-
Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.
Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
Guangxi, Baise Birding (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Barbets48
- Start date
Jeff Hopkins
Just another...observer
First off, welcome to the forum.
Second, I can't say I've seen any posters on here from Guangxi, never mind one so close to Vietnam, but I look forward to reading yours.
Second, I can't say I've seen any posters on here from Guangxi, never mind one so close to Vietnam, but I look forward to reading yours.
Saw this link on the Vietnam forum. Perhaps it will be useful since you are so close to the border.
http://vietnambirdnews.blogspot.com/
http://vietnambirdnews.blogspot.com/
Mike,
I had a few minutes to look around the www and I also saw these that may provide some contacts and locations:
http://www.southchinabirder.com/Provinces/Guangxi.html
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...sg=AFQjCNG-xhaaAhMYKuHVl-kimcqbJTk9hg&cad=rja
This should open a PDF file.
http://www.talking-naturally.co.uk/nanning-peoples-park-china/
Nanning trip report
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...N9YPAB4NgABFUtBH9jUr1lw&bvm=bv.74115972,d.eXY
A PDF China/Vietnam border, birding trip report
Happy birding!
Bruce
I had a few minutes to look around the www and I also saw these that may provide some contacts and locations:
http://www.southchinabirder.com/Provinces/Guangxi.html
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...sg=AFQjCNG-xhaaAhMYKuHVl-kimcqbJTk9hg&cad=rja
This should open a PDF file.
http://www.talking-naturally.co.uk/nanning-peoples-park-china/
Nanning trip report
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...N9YPAB4NgABFUtBH9jUr1lw&bvm=bv.74115972,d.eXY
A PDF China/Vietnam border, birding trip report
Happy birding!
Bruce
MKinHK
Mike Kilburn
Hi Mike
Not sure if there are any birders there but the area around Baise, at the confluence of SE Yunnan, north Vietnam and NW Guangxi is one of the least birded areas with the greatest potential for finding really good birds yourself.
It is not completely terra incognito - a little to the south is Nonggang, where Nonggang Babbler was a new discovery to science less than a decade ago. much closer to Baise is a reserve called Cenwanglao Shan which was surveyed back in 1999 and 2002 by Hong Kong-based NGO Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, who rated it very highly for its assemblage of montane bird species. Their report is available on the web at:
http://www.kfbg.org.hk/content/49/18/2/e27_cenwanglaoshan_report_w.pdf
And the motherlode for all KFBG rapid ecological assessment reports in Guangxi (and elsewhere in SE China) is here:
http://www.kfbg.org.hk/kfb/introwithreport.xml?fid=167&sid=217
The other useful resource is Tim Woodward's book Birding Southeast China. the section on Guangxi shows ten reserves within striking distance from Baise. I suspect this will be the best place to start as it provides maps, access info and a list of birds based on the KFBG list but with additional birds seen by Tim. However several of these reserves abut the birder with Vietnam and entry for non Chinese can sometimes be tricky - just seen that Bruce has posted a link to Tim's website.
Any birds you find would be of great interest so please do post what you see and info sites would also be most welcome.
Cheers
Mike
Not sure if there are any birders there but the area around Baise, at the confluence of SE Yunnan, north Vietnam and NW Guangxi is one of the least birded areas with the greatest potential for finding really good birds yourself.
It is not completely terra incognito - a little to the south is Nonggang, where Nonggang Babbler was a new discovery to science less than a decade ago. much closer to Baise is a reserve called Cenwanglao Shan which was surveyed back in 1999 and 2002 by Hong Kong-based NGO Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, who rated it very highly for its assemblage of montane bird species. Their report is available on the web at:
http://www.kfbg.org.hk/content/49/18/2/e27_cenwanglaoshan_report_w.pdf
And the motherlode for all KFBG rapid ecological assessment reports in Guangxi (and elsewhere in SE China) is here:
http://www.kfbg.org.hk/kfb/introwithreport.xml?fid=167&sid=217
The other useful resource is Tim Woodward's book Birding Southeast China. the section on Guangxi shows ten reserves within striking distance from Baise. I suspect this will be the best place to start as it provides maps, access info and a list of birds based on the KFBG list but with additional birds seen by Tim. However several of these reserves abut the birder with Vietnam and entry for non Chinese can sometimes be tricky - just seen that Bruce has posted a link to Tim's website.
Any birds you find would be of great interest so please do post what you see and info sites would also be most welcome.
Cheers
Mike
Last edited:
MKinHK
Mike Kilburn
Looking a little further I see there has been a reintroduction of Hume's Pheaant into Cen Wang LaoShan:
http://www.b-paper.com/tag/cenwanglaoshan-nature-reserve.
There are also a few follow-up papers on the reintroduction.
I've also dug out an old report on my visit to Nonggang:
Nong Gang Shan National Nature Reserve, Southwest Guangxi
9 - 13 November, 2006
This short trip was planned at the last minute to visit Nonggang Shan, one of the best birding areas in western Guangxi, and combined some wonderful, difficult-to-see Chinese birds against a majestic background of Guilin-style karst limestone hills.
Arrangements were made swiftly and smoothly through Mr Tan of the Guangxi Forestry Bureau, and after a 1-hour flight from Shenzhen we made a 90-minute transfer from Nanning airport to Longzhou, the county town, arriving at 2:30am! We had just four hours of sleep before taking another 40 minute drive to the reserve protection station, which was set amidst sugar-cane fields and completely surrounded by a breathtaking rampart of karst limestone crags, and begun birding around 7:30.
Leaving the station we walked along a track that passed swiftly from the sugar cane into the fringe of shrubland dotted with occasional tall trees that provided a green “skirt” to the base of each of the karst outcrops.
Our first good bird wave produced our only White-browed Piculet, a probable Chinese Leaf and Sulphur-breasted Warblers (the former would be a “first” for Guangxi, but very difficult to separate from Lemon-rumped Warbler, so no official claim will be made), the first of many Grey-cheeked Fulvettas and Striped Tit-Babblers, and mixed flocks of Red-whiskered and “Hainan” Chinese Bulbul. In contrast to the familiar white-naped race from Hong Kong, Hainan Bulbul has an all-black cap with a single neat, white earspot. Curiously, this was the only day we saw any numbers of this species.
Also of interest was a briefly-seen Broad-billed Warbler, which showed a rather open plain grey face with just the hint of a pale eyering – totally different from the contrasting facial pattern of Chestnut-crowned Warbler, which we saw several times over the next few days. We also saw a male Small Niltava, a Sooty Flycatcher and several Puff-throated Bulbuls – which have a rather harsh shout of a call.
The afternoon session started dramatically with a group of five White-winged Magpies – our major target bird for the trip. We leaped out of the van to have brief views of a single perched bird and flight views of the departing flock – each bird showing a broad white tail with a black band, making them look eerily (and briefly, heart-stoppingly) similar to Black-collared Starling. They also soar on stiff wings – just like the starling, but somehow manage to fly even slower, and with an assurance bordering on arrogance.
However, even more than these, my personal highlight of the day was finding a number of babblers washing and drinking from a hidden pool in the bole of a tree some 10 meters into the forest. The first bird we saw here was a mysterious, all-dark babbler, which we had seen earlier in the day and tentatively identified as a very dark and undescribed race of Limestone Wren Babbler. A party of four or five it fed among leaf litter and in crevices of limestone outcrops beneath a closed canopy. In the afternoon we had wonderful views, as several birds returned repeatedly to the bole in the tree and emerged to shake off the water and preen nearby. Even before washing they looked darker than any race of Limestone Wren babbler, (but superficially similar to pix on the Oriental Bird Images website www.orientalbirdimages.org of Limestone Wren Babbler taken in northern Vietnam), and lacked the streaking on the back and sides that the illustrations show. The birds did show a narrow white throat patch, which looked like a short broad tie – with dark grey streaks on a white background. However, with closer views the plot thickened. The birds also showed a short broad white crescent on the lower rear edge of the ear coverts, a feature shared by no other babbler illustrated in Robson. It also had a whitish iris (possibly with a faint bluish cast), which separates it from all other wren babblers, and indeed all other babblers! Earlier in the day I thought I saw an olive cast to the wings and that afternoon, a chestnut wash to the crown. The remainder of the plumage, bill and legs were black.
Before leaving for this trip I had been shown photos of a bird had previously been trapped and photographed earlier in 2006 at Nonggang by a Chinese ornithologist, Mr Jiang Aiwu, during work funded by the Kadoorie Farm Scholarship Programme. Our birds turned out to be the same, and he has since published a paper describing the bird as a new species, which has been named NONGGANG BABBLER. To see so well a bird that was then undescribed is one of the best moments of my birding career.
The best pics on the web are probably these two:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/travel/img/attachement/jpg/site1/20130313/002564bc654b12aa21290c.jpg
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?Bird_ID=2844&Bird_Image_ID=31315&p=5
It was great to enjoy close views of at least two Streaked Wren Babblers washing at the same spot. These showed a distinctive plain grey face and tiny white spots on the edges of the tertials and coverts. The last birds in were a couple of Grey-throated Babblers, which also gave very good views. Other birds seen that afternoon included a fine male Verditer, Bay Woodpecker, and Ruy enjoyed close views of two Buff-breasted Babblers, a limestone forest specialist which is only known in China from western Guangxi and southern Yunnan. It is one of the dullest-looking birds you will ever see, being described, justifiably, by Robson as “very nondescript”! However they have a delightful, cheerful song and a distinctive two note whistle, and turned out to be one of the more memorable birds we saw!
The next two days we spent all our birding time in the northern part of the core section of the reserve, between Long Feng and Long Zhang villages, covering a wide range of habitats including cassava, sugar cane, peanut and pasture cultivation, and variations of scrub and forest on the slopes of the ever-impressive karst formations. This proved to be our best area and one of my personal highlights was of seeing several White-winged Magpies, shrieking curses as they flushed from a scrub-edged watering hole. Over the next hour we watched them work their way slowly around the valley, soaring slowly across open spaces on stiff wings, and climbing from tree to tree up the high, forested slopes of the valley and out of sight.
That same evening we heard the powerful ringing song of Large Scimitar Babbler and the even louder cacophony of a Bar-backed Partridge from the wooded slopes, but never stood a chance of seeing either of these very skulking birds.
Other birds behaved rather better – Sultan Tits gave good views on several occasions, and on the closest views Karen noted that the bright yellow feathers of the crest are so long that they flop freely about, rather than staying stiffly upright like Red-whiskered Bulbul.
On four occasions we watched birds coming down to drink from man-made waterholes. The forest was very dry, to the point where the leaves of many shrubs were visibly wilting, and this provided us the opportunity for close views of some otherwise rather secretive birds. Most noticeable were the White-throated Fantails – bouncing manically about, their black, white-tipped tail spread wide in a perfect fan. They were generally the first of a mixed flock to pluck up the courage to come down and drink, opening the way for the Grey-cheeked Fulvettas, Rufous-capped, Grey-throated, Buff-breasted and Striped Tit Babblers to follow. The pool at Long Zhang also attracted a good number of migrants – with Rufous-tailed Robin, Chestnut Bunting and Black-breasted Thrushes all coming down to drink and feed on the muddy fringes of the pool.
However the real stars were two shyer birds – both of which have a very restricted range in China. We saw White-rumped Shama, including a spectacular long-tailed adult male, on three occasions, while the breathtakingly beautiful Indochinese Green Magpie was more elusive – skulking deep in cover, before dropping swiftly onto the banks of the pool. When it did emerge the contrast between the brilliant green face and jet-black mask and bright red bill beggared description. Fortunately, each time it showed the uniform green tertials were clearly seen – allowing separation from the longer tailed, but rather similar, Common Green Magpie (which we did not see).
Other good birds here included a wonderful single-day count of nine Streaked Wren-Babblers - they clearly thrive on winkling insects out of the rain–cut crevices and miniature ecosystems that seem to form on every limestone boulder. Bay and Rufous Woodpeckers and Great Barbet were each seen once, but it seemed that many larger birds (including Silver-breasted and Long-tailed Broadbills) we had hoped to see were absent.
On our final morning we visited the Longrui section of the reserve, some 2 hours southeast of Nonggang. This area is known as a site for Dusky Crag Martin (along the river) and Oriental Pied Hornbill, a very rare bird in China, which is still seen deep in the heart of the reserve. We saw neither, but have a much better idea of how to find them on future visits.
After staying in a wonderful wooden building at the Minzu Fandian Hotel in Longrui, a stiff climb up into the reserve produced 5 more White-winged Magpies, another Indochinese Green Magpie, the distinctly kooky Green-billed Malkoha, our first Black-crested Bulbuls, and a Pale-footed Bush Warbler. Unspectacular but significant, we recorded a range extension for Dark-necked Tailorbird (a female), which previously was only known from the Chunxiu Nature Reserve, which immediately abuts the Vietnam border some 70-odd kilometres to the west.
Our final birds came along the river and from the car. Having seen no raptors except for a pair of Kestrels at Nonggang, we added a Crested Goshawk, two Black-shouldered Kites and another Kestrel on the way to the airport, a Black-capped Kingfisher along the river, and three different Blue Rock Thrushes (of both the all-blue pandoo race and the red-bellied philippensis race), one of which spent several minutes foraging on the balconies and railings of the hotel’s wooden buildings.
Other wildlife seen during our stay included three species of squirrel (including an impressively large one with a deep rufous belly, a large troupe of Rhesus Macacques and a group of six Black Langurs, which gave wonderful views perched in cliffbound trees high above us on a limestone crag, and a large insectivorous bat. We also heard the loud, distinctive call of Tokay Geckos on two evenings.
Our thanks go to Mr Tan in Nanning and the management and staff of the Nonggang Reserve, Lee Kwok Shing of Kadoorie Farm and Jiang Aiwu for providing information on the birds we were likely to see, and especially our ever cheerful driver, Mr Sun for doing everything they could to ensure we had an enjoyable and successful trip.
Cheers
Mike
http://www.b-paper.com/tag/cenwanglaoshan-nature-reserve.
There are also a few follow-up papers on the reintroduction.
I've also dug out an old report on my visit to Nonggang:
Nong Gang Shan National Nature Reserve, Southwest Guangxi
9 - 13 November, 2006
This short trip was planned at the last minute to visit Nonggang Shan, one of the best birding areas in western Guangxi, and combined some wonderful, difficult-to-see Chinese birds against a majestic background of Guilin-style karst limestone hills.
Arrangements were made swiftly and smoothly through Mr Tan of the Guangxi Forestry Bureau, and after a 1-hour flight from Shenzhen we made a 90-minute transfer from Nanning airport to Longzhou, the county town, arriving at 2:30am! We had just four hours of sleep before taking another 40 minute drive to the reserve protection station, which was set amidst sugar-cane fields and completely surrounded by a breathtaking rampart of karst limestone crags, and begun birding around 7:30.
Leaving the station we walked along a track that passed swiftly from the sugar cane into the fringe of shrubland dotted with occasional tall trees that provided a green “skirt” to the base of each of the karst outcrops.
Our first good bird wave produced our only White-browed Piculet, a probable Chinese Leaf and Sulphur-breasted Warblers (the former would be a “first” for Guangxi, but very difficult to separate from Lemon-rumped Warbler, so no official claim will be made), the first of many Grey-cheeked Fulvettas and Striped Tit-Babblers, and mixed flocks of Red-whiskered and “Hainan” Chinese Bulbul. In contrast to the familiar white-naped race from Hong Kong, Hainan Bulbul has an all-black cap with a single neat, white earspot. Curiously, this was the only day we saw any numbers of this species.
Also of interest was a briefly-seen Broad-billed Warbler, which showed a rather open plain grey face with just the hint of a pale eyering – totally different from the contrasting facial pattern of Chestnut-crowned Warbler, which we saw several times over the next few days. We also saw a male Small Niltava, a Sooty Flycatcher and several Puff-throated Bulbuls – which have a rather harsh shout of a call.
The afternoon session started dramatically with a group of five White-winged Magpies – our major target bird for the trip. We leaped out of the van to have brief views of a single perched bird and flight views of the departing flock – each bird showing a broad white tail with a black band, making them look eerily (and briefly, heart-stoppingly) similar to Black-collared Starling. They also soar on stiff wings – just like the starling, but somehow manage to fly even slower, and with an assurance bordering on arrogance.
However, even more than these, my personal highlight of the day was finding a number of babblers washing and drinking from a hidden pool in the bole of a tree some 10 meters into the forest. The first bird we saw here was a mysterious, all-dark babbler, which we had seen earlier in the day and tentatively identified as a very dark and undescribed race of Limestone Wren Babbler. A party of four or five it fed among leaf litter and in crevices of limestone outcrops beneath a closed canopy. In the afternoon we had wonderful views, as several birds returned repeatedly to the bole in the tree and emerged to shake off the water and preen nearby. Even before washing they looked darker than any race of Limestone Wren babbler, (but superficially similar to pix on the Oriental Bird Images website www.orientalbirdimages.org of Limestone Wren Babbler taken in northern Vietnam), and lacked the streaking on the back and sides that the illustrations show. The birds did show a narrow white throat patch, which looked like a short broad tie – with dark grey streaks on a white background. However, with closer views the plot thickened. The birds also showed a short broad white crescent on the lower rear edge of the ear coverts, a feature shared by no other babbler illustrated in Robson. It also had a whitish iris (possibly with a faint bluish cast), which separates it from all other wren babblers, and indeed all other babblers! Earlier in the day I thought I saw an olive cast to the wings and that afternoon, a chestnut wash to the crown. The remainder of the plumage, bill and legs were black.
Before leaving for this trip I had been shown photos of a bird had previously been trapped and photographed earlier in 2006 at Nonggang by a Chinese ornithologist, Mr Jiang Aiwu, during work funded by the Kadoorie Farm Scholarship Programme. Our birds turned out to be the same, and he has since published a paper describing the bird as a new species, which has been named NONGGANG BABBLER. To see so well a bird that was then undescribed is one of the best moments of my birding career.
The best pics on the web are probably these two:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/travel/img/attachement/jpg/site1/20130313/002564bc654b12aa21290c.jpg
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?Bird_ID=2844&Bird_Image_ID=31315&p=5
It was great to enjoy close views of at least two Streaked Wren Babblers washing at the same spot. These showed a distinctive plain grey face and tiny white spots on the edges of the tertials and coverts. The last birds in were a couple of Grey-throated Babblers, which also gave very good views. Other birds seen that afternoon included a fine male Verditer, Bay Woodpecker, and Ruy enjoyed close views of two Buff-breasted Babblers, a limestone forest specialist which is only known in China from western Guangxi and southern Yunnan. It is one of the dullest-looking birds you will ever see, being described, justifiably, by Robson as “very nondescript”! However they have a delightful, cheerful song and a distinctive two note whistle, and turned out to be one of the more memorable birds we saw!
The next two days we spent all our birding time in the northern part of the core section of the reserve, between Long Feng and Long Zhang villages, covering a wide range of habitats including cassava, sugar cane, peanut and pasture cultivation, and variations of scrub and forest on the slopes of the ever-impressive karst formations. This proved to be our best area and one of my personal highlights was of seeing several White-winged Magpies, shrieking curses as they flushed from a scrub-edged watering hole. Over the next hour we watched them work their way slowly around the valley, soaring slowly across open spaces on stiff wings, and climbing from tree to tree up the high, forested slopes of the valley and out of sight.
That same evening we heard the powerful ringing song of Large Scimitar Babbler and the even louder cacophony of a Bar-backed Partridge from the wooded slopes, but never stood a chance of seeing either of these very skulking birds.
Other birds behaved rather better – Sultan Tits gave good views on several occasions, and on the closest views Karen noted that the bright yellow feathers of the crest are so long that they flop freely about, rather than staying stiffly upright like Red-whiskered Bulbul.
On four occasions we watched birds coming down to drink from man-made waterholes. The forest was very dry, to the point where the leaves of many shrubs were visibly wilting, and this provided us the opportunity for close views of some otherwise rather secretive birds. Most noticeable were the White-throated Fantails – bouncing manically about, their black, white-tipped tail spread wide in a perfect fan. They were generally the first of a mixed flock to pluck up the courage to come down and drink, opening the way for the Grey-cheeked Fulvettas, Rufous-capped, Grey-throated, Buff-breasted and Striped Tit Babblers to follow. The pool at Long Zhang also attracted a good number of migrants – with Rufous-tailed Robin, Chestnut Bunting and Black-breasted Thrushes all coming down to drink and feed on the muddy fringes of the pool.
However the real stars were two shyer birds – both of which have a very restricted range in China. We saw White-rumped Shama, including a spectacular long-tailed adult male, on three occasions, while the breathtakingly beautiful Indochinese Green Magpie was more elusive – skulking deep in cover, before dropping swiftly onto the banks of the pool. When it did emerge the contrast between the brilliant green face and jet-black mask and bright red bill beggared description. Fortunately, each time it showed the uniform green tertials were clearly seen – allowing separation from the longer tailed, but rather similar, Common Green Magpie (which we did not see).
Other good birds here included a wonderful single-day count of nine Streaked Wren-Babblers - they clearly thrive on winkling insects out of the rain–cut crevices and miniature ecosystems that seem to form on every limestone boulder. Bay and Rufous Woodpeckers and Great Barbet were each seen once, but it seemed that many larger birds (including Silver-breasted and Long-tailed Broadbills) we had hoped to see were absent.
On our final morning we visited the Longrui section of the reserve, some 2 hours southeast of Nonggang. This area is known as a site for Dusky Crag Martin (along the river) and Oriental Pied Hornbill, a very rare bird in China, which is still seen deep in the heart of the reserve. We saw neither, but have a much better idea of how to find them on future visits.
After staying in a wonderful wooden building at the Minzu Fandian Hotel in Longrui, a stiff climb up into the reserve produced 5 more White-winged Magpies, another Indochinese Green Magpie, the distinctly kooky Green-billed Malkoha, our first Black-crested Bulbuls, and a Pale-footed Bush Warbler. Unspectacular but significant, we recorded a range extension for Dark-necked Tailorbird (a female), which previously was only known from the Chunxiu Nature Reserve, which immediately abuts the Vietnam border some 70-odd kilometres to the west.
Our final birds came along the river and from the car. Having seen no raptors except for a pair of Kestrels at Nonggang, we added a Crested Goshawk, two Black-shouldered Kites and another Kestrel on the way to the airport, a Black-capped Kingfisher along the river, and three different Blue Rock Thrushes (of both the all-blue pandoo race and the red-bellied philippensis race), one of which spent several minutes foraging on the balconies and railings of the hotel’s wooden buildings.
Other wildlife seen during our stay included three species of squirrel (including an impressively large one with a deep rufous belly, a large troupe of Rhesus Macacques and a group of six Black Langurs, which gave wonderful views perched in cliffbound trees high above us on a limestone crag, and a large insectivorous bat. We also heard the loud, distinctive call of Tokay Geckos on two evenings.
Our thanks go to Mr Tan in Nanning and the management and staff of the Nonggang Reserve, Lee Kwok Shing of Kadoorie Farm and Jiang Aiwu for providing information on the birds we were likely to see, and especially our ever cheerful driver, Mr Sun for doing everything they could to ensure we had an enjoyable and successful trip.
Cheers
Mike
DavidJStanton
Member
Hi Mike (not in HK!)
I'd be very interested to hear inparticualr of any Collared Crow records you may get when birding out in the area around Baise.
Good luck and enjoy yourself there, it looks like it could be a good patch.
Cheers
Dave
I'd be very interested to hear inparticualr of any Collared Crow records you may get when birding out in the area around Baise.
Good luck and enjoy yourself there, it looks like it could be a good patch.
Cheers
Dave
