[china guy]

Hi John - just did a check of of Xeno-canto - still no section for birder's babies!!!!
This year we guided, Dutch birder, John van der Woude and his wife Nollie - these guys were among the very first contributors to Xeno-canto.

And I've just obtained a recording of a species not available on the Xeno-canto site - Grey-hooded Parrotbill
Yesterday I returned from a quick visit to Wawu to pick up one of my birders who had been taking a few days solo - other Parrotbill calls I got on this trip were Brown and Ashy-throated - I've also included the flock noise of Golden Parrotbill taken on the west of Wawu.

Recordings

1- Grey-hooded Parrotbill - a flock of around 15 birds - we ran into this bird 3 times during this last visit

2 - Brown Parrotbill - around 20 birds, including young

3 - Ashy-throated Parrotbill calls - from a a location outside the park

4 - Golden Parrotbills - a flock in the rain

[MKinHK]

Pix from your trip to Wawu with Peter and Michelle , including some choice parrotbills and a killer Red Panda shot are now up on the HKBWS BBS here:
http://www.hkbws.org.hk/BBS/viewthread.php?tid=14470

Cheers
Mike

[James Eaton]

Wow, I love that panda! Great to see the old pale Red Panda is still about (the last photo), I remember speaking to Robbie the researcher in June and he hadn't seen that individual all year - have you seen him this year often Sid?
The first photo looks like the same one we saw in June.

James

[china guy]

Hi James - that bear, and all the the other photos are blocked out here - can't have been enough Red in the Red Panda, so must be a dangerous enemy of the state!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I must admit my Red Panda sightings haven't been too numerous this year - however got to see one last Thursday - but not the pale animal. The only time I've ever seen a really pale Red Panda was last year, during May, at the bottom section about 5km from the park gate - we got one going through the grass on the verge and then crossing the road. This was the only time we've made a sighting of this species away from the top.

Luckily Peter and Michelle have sent me some of their photos - I was quite excited about the Plain-backed Thrush!!!!!!!

Here are some more Wawu calls from my last trip

1 - another incredible Bush Warbler song - this time Spotted.
And on the subject of Bush Warblers my last trip, that ended a couple of days back, gave us more fun with Chestnut-crowned. We were lucky enough to get some nano-second glimpses - but that bird is just brilliant at being able to sing at arms length distance, while still remaining perfectly hidden in the bamboo!!!!!!!

2 - another loud and noisy bird - Buffy Laughingthrush from the mid section.

3 - a rather more sedate noise - Greenish Warbler

4 - and finally a Chinese endemic - Slaty Bunting. This is a Female with two young that were flying but still being fed

[Bob Planque]

Hi China Guy,

So why not post those recordings on xeno-canto and help us all out?

We are always happy to offer new functionality at x-c, so if you could explain what you meant by "birder's babies", maybe we could help out.

happy birding!
Bob
xeno-canto.org

[china guy]

Hi Bob - I've made a lot of use of your collection at Xeno Canto - a fantastic resource for all birders. You Xeno canto guys are true ornithological heroes!!!!!!
This evening I registered and uploaded the Grey-hooded Parrotbill call - I'll follow up with more recordings.
As for the birders babies - well that was just a joke about a recording of my new-born son that I uploaded here at birdforum - I don't think his or any other hungry baby squeals will be much use on your site.

I can also see that Delia Todd is using my calls for the Opus -
Delia - you uploaded a recording of the Pygmy Wren Babbler call - however a more useful sound for finding this bird would be the highly characteristic three blind mice song of this bird (sometimes it'll sing just the first two notes) - which I've uploaded here on this post. A bird which is much heard but often very difficult to see.

Another Timaliidae call I recorded on this last trip was Red-tailed Minla - from the west of Wawu.

And a couple of Yuhina calls from the top of Wawu -
The first is Stripe-throated Yuhina (in the background you can hear my Dutch guest making a commentary as he videos the birds).
And the second is the manic call of White-collared Yuhina.

[Bob Planque]

That's the spirit, Sid. Hope to see more cuts coming soon. And thanks for the compliment!
cheers,
Bob

[china guy]

New baby has meant me being rather grounded over the last few weeks - but Saker is such a good little boy, that we're now talking about getting out and about again for some birding.

Last week I went with Roland to Qinglong Lake, inthe East of Chengdu. No Pheasant-tailed Jacanas but my first Purple Heron for the Sichuan.

This summer gave us some great guests - including two sets of very nice Dutch birders who both made online reports of their visits -

This link is to the report from John and Nollie Van Der Woude -
http://www.jvanderw.nl/tripreports/China2011/report.html

A nice relaxed trip - we got a decent list even though we gave Jiuzhaigou a miss.
Highlight bird for me on this trip was the singing Gansu Leaf Warbler at Baxi - otherwise we got our Monals and some late snow gave us gripping views of large flocks of Grandala.

The second report from Ben Dielissen is in whole other format - a picture album. These photos - there are a lot of scenery/culture pics - really captures the mood of a Sichuan birding trip, with the habitat we bird, the places we visit and the people we bump into. You can see Ben's work, China 2011, here -
http://www.albelli.nl/onlinefotoboek...2-2f67caf9f421

The comments are in Dutch - but the images do all the talking.

Both trips ran into the danger of me having to give up the tours and head back home to aid a pregnant Meggie - and during Ben's trip she delivered! Luckily Meggie's brother could take over the driving - and I rejoined his trip at the very end to take him through Wawu.

This period has also been used to build my new website. Still not finished it's starting to take shape and can be seen here - http://sichuanbirding.cloudaccess.net/

You can see my calls are going down on the site - http://sichuanbirding.cloudaccess.ne...ird-calls.html
There's still a lot left to upload. Here are 5 more calls -

1 the first call is something I found in my old recordings - Grey-sided Bush Warbler - an ancient MP3 I made on Emei in 2009. This would have been a great call for an uncommon Sichuan bird - but then came that tour bus tearing up the mountain, and for some reason I wasn't able to get another chance!!!! Not my greatest effort - that's unless your a rabid bus enthusiast - then you should be able to ID manufacturer and how many passengers its carrying.

2 Still on the Bush Warbler theme - Yellowish-bellied Bush Warbler - made during Ben's trip, in the rain, from the West of Wawu. You can hear other YB Bush warblers calling in the background - I agitated them all with a bit of Owl - a Lesser Cuckoo pipes up and right at the end there's a overhead Minivet.

3 Claudia's Leaf Warbler - this recording taken by the hotels at the mid section of Wawu during a May visit. The other Leaf Warbler you can hear is Large-billed - both faint calls and a more distinctive song

4 Spotted Laughingthrush - from the west side of the Old Erlang Road made this August. During that little trek we were actually after Barred Laughers - but could only pick them up from distant calls - without being able to get them to move in closer. Calls in the background include a Claudia's LW, Elliot's Laugher and those grating calls are from a mixed flock that were made up of Tits (Green-backed, Yellow-browed and Rufous-vented) and White-browed Fulvetta.

5 here's a great duet - lead in bird is Daurian Redstart - but main vocals get taken over by a rather loud Chinese Bamboo Partridge. there's actually a second Partridge in there answering the main call - other birds are Oriental Greenfinch and a very brief Bulbul - which I'm nearly sure is Brown-breasted.

[johnjemi]

Sid and Meggie,
Belated congratulations from us on your recent addition to the "Sichuanbirding" Team !
There are many great photos on the new website. Liked the photo album by the Dutch guy, too.

J & J

[Gretchen]

The new site looks great - lots of info and great to have so many photos. This should be very helpful to people wanting to know about sichuan birds.

[Du Nok]

Yes,the new website is really good with lots of information,well done,Sid.I would love to see you again after next year.

[delia todd]

I can also see that Delia Todd is using my calls for the Opus -
Delia - you uploaded a recording of the Pygmy Wren Babbler call - however a more useful sound for finding this bird would be the highly characteristic three blind mice song of this bird (sometimes it'll sing just the first two notes) - which I've uploaded here on this post. A bird which is much heard but often very difficult to see.

Thanks very much Sid. I've uploaded this one in addition, along with your helpful notes.

Sorry for the delay in responding to this, I've got a bit behind hand trying to catch up on everything after a holiday in Abergavenny.

Hope the bairn is doing fine.

D

[china guy]

Thanks a lot for all that positive feedback on the site. Still want to add a lot more - butterflies and insects, flowers and more general info on ordinary, but always important stuff that were always getting asked, like money changing, Sichuan weather, local food and what clothing to take. I'll get there eventually!!!!!!!!

However - as you can see from the photo - most work at the moment is getting the new birder in our team a little up to scratch with his new vocation. That pic shows new-guy getting to grips with some optics - and what a start to his birding.
First trip out to Jinma River and he got in to a fall of Wryneck - I must have seen 5 birds - looking over my back he could of seen more, but he never tells me what he sees (hope he isn't going to turn out to be a selfish birder).

Second day out with Roland - we got two new birds for our Sichuan list on the river near the Chengdu exhibition center - 3 Marsh Sandpiper and a single Ruff. A few other waders about - with about 7 Black-winged Stilt and many Wood Sandpiper and Temmincks Stint.

And today I visited one of my old haunts in N Chengdu - and one of the species seen was Red-billed Starling, which so often appears on visitor's wish lists. I've seen this bird several times in this area where old railway sidings border old brick buildings, trees and overgrown areas of semi-scrub. My best area for this tick within the city.

Delia its great you're using the calls - and your mention of Abergavenny brought back pleasant memories.

here's some more calls

1 - Black-faced bunting one of the birds seen on Saker's first birding trip - here's the song from the Jiuzaighou area recorded during June

2 - Chinese Grosbeak - a bird seen on Saker's second birding day even though I only got a brief view out of the car window. Here's the song recorded in May from NE Sichuan

3 - Streak-breasted Scimitar Babbler - once talked in a post ages back about how this species sometimes gave a call I likened to the sound of "sweet birdy." You can hear it if you use a tad of imagination. Again a call from NE Sichuan. Possible to see in a Chengdu park - but not a common city bird .

4 - Lesser Cuckoo - maybe the most rousing of this post's calls. From just outside Wawu this June

[Jeff hopkins]

I love the picture: "Dad! Give me the binoculars! I wanna see!"

[firstreesjohn]

Could somebody carry me around like that, please ?

Especially up & down all those blasted steps !

Lurv the site.

[china guy]

The way this baby is growing it won't be so long before he stakes his claim on my bins through sheer muscle power!!!!!!
And John - you wanting someone to haul you about while birding - sounds like you're getting carried away??????

On the subject of Babies - got a couple this morning - two very young Chinese Bamboo Partridge. The parent bird flew up onto an embankment - the rest of the family waited, bellow, until I walked past.

At the moment we're out in NE Sichuan - and yesterday I got a Sichuan lifer - an Osprey.
My only other China record of this bird comes from Hainan.

pictures -

1 Chinese Bamboo Partridge - the rugrat version

2 That Osprey - in Sichuan they're recorded at Ruoergai on passage

3 Siberian Stonchat (female) - lots of these passage birds today

4 at the moment I'm taking a lot of Butterfly photos for the site - this is Papilio protenor or Spangle Butterfly

[Jeff hopkins]

Originally Posted by china guy

3 Siberian Stonechat (female) - lots of these passage birds today

We had a large fallout of stonechats in Wuhu yesterday, too, so they were apparently moving along a broad front. Interesting.

[china guy]

We had a large fallout of stonechats in Wuhu yesterday, too, so they were apparently moving along a broad front. Interesting

Hi Jeff - an interesting thing with the Stonechats we have in China is the question of where they're from. The birds that you saw the other day and my birds could come from different races and breeding populations. - which leads us onto the question of splits.

Wuhu, in the east, must be on the route south for S. maurus stejnegri - a race that breeds NE China. This species has been nominated as full split - Stejneger's Sonechat. According to this wiki article the evidence is in the form of genetic work -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stejneger%27s_Stonechat
Which leads us to this abstract -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19464380
the all important quote from this goes -

We found that two widespread neighboring Eurasian subspecies of Siberian stonechat, Saxicola maura maura and S. m. stejnegeri, although very similar in appearance, are not each other's closest relatives. Eastern Asian S. m. stejnegeri appears to have split from other Palearctic, African, and island stonechats well before differentiation occurred among the latter taxa. Our data indicate that European (S. t. rubicola), central Palearctic (S. m. maura) and eastern Palearctic (S. m. stejnegeri) are independently evolving, and could each warrant separate species status, as assumed earlier for S. rubicola, S. maura and S. torquata.

Great stuff - now all we need is a DNA kit to differentiate between our Siberian and Stejneger's ticks - or extremely tame birds that will sit still so we can measure bills -

differing in only small details, notably having a slightly broader-based bill 4.7–5.7 mm wide (4.0–4.9 mm wide in Siberian Stonechat) and slightly less white on the rump

The race have around here - the breeding Stonechat in Central and Western China - is supposed to be przewalkskii - but is that a race of Siberian or Stejneger's????????

Home yesterday from our trip to NE Sichuan - some pics

1 with no rump, that broad wingstripe with the dark edgings and those nice black and white tertials a Yellow-browed Warbler. That dull crown suggests it must be going into its first winter. Lots of Yellow-browed about. They can be easier to draw out than some of the other leaf warblers.

2 Rufous-faced Warbler - common but sometimes a little allusive. I managed to coax this bird out of thick cover.

3 Mandarin Ratsnake - what a beauty. I had to put this one up on the reptile thread for an ID - luckily Rockfowk gave me an almost instant response. This snake is supposed to be a shy species that spends most of its time in burrows hunting rodents. Although non-poisonous they can be aggressive when cornered - this guy made a lunge at me.

4 Here's another beauty - but I don't know what it's going to turn into. Somewhere I've seen a picture of this larva - or at least a very similar one - but looking through my books today I couldn't find it!!!!!!!

[MKinHK]

That YBW would certainly provoke thoughts of Hume's down here, Sid

What a superb snake!

Was it my pic of a caterpillar here that this one reminded you of?

Mine has the extra funk factor of having candyfloss-pink hair, but they must be the same family

Cheers
Mike

[china guy]

Hi Mike it must be your caterpillar pic - unsuccessfully just tried to find it - where is it?

That leaf warbler does look Humey - but the pic here better shows those "showy" tertials and gives a feint coronal stripe stretching over the full crown, that should be seen on a 1st winter YBW.

The second pic is of the adult version - which were also about.

[MKinHK]

The "here" is hyperlinked Sid, but not very visibly, otherwise just go to post No 568 on the Ng Tung Chai thread.

Cheers
Mike

[Gretchen]

I will have to digest the stonechat info - thanks for all the details. I was just looking at one the other day which didn't look quite as I expected...

Nice pic of the rufous-faced - quite a handsome guy! Interesting to hear discussion of YBW vs. Humes too (though I won't be weighing in on additional features at this point!)

Looking at your very hairy caterpillar here and seeing this entry at BESG blog here on how birds eat these caterpillars was quite interesting. Have you ever watched birds eating this kind of caterpillar? It seems unlikely to me that they could really rub off the hair, put this writer seems to think that's what's going on, and it makes sense that the hair is a kind of defense mechanism (hadn't quite thought of that before).

[Jeff hopkins]

According to Clements, stejnegeri is a monotypic group, while the maurus group includes variegatus, armenicus, maurus, indicus and przewalskii. Mind you, they still haven't split stonechat into European, African and Siberian, yet, so anything can still happen.

The good news for the twitcher in me is saying I've seen "Siberian Stonechat" in both Central Asia (S. m. maurus) and Hong Kong (S. m. Stejnegeri) as well as here in Wuhu, so I don't really have to figure out which supspecies is here. Though like you I suspect stejnegeri.

The inquisitive birder in me wishes there were a way to distinguish.

[china guy]

Jeff - one site, which gets mentioned as a good picture resource - Netfugl.dk - has pictures of China East coast Stonechats, which it labels as Stejneger's Stonechat.
http://www.netfugl.dk/species.php?id...t&birdid=21445
This can be compared with their page on Siberian Stonechat
http://www.netfugl.dk/species.php?id=factsheet&birdid=21440

I suspect they've made they've made their ID on geographic rather than strong plumage or vocalization evidence.
With S. m. przewalskii as a ssp. of Siberian, if a birder accepted these splits, then two Stonechat ticks for China - both of which should turn up in Sichuan.

Hi Mike - yes our caterpillars are family. I found another example, of a very similar specimen, on a Singapore blog where the author also can't give it a name. I think the pictures that reminded me of the caterpillar were of one of the Orgyia caterpillars -
http://bugguide.net/node/view/130908
with that crazy hairstyle it looks like it may have a chance of being related to ours

Gretchen - it isn't just Cuckoos that give their prey a quick rubbing down - several species do the same when they rub off bee-stings - I've seen Long-tailed Shrike doing that, but unfortunately never a Cuckoo working down a hairy caterpillar.

[sichuan jiujiu]

Below I put the images of two juvenile birds.

The first is a White-throated Redstart kiddy taken in August this year in Northern Sichuan. The fast changing colours of the plumage sometimes make it a puzzle to get a certain ID of the birds. Only if you see the adults around you can be sure.
The next picture shows a young Northern Goshawk who was the one to be puzzled. This fellow didn't know what to do with me stalking around the tree taking pictures - it seemed quite inexperienced. He also showed no interest in a playback from a German Northern Goshawk. Probably never had the chance to hear one so far