, that the breeding season isn't quite over, and the noises of Zitting Cisticola perculated out of the ranks of rice-stalks. Latter on we'll be getting many Wagtails, Pipits and Buntings passing through this little area - but most interesting today were smart looking Amur (White) Wagtails - M a leucopsis.
Last autumn we also had Von Schernck's Bittern - but this morning we just got our usual mix of Chinese Pond and Little Egret together with a single imm. Black-crowned Night Heron.

The pics show a female Amur Wagtail from a couple of weeks back - a male Chestnut-eared Bunting, we caught this spring, which is a regular passage visitor to the paddies - and how those paddies looked very early this morning.
 

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Wonderful photos again Meggie. Good to see the rice paddies...I am one of those that hate the taste of savoury rice but love a rice pudding [minus nutmeg]

Hope your birding goes well.
 
Thanks marmot - just for you I decided to forgo an extra piece of toast - and touch advantage of Meggie's snoring and sneaked out with her camera and lens.
I'm afraid the harvesters were out early this morning - but because it was very wet they were cutting by hand, rather than letting the machines in. 30 mins was enough to get some half-decent pics of the bird, which proves that nature has also embraced woman's liberation and the effeminate male - Greater Painted Snipe
This is one of those 'role reversal" species - big brightly coloured female matching up to a small drabber hubby - who's given the tasks of incubation etc etc.
With this fate in mind - I was extra quiet when I crept back home - and made sure that the pics still had Meggie's credit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way the female are usually well outnumbered by males (those girls live up to their rep - and have their toy-boyz hanging about) - but I got a shot of one flying - two of the pics are male. The flying pic of the male - and most of the time you just see this bird flying - shows well one of the major field characteristics - the trailing feet.
 

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I like the shot of the female in flight - In HK I see them much more on the ground and with my dodgyscoping set-up would never even dream of trying to photograph one in the air!

Cheers
Mike
 
Now we've got the new EF f4 300 - the flight pics get a bit easier - problem is that this lens gives such an improvement to our picture quality - we want to retake so many old shots (well actually that's quite a lot to look forward to).

As for dodgy telescope set-ups - I'm still using a Chinese job - something going under the deviously misleading brand-name of Nikula (pretty sure they want naive brains to associate this piece of cheap glass with a far more expensive Japanese brand). Anyways it works ok - but that's a piece of equipment that will be slated for an upgrade - especially if I want to do some decent dodgy-digiscoping after this winter's Baer's Pochard.

Today I put down a pic on Opus of Black-streaked Scimitar Babbler - one of the Scimitars that have been split of from the Spot-breasted complex.
Normally these are pure terrors to see - but I've uploaded a couple of my calls (I've labeled them Spot-breasted, but they're Black-streaked - I made them in Sichuan) - they work wonders. For all its invisible habits this is a pretty common bird - the semi-natural parkland at the base of Emei is an easy place for it - and an area that many birders pass through during their Sichuan circuit.
 

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I'm afraid the harvesters were out early this morning - but because it was very wet they were cutting by hand, rather than letting the machines in. 30 mins was enough to get some half-decent pics of the bird...

Very nice pics. Nice to hear too that the snipes are coexisting with the local farming reasonably well it seems.

(I still need to find a snipe on my own ;) so far just saw the ones others pointed out... I think I did see a black-capped kingfisher last week - but a bit distant and not 100% sure about it, so will try again before too long.)
 
Birds still seem to be surviving - but cultivation 'advances' within Chinese agriculture means that any birds breeding in the rice will have shorter periods to nest and nurture their young to the stage of flight and independence - a fact that was made evident with the first bird I saw that morning - a White-breasted Waterhen Chick.
There is also greater mechanisation - which means that fields become bigger and there are less ditches for birds like Rails and Bitterns to hide and feed once the cover of rice plants has gone (Cinnamon Bittern now seldom seen in these paddies must have once been common in this area – like wise Ruddy-breasted Crake and Watercock are hard to find).
Birds like the Common and Swintail Snipe are on passage while the Painted Snipe seem to breed locally but use the paddies as post-breeding feeding areas - where they form small flocks.
It would be wonderful if some Chinese Ornithologists could study the effect that the changes caused by modern Chinese agricultural development is having on the ecology of the typical Sichuan countryside – maybe giving a foundation for local nature reserves around Chengdu.
After all this is the landscape and nature that has inspired so much Chinese culture - but all resources go to the Panda - when in times of old that animal was only noted for the medicinal properties of its urine and hair (but please don’t think me ungrateful - conservation of the Sichuan Panda Zone gives us so much great birding habitat)!!!!!!
Yeah it'd be great if something also went into protecting the commoner flora and fauna of normal rural China – before some of that also becomes threatened with extinction.

Here's a pic from when rice had just been planted - another passage species to these paddies - Grey-headed Lapwing - it'll be going up your way Gretchen
 

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... which means that fields become bigger and there are less ditches for birds like Rails and Bitterns to hide and feed once the cover of rice plants has gone

Yes, of course the situation is complicated, and I guess this is happening with cultivation everywhere - but in richer countries, people can "afford" to leave margins, if they think of it... so much harder where people feel unsure about the future.
It would be wonderful if some Chinese Ornithologists could study the effect that the changes caused by modern Chinese agricultural development is having on the ecology of the typical Sichuan countryside – maybe giving a foundation for local nature reserves around Chengdu.
Great idea - as you say there are wonderful riches which would be so sad to lose there. Even in the US, people are just beginning to really attend to the effects of agricultural practices on birds - life is so complex...
Here's a pic from when rice had just been planted - another passage species to these paddies - Grey-headed Lapwing - it'll be going up your way Gretchen
Thanks, it looks like maybe this is just the right time for them to be through - I have never seen one. There are not so many fields around us as there used to be (next step up in "development"), but I should try to find some, as they appear to be better for bird viewing than I thought!
 
Here's a pic from today's hand harvesting - that must be back-breaking work - you can't blame these guys for wanting to get a mechanical harvester in there (the rice harvesters run on caterpillar tracks) - just wish somehow we could compensate for the loss of habitat quality that must come with mechanisation - like the protection of smaller wetland sites that house such a rich ecology.
However I'm afraid we may have to look many years into the future before the concept of local nature reserves gets off the ground!!!!!

And good news today - a bit of cunning and playing around with HTLM script has allowed me to add new articles with pictures onto my Sichuan birds blogspot site (actually the first new article is just a copy of one of my birdforum blog articles) - you can see it here - sichuanbirds.blogspot.com/

But I'm afraid anyone trying to view it from China will still get a page error - you have to read it through a proxy.

However today is the end of our little work pause, so I haven't got too much time to play around with blogspot - we're due off tomorrow on a trip, the first of a series of jobs that keep us busy until mid-October!!!!!
If we get anything real interesting we'll try to get it down here - just as long as our wireless connection can get through.
 

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Re: your picture - Yes, really hard work!

Good news for me is that I have a path around the Wall too - so I'm happy to see yours and several other blogs again :king: Glad to hear you're figuring out ways to make it work for you. Perhaps in a month or two things will change... ideally Chinese readers can read about all you guys are finding in Sichuan (or maybe you post somewhere else in Chinese?)

Good travels to you both!
 
Wow - a month of birding in September/October - sounds fantastic!

Looking forward to hearing how you get on.

Cheers
Mike
 
We're out at the moment - and have just come down from a quick trip onto the plateau at Tagong. The weather has been horribly hot for this time of year - and the road construction out this way - as ever - is a major pain. But we've still sen interesting birds - 20+ White-eared Pheasant in 2 large flocks on Zhedoushan - and a couple of Ibisbill at Tagong.

I've put down pics of one of the Ibisbill (just caught a fish) and a Himalayan Griffon.
 

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Super catch by the pair of you on the Ibisbill.

Can you send a bit of the heat over here its a bit nippy at the moment.

Hope you enjoy yourself on your travels
 
Streaked Barwing

We're still off on Autumn trips and today we got a quality bird - Streaked Barwing.
We get this bird on the Tianquan side of the Old Erlang Road (which is now a track) - we've seen it a couple of times at this location - but this morning was the first time we could show it to one of our guests.
We managed to get a couple of half-decent pics - both of which show how this family got their name.
 

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I haven't replied to your PM yet, but I'll definitely keep it in mind! Good word on the Barwing, it's high on my 'most wanted' China birds! :thumbs::t:
 
We're still off on Autumn trips and today we got a quality bird - Streaked Barwing... We managed to get a couple of half-decent pics - both of which show how this family got their name.

Very handsome bird! and very pleasing to get it with others! Hope many other good birds are turning up.

Gretchen
 
Black-faced Warbler

Temmie - I'm sure staking out the start of the old Erlang road would produce a Barwing or two - another site I've seen this bird is just a km or so up the road at the carpark before the entrance to the Erlang Tunnel - iat the edge of the forest, right behind the public toilets!!!!!!

Gretchen the birding has been tough but we've seen a few good birds - today's highlight was a Black-faced warbler - around the hotel area, lower cable-car station at Wawu - a single bird was bouncing about at tree-top height - two of us got pretty good looks - but we couldn't get pics.

Birds we have pics of - Spotted Forktail from Bifengxia (yesterday - we got all 4 Sichuan Forktails within a half hour of getting to the bottom of the gorge) - and Three-toed Parrotbill and Rusty Laugher from today's Wawu birding.
 

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Hi Mike - Meggie follows the Chinese threads - and although one of the Sichuan birders put up a great single pic of Streaked Barwing (without giving a location - we presume its from Sichuan and not Yunnan) - no recent Emei sightings have come to our notice.

This of course can be due to the crazy prices that you have to pay for an Emei entrance ticket - 150RMB for 2 days access - and the fact that the main paths are so spoiled by crowds of noisy local tourists (those of you living in other parts of the world - you don't know what the noisy tourist is until you come to China). But on the road, up to Golden Summit, you go through a lot of great habitat that seems it could hold Barwing - but we only go through here with paying guests, that rather limits our time and ability to explore some of the more interesting looking tracks. Also the 150RMB ticket rather puts off doing more exploration in these areas on our own - we've already got our 'away from the tourist crowd' Emei tracks - where we pick up our Minlas, Warblers, Red-winged Laughers etc etc. I'm sure some of these locations also are possible Barwing habitat - but we haven't got to see any.

There's are also alternative Emei birding locations outside the ticketed area - you just have to follow farmer/forestry trails. Hopefully we'll have time to explore more of these routes - but Sichuan is darn big - and our list of places to check out is pretty long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've just been checking the cards from the last trips - there was another good Barwing pic. We got the bird after stopping to look at a flock of Great Barbets - a lucky stop - as usual Meggie got the bird before us others had laid eyes on it.

Another bird she got was Chesnut-headed Tesia - she told us she'd found an adult - which we doubted a little after not being able to locate it again. So off she went and pished in an imm. bird - and that funny pic of unmistakable Tesia legs put the matter to rest

PS - the habitat pic is the old Erlang Road - where we got the Barwing
 

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