Sichuan Birding (13 Viewers)

Hi H - we're also confused............

But first more on that Greenish with the two wing bars we pictured a couple of posts back, from the Moxi area. This photo comes from just over a year back - August 25 2009 - very high at around the 3,500m mark, in the Rhody-scrub past the present day (Yak-induced) tree-line.
From my pics I can see there were more than one of these 2 bar birds up there - and at this time of year, in habitat like this, there's a fair chance they were a fall of passage birds making their way south.
I've included a pic of one of the other birds - here you see the better lighting shows the under plumage to be much lighter - but the way the light falls across the bill masks that characteristic color difference between upper and lower mandible. This bird also gives the impression that the supercilium ends well before the start of bill - which is usually a characteristic of Arctic.
As for calls - well we have calls that are labeled Greenish and Two-barred - but don't have complete confidence in them..........

which brings us back to the subject of confusion -
Brazil, Birds of East of China p360, writes on the call of Two-barred Greenish (plumbeitarus) -
" ...but can also recall disyllabic call of Greenish warbler, making separation of voice extremely difficult and potentially unreliable".

More confusion is a added when you look at pics in OBC images -
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?p=29&Bird_ID=1829&Bird_Family_ID=&pagesize=1
Here we see a plumbeitarus pictured with what looks like one bar!!!!!!!!!!!

However those breeding Greenish we have in Sichuan and central China - should belong to the (well named) ssp obscuratus - which is shown on p360 of Brazil's book - and indeed shows signs of two wing bars.
But as far as for plumbeitarus showing up in our neck of the woods - well that should also be possible during passage.
And as to their certain ID. It looks like the one place where you have the best chance of doing that is up in NE China/Asia - here two-barred birds are more certain to be be plumbeitarus - but for us guys with our breeding population of 2-barred obscuratus and the chance of plumbeitarus passing through on passage - well a pair of scissors to snip off a feather or two and a portable DNA kit wouldn't go a miss!!!!!

Here are some more pics from that day a year back -
2nd picture is a slightly more easy to ID warbler - good old Buff-barred.

And finally evidence that aerial migration isn't confined to Birds - a Tortoiseshell as you don't usually see them, among alpine flowers at 3500m, on its way somewhere or other. An Eurasian species - Small Tortoiseshell has occasionally been sighted in the states. Its suspected that those mighty journeys have been human assisted - but our high altitude Tort does show these guys are pretty tough travelers.

Hi Sid and James

Hi Sid and James,

Now I am safe in Beijing, it's my great pleasure to meet you guys on Wawu Plateau!

Here is my shots of Red Panda and Grey-hooded Parrotbill of Wawu Shan, hope you'll enjoy it.

Kind regards,

Robbi

Hey Robbi,

Nice to hear from you and great shots, I can't get enough of these Red Panda photos - I assume your views were very, very close!

Greenish Warblers - indeed, they can show two wing-bars, one wing-bar though I'm yet to see a Two-barred Greenish with a single wing-bar, though sometimes it can be tricky. Call is the key and though it is tricky, given time and experience eventually it becomes clearer, I feel quite confident now picking them out. the link that Sid provided shows a second wingbar though not sure what is up with it, almost looks a bit wet.

Cheers,

James

Certainly great to hear from Robbi - he's a young researcher who was part of a 2 man team who were researching the birds and wildlife of Wawu. Of particular interest to him was Sichuan Treecreeper - he's particularly interested in mapping out this bird's distribution, so I'm sure he'd be grateful for records that came from outside those Sichuan sites where it's normally recorded.
That first pic - when you focus in on the subject matter through the maze of Bamboo - is a Great Parrotbill nest that Meggie and Robbi went to investigate during our last stay on Wawu. That second pic is a clearer pic of an adult Great Parrotbill (from Moxi) - about all you can id of parent in the first pic is that whacking great orange bill!!!!

And on the subject of parents, feeding young and whacking great things - well picture three needs no explanation. Cuckoo is Eurasian - the poor host bird is Hodgsom's Redstart. Taken on the road just south of Daocheng in SW Sichuan.

The second Great Parrotbill looks like a young bird

china guy said:

Certainly great to hear from Robbi - he's a young researcher who was part of a 2 man team who were researching the birds and wildlife of Wawu. Of particular interest to him was Sichuan Treecreeper - he's particularly interested in mapping out this bird's distribution, so I'm sure he'd be grateful for records that came from outside those Sichuan sites where it's normally recorded.
That first pic - when you focus in on the subject matter through the maze of Bamboo - is a Great Parrotbill nest that Meggie and Robbi went to investigate during our last stay on Wawu. That second pic is a clearer pic of an adult Great Parrotbill (from Moxi) - about all you can id of parent in the first pic is that whacking great orange bill!!!!

And on the subject of parents, feeding young and whacking great things - well picture three needs no explanation. Cuckoo is Eurasian - the poor host bird is Hodgsom's Redstart. Taken on the road just south of Daocheng in SW Sichuan.

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Hi Sid, it's so kind of you to post my query of records of STT, many thanks!

And the second pic of your Great Parrotbill looks like a young bird, which has a much shorter tail than a normal adult, when did you shot this pic?

Hi Robbi - that Great Parrot came from the Moxi area on the small mountain road that threads through aforest area and over a high. 4000m, mountain pass between Moxi and Kangding. This area now sports the name Hailuogou High Mountain Botanic Garden - and from the road we've had Great, Brown and Three-toed Parrotbill. That bird in our last post was taken during august 2009 - so could well be a young bird.
Here's another pic of a roadside Parrotbill from the same day - Brown Parrotbill - showing well how its face pattern differs from 3-toed.

At the moment were basking in that unusual pleasure of being at home for an extended period - but its not going to last for long we'll be away for the most of October.
This home stay has given me the chance to sort out some of our pictures - and today I uploaded a video, onto BirdForum TV, shot by one of our May guests - Simon Dennis - of Blue-eared Pheasant at Wanglang in N Sichuan. Here's the link -
http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/2285/Blue_eared_Pheasant__Sichuan__China/

I had to listen carefully to the sound-track just in case I had to censor any colourful use of the English language - but could breath a sigh of relief when I discovered that for once we'd actually remained silent.

With the road construction that was going on at the time - we were lucky to be allowed into the park - but at least that meant were the only guests and had a whole nature reserve to ourselves. That new park road is due to be opened this October - in time for the national holidays - lets just hope its doesn't attract too many noisy tour groups!!!!

The photograph is of those same Pheasants - shot on the morning of our second day at Wanglang.

B

I had to listen carefully to the sound-track just in case I had to censor any colourful use of the English language - but could breath a sigh of relief when I discovered that for once we'd actually remained silent.

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Hey Sid!

You would have found expletives on the tape if that bullock had comeany closer.( cannot see it on the video). But Hey! it wouldn't have mattered, after all they were "BLUE" Eared Pheasants! Ouch!!!

Best wishes Si

B

Hi Si - get ready for a juicy expletive.
Just been going through the pics of the day we were up at the Monastery at Pamolin - Meggie told us she had taken a pic of a Tit Warbler - but all we got was the sight of a bird flying out of a bush.

Just found her pic - it was a female Crested Tit Warbler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was a real bogey species this summer - all our trips easily found White-browed Tit Warbler (we got a pair of those the following day) - but I was sure we'd completely missed out on Crested - until I found this pic.

Hi Sid,

Gripping pic - never managed a good photo of these beauties. Amazingly we had a pair of Crested Tit Warblers feeding actually on the ground just up from Jiuzhaigou whilst while waiting for a Severtzov's Grouse to reappear (which it didn't!).

One of my tour participants this year has just finished uploading his photos from Sichuan - see here http://web.me.com/gerthuijzers/Gert_Huijzers_op_reis/Sichuan_-_China/Sichuan_-_China.html - he was using a big boys lens with very impressive results!

James

Some great shots on the link James, rather unique tour fitness preparation - http://web.me.com/gerthuijzers/Gert...hina/Paginas/Reisgenoten_-_companions.html#45

Hi Sid,
That is a great pic. I remember the day at Pamolin well. I was lying on my belly in the crud videoing Blood Pheasant when Meggie captured that.
Still you cannot tick them all. A good consolation must have been the Crested Tit-warbler later on in the trip.

Kindest Regards Si

James thanks for putting up that link - that's a brilliant set of pictures. I can remember that dutch guy and his huge lens. Takes a bit of muscle to hump that around!!!!!

Hey Si - nothing like crawling in the crud after Blood Pheasant - I'll have to get that vid onto here when I get back home.

At the moment were out in NE Sichuan - and today we birded in a forest park called Baiyunshan. This place is totally off the Sichuan birding map - in fact its off the map for tourists, since the park its hotel and other amenities have been long since been abandoned.
But luckily the birds haven't abandoned this site - and today we got a rather nice tick - Chestnut-winged Cuckoo. From the pictures it looks like a young bird - and there are plenty of host species in this area. Recorded hosts include - Greater-necklaced and Moustached Laughers, Spot-breasted Scimitar Babbler and Oriental Magpie Robin - all of which are found in this part of the world.

Other good birds today were - Eyebrowed Thrush, Buffy Laughingthrush and a Yellow-streaked Warbler.

Sid & Meggie,

I really appreciate the pic of your Chestnut-winged Cuckoo. Actually, I'd love to see some of those big cuckoos more often by myself, but apparently they prefer the eastern regions of China to the West of Sichuan - where I usually stroll around.

Here I got a close up picture of another Cuckoo - Oriental, just on the way to move south. A few of them gathered on the grassland in Tagong to take off.

Near Kangding at 4900m asl I once more was looking for the "summer camps" of Grandala (which I haven't found yet).

But instead I found a White-winged Redstart (Guldenstat’s) and a flock of Snow Partridges. Latter were absolutely not shy and it was easy to approach to about 5m.

But, the most amazing thing I found in a monastery was a page of a Tibetan school book used as tapestry. It is remarkable that images of local birds were printed in a Tibetan school book, whereas in Chinese school books you'll probably not find anything comparable.

Cheers
R.

Nice pics - those Snow Partridge look a bit surprised to see a birder getting up there.
I've seen a report for Chestnut-winged Cuckoo on CBR for that Peach Mountain place just outside Chengdu - that was a couple of years back - but they can turn up in our neck of the woods.
You sure those Cuckoo's you saw at Tagong were Himalayan - lots of Eurasian Cuckoo up on the Grasslands - Himalayan tend to stick to more forested places further down, but it's always difficult to separate them without song, especially if they're this years birds!!!!!!

We also got a bit of Tibetan bird art this summer - but our birds were carved in stone. Here are a Dipper and Ibisbill from around the stupas at Bangbu monastery.

Right now were watching birds of prey in NE Sichuan - nothing very exceptional but a decent list of raptors - Pied Harrier, Black-eared Kite, Oriental Honey Buzzard, Eastern Buzzard, Crested Goshawk, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Chinese Sparrowhawk, Grey-faced Buzzard, Common Kestrel, Northern Hobby, Peregrine.

Sure, of course I meant Eurasian Cuckoo. Though these cuckoos didn't call and the one one pic doesn't look to be an adult bird. Eurasian is the only cuckoo I ever heard at this altitude (3900m).

Speaking of Cuckoo:

Yesterday another cuckoo was just sitting on the roof of my appartment in Chengdu.
Looking at the numbers and shape of the stripes on the belly gives the conclusion that this probably is the female of a migrating Lesser Cuckoo. The other possibility (with thick and few stripes) - Oriental Cuckoo - probably wouldn't find its way into Chengdu's "Concrete Metropoly".

Cheers
r

That cuckoo must be pretty clever to pick the roof-garden of the only German birder in Sichuan - did it sprache deustch????
Those broad breast bands seem to make it something other than Eurasian.

We also have clever bird to report about. Last April we wrote about the Bonelli's eagle with the "peg-leg".
http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=1805237&postcount=249
That leg looked liked a big impediment to carrying on the life of an Eagle - but happily we can report that our peg-leg Bonelli's is still around and still flying in a pair. We've seen this very distinctive bird and its mate, at this NE Sichuan site, for nearly a year - so these birds are resident. The big question is can our peg-leg do the business - and produce small Bonelli's?
We've seen a third bird - but that's also an adult, so far no young.

The pic shows Peg leg having fun with a passage Oriental Honey Buzzard - both birds made a stoop at each other.

Another bird we've seen surprising numbers of in the last couple of days is Moustached Laughingthrush. They're always around in this area - but that never makes them any easier to find!!!

We're just back from a recce trip to Wolong/Balang. There has been horrible damage out here due to mudslides that were triggered by the heavy summer rains. The path up to Wuyipeng has been badly affected - you can now only get 3/4 up the ridge before you hit a mudslide that has taken out the path. Any further ascent becomes a bit of a mountaineering project - I hope the path gets repaired before next season!!!!!
We got Koklass at the Balang Chicken stakeout - but misty weather meant scanning for Monal wasn't possible. Otherwise birding wasn't that spectacular.

Pictures - the craziest bird of the trip was the Quail we found in sup-alpine forest!!!!! It was on the path and flew into a clump of bamboo. Anybody able to ID this as Japanese or Common????

Same piece of forest produced a more expected species - a nice close-up study of Black-faced Laughingthrush.

Many birds in the bottoms of the valleys - here's a female Golden Bush Robin.

Another bird in the same kind of habitat was Pallas's Leaf Warbler. These birds are winter visitors in Sichuan and they were together with Tit flocks that included a couple of Sooty Tits.

And finally a picture of Chinese Goral - this looks like it was taken at a Zoo but in fact it's a very docile animal that we saw from the road. Even though we could make a pretty close approach we took that picture at 1/40sec - it was a very dark gloomy morning!

Great group of pics - my first view of the Golden Bush Robin - even the female is quite attractive! Never saw a goral either - it looks quite warmly furred for the colder times coming. Such a yellow brow on your Pallas's and a very minute second wing bar...