Gretchen
Noted on the Beidaihe weather... "fog, dust, and strong winds".
Compared with the weather I've had to endure in Wuyuan, Jiangxi, in the past three days, I have to say I'm a bit envious.
It hasn't just rained most of the time, but the rain has been of the ferocious cats and dogs variety (spots the size of those on Dalmatians).
It's been so wet that here I am sitting in Huangzhou airport, waiting for my flight back to Beijing, with soggy boots and something close to "trench" foot.
Let me begin at the beginning:
Sunday, 29th April 2012; Wuyuan, Jiangxi province
"You should have been here yesterday," said my driver, "The weather was lovely".
The window wipers of his Nissan were struggling to cope with force of the downfall.
"Where do you want to go again?"
I repeated the name of "Location A", now worried that he had pretended to know where it was, just to get me into the car.
I had asked half-a-dozen people the previous day if they knew where it was, but no one had heard of it.
"No problem," he reassured me.
Sure enough, he managed to find the place easily and, what's more, the rain had almost stopped.
Alas, in the one hour search, there was no sign of Courtois's Laughingthrush, one of the world's rarest, and most local birds (hence me using "Location X", etc). There was not much sign of any other bird either, other than the ubiquitous Collared Finchbills, Chinese Blackbirds, and Chinese Bulbuls.
At "Location 2", there were again remarkably few birds, although a few more than at "1": several Red-billed Starlings, a few Black-collared Starlings; 5 Grey-headed Lapwings; a few snipe, a Masked Laughingthrush. But again, no sign of Courtois's.
"Location 3" was a bit more of a long-shot than "1 & 2". Made even more of a long-shot by the heavy rain. I worked out that the only two sites that had the necessary tall, old trees, were the police station and the government office compound.
First I tried the police station. "Excuse me, I'm here looking for a special bird. May I go behind your police station to look at your tall trees please?" The policeman laughed, and asked me to repeat my strange request. He laughed again, before telling me to go ahead.
No sign of Courtois's.
The large trees that were inside the government office-building compound proved to be a harder nut to crack. The security gate was locked. So, I gingerly pushed at the barrier, which sprang open with an almighty clatter.
I entered the government compound, trying to make my camera and large lens look less conspicuous by tucking it against my side.
I saw someone inside the building and entered a room with four people...
"Hello, may I go behind your office building to look at your tall trees please."
An avalanche of questions followed: "Why; where are you from; what are you doing here; why are you carrying such a big lens; where are you staying; who are you with..."
"I'm English, I live in Beijing, I've come to look for and photograph a bird that only occurs in Wuyuan... and no other place on Earth."
Rather than telling me to bugger off, or calling the security forces, the man who was clearly the senior person there, said something that gave me hope:
"Oh! You've come to see Courtois's Laughingthrush," he said.
"Yes! Can you help me?" I replied.
"Well, they used to breed around here for years, up until the year before last... last year they didn't show up... and none this year."
"Do you know where they are now, or where they were seen last year?" I asked.
"No. But go and have a look at our trees if you want... you never know".
No sign of Courtois's. But a Eurasian Jay, and several Ashy Minivets there.
No sign of Coutois's at "Location 4" either, and now with the rain pelting down, I tried "Location 5", the only one of the locations that is outside of Wuyuan county.
It took over an hour to get to the spot, and an hour waiting in the car for the torrent to stop before I was able to venture out.
Cattle Egret; 4 Dollarbirds; three Pied Kingfishers; 2 Rustic Buntings; 1 Dusky Warbler; but no sign of Courtois's.
It was getting dark, and I had spent the entire day trying - and failing - to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of information, some of whose pieces were more than a dozen years old, to work out where I could find The world's rarest laughingthrush.
Desperate situations call for desperate measures so, that evening, I resorted to asking various taxi drivers if they knew the whereabouts of "Wuyuan's special, beautiful yellow bird".
My hopes were raised when one taxi driver confided:
"Sure, I can take you right to the place."
"That's great!" I said, "Where is it? And can you pick me up from my hotel at 7am tomorrow to go there".
"There's no need to wait until then," he told me, "I can take you there now!"
I looked around me. A thunder storm was raging. More implausibly, it was two hours after dark.
I guessed, there had been a misunderstanding, so I repeated the brief:
"Wuyuan's special, beautiful yellow bird".
The penny dropped when I heard his reply:
"That's right. She's 18 year's old! Very beautiful! Jump in."
It then dawned on me that the Chinese for "yellow" huangside translates as the English for "blue" (ie "pornographic", or "dirty").
As the News of the World reporters used to say, I made my excuses and sent the taxi driver away empty handed.
I retired to my hotel room to soak my wet feet, and to hope that the following day would bring better weather, as well as the only kind of "Wuyuan's special, beautiful yellow bird" I was looking for.
Shi Jin