Birding China, hard gen (1 Viewer)

Dear all

As promised, I am starting a new thread for any posts concerning hard information about birding in China.

I cannot police the content but what I am looking for ideally is..

Precise locations of trailheads which lead through good forest, best if GPS refs are given in full decimal eg 30.0567,102.4567 ideally to 4 decimals, a map is the very best info, either scanned from hand drawn, crudely produced on paint (like mine) or screen shots from Google maps

Precise locations of any and all good places to spend an hour birding, perhaps with a short list of target species.

Precise locations of sites with a good chance of seeing particular, difficult species.

At the moment, to be on the safe side I do not want posts concerning specific gen on ANY Laughing thrush or ANY Galliforme, if there are other species you feel need restricting please say.

What I and the birding community do not need on this thread is generalised waffle such as "North of Baxi we saw several ABC"

As a general rule, the location is always more important than the species, so saying "try the trees on the east of the road between km 10.2 and 10.7" is much more useful than saying I had a XYZ in the dead branches of the tree at (precise GPS)

I will start the ball rolling with precise details of how to get to Labahe, Sichuan

Going off-web for a few weeks, Thanks for all your help
Let's see how this goes

Well done Michael - a good start. I'd certainly like to visit Labahe one day.

I'll have to see if I can contribute something from my rather poor notes of these things!

cheers, alan

Kessler's Thrush, Snowy-cheeked LT

Yes I know I just said no laughers, but Snowy-cheeked is fine (please advise if not)

One very easy site for Kessler's

One reliable site for Snowy-cheeked laugher (though could take time)

You will find precise details of these two plus others in my Jiuzhaigou report, reposting of V4 here

Snowy-cheeked Laugher - there are obliging birds on the road side (May 2013) if you walk out of the long lake car park and just start walking down the hill just a few hundred metres. They are also in the woodland behind the car park but seemed very wary there. We didn't see them elsewhere.

cheers, alan

It's a bit out-of-date in places, but FWIW here is a link that includes our account of getting to Labahe on the bus in 2006. Note that Ya'an has at least two bus stations !

http://johnjemi.hk/journey_tr/cn/sc06_06/2006_06-07_sichuan.htm

At Labahe, what I described as "Water Deer" are probably Sambar.

Snowy-cheeked Laugher is also possible at Wanglang (Sichuan) and Lianhuashan (South Gansu)

Why the precise locations were not given? Check below

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=149725&page=36

Please read post #889 onwards.

I wouldn't agree to the fact that the info is not shared because of commercial blurb. It's mainly because of putting the welfare of the birds in the first place. Most of the BF members will share the info if you drop a PM or ask around.

thirudevaram said:

I wouldn't agree to the fact that the info is not shared because of commercial blurb. It's mainly because of putting the welfare of the birds in the first place. Most of the BF members will share the info if you drop a PM or ask around.

Click to expand...

Completely agree with Dev.

I have mistakenly put specific locations (not difficult to find and maybe the influx was not due to my report though I feel guilty about it anyway) in reports and then seen a deluge of Chinese togs (not that that is really a major concern but bird traders most definitely are and there is no doubt that they monitor the Chinese bird forums, who also monitor this forum).

It is naive to think that any information divulged on this forum is going to stay amongst responsible birders so generalisations are always better than specifics and the PM system is excellent because you can decide whether to give the information to the person requesting it or not.

johnjemi said:

It's a bit out-of-date in places, but FWIW here is a link that includes our account of getting to Labahe on the bus in 2006. Note that Ya'an has at least two bus stations !

http://johnjemi.hk/journey_tr/cn/sc06_06/2006_06-07_sichuan.htm

At Labahe, what I described as "Water Deer" are probably Sambar.

Click to expand...

...and my instructions from when I went to Labahe by bus in 2013 on post #241 here: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=262468&page=10

(I found johnjemi's reports very useful when i was tripping round the country; and yes the deer at the restaurant are sambar).