china guy
A taff living in Sichuan
Just Back from a trip - which I'm afraid was a bit of disappointment. I had a group that was focused on finding Red Panda - but on this species, although we found fresh skat at two sites, we drew a blank.
Our problems partly lay in the fact that with horrible bad luck we arrived at Wawu on the very day they decided to close the park for a week of cable-car maintenance - which meant we could only get to our best Red Panda site on Wawu summit for just a single morning's watch that started at around 9.00am.
In an attempt to compensate for our Wawu woes we took off to the forest areas 2 hours to west at Longcang. Here at levels around 2300m plenty of Red Panda skat and great birding - Grey-hooded Parrotbill on three days (with all the other Parrots that are found at Wawu) - but no Pamda sighting. However we did get a stunner - an Asiatic Black Bear holed up in a hollow tree - quite a sight through the scope!!!!!!!
Moving onto to Wanglang we got a great close-up view of Leopard Cat, Complex-tooth Flying Squirrels, Chinese Serow, plenty of Blue-eared Pheasant, Chinese Grouse, a brief glimpse of an Owl carrying prey that must have been Chinese Tawny, Three-toed Woodpecker and last but not least Red-throated Thrush. But here again mammals - the focus of our tour - were few and far between.
One exciting bird I though we'd found was a Common Starling - rare to this part of the world. But getting home and examining pics I found it was one of our famous Sichuan dyed cage-bird escape Starlings - a black dyed White-cheeked!!!!!!! This is the second time I've found a black dyed version of this bird - which I'm sure has been used in attempt to sell a fake Myna.
The pic is of our bear from Longcang. This location offers birding that really compares with Wawu.
The calls are - Black-faced Laughingthrush song (to go with the call a few posts back)
Buff-barred Warbler song - a common sound at both Longcang and the top of Wawu.
Russet Bush Warbler which can be heard - during the evenings - at the very bottom of Wawu Park.
And another bird I from this area I don't see on too many lists - there were a few of then calling just a dusk - Asian Barred Owlet
Our problems partly lay in the fact that with horrible bad luck we arrived at Wawu on the very day they decided to close the park for a week of cable-car maintenance - which meant we could only get to our best Red Panda site on Wawu summit for just a single morning's watch that started at around 9.00am.
In an attempt to compensate for our Wawu woes we took off to the forest areas 2 hours to west at Longcang. Here at levels around 2300m plenty of Red Panda skat and great birding - Grey-hooded Parrotbill on three days (with all the other Parrots that are found at Wawu) - but no Pamda sighting. However we did get a stunner - an Asiatic Black Bear holed up in a hollow tree - quite a sight through the scope!!!!!!!
Moving onto to Wanglang we got a great close-up view of Leopard Cat, Complex-tooth Flying Squirrels, Chinese Serow, plenty of Blue-eared Pheasant, Chinese Grouse, a brief glimpse of an Owl carrying prey that must have been Chinese Tawny, Three-toed Woodpecker and last but not least Red-throated Thrush. But here again mammals - the focus of our tour - were few and far between.
One exciting bird I though we'd found was a Common Starling - rare to this part of the world. But getting home and examining pics I found it was one of our famous Sichuan dyed cage-bird escape Starlings - a black dyed White-cheeked!!!!!!! This is the second time I've found a black dyed version of this bird - which I'm sure has been used in attempt to sell a fake Myna.
The pic is of our bear from Longcang. This location offers birding that really compares with Wawu.
The calls are - Black-faced Laughingthrush song (to go with the call a few posts back)
Buff-barred Warbler song - a common sound at both Longcang and the top of Wawu.
Russet Bush Warbler which can be heard - during the evenings - at the very bottom of Wawu Park.
And another bird I from this area I don't see on too many lists - there were a few of then calling just a dusk - Asian Barred Owlet
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