[thrush]

Originally Posted by viator

Hi Craig, I follow the IOC list (mostly) so yes I for would go with your proposed treatment.

'Ppreciate the input, viator.

[thrush]

Were you aware that the WHITE-BELLIED ERPORNIS (白腹凤鹛, báifù fèngméi, Erpornis zantholeuca) may be a part of Vireonidae, an otherwise completely New World family? Please enjoy this image that I got this year, then give me your thoughts. To which family does this puzzling bird belong? As I write my e-Guide to the Birds of China, shall I keep this species in Timaliidae or move it into Vireonidae?

[thirudevaram]

Originally Posted by thrush

Again, this second-winter individual from the Huangpu River on Saturday leans Mongolian.

Something affirmative for Vega! Don't ask me why. As you always say, put a gun to my head, i would say "I don't know".

[thrush]

Originally Posted by thirudevaram

Something affirmative for Vega! Don't ask me why. As you always say, put a gun to my head, i would say "I don't know".

Hey Dev, when the discussion is about herring-gull gulls, then the subject is almost always species and subspecies. Below, I have some questions about other Chinese birds. Here, the problem is family. Anyone care to help?

1. Is fire-tailed myzornis (Myzornis pyrrhoura) better placed in Timaliidae or in Sylviidae? (My current placement: Timaliidae)

2. Is the golden-breasted "fulvetta" (Lioparus chrysotis) better placed in Timaliidae or in Sylviidae? (My current placement: Timaliidae)

3. Does the Chinese hill babbler (Rhopophilus pekinensis) belong in Cisticolidae, Timaliidae, or Sylviidae? (My current placement: Timaliidae)

4. Shall I place Przevalski's finch (Urocynchramus pylzowi) in the new, unispecific family Urocynchramidae, keep it in Fringillidae, or move it to Emberizidae? (My current placement: Urocynchramidae)

[MKinHK]

Craig

My suggestion would be to save the pain of agonizing over the twists and turns of taxonomy (not many birders have the least notion of mitochondrial DNA anyway) is to outsource the worry by choosing one list to follow.

Cheers
Mike

[thrush]

Originally Posted by MKinHK

Craig

My suggestion would be to save the pain of agonizing over the twists and turns of taxonomy (not many birders have the least notion of mitochondrial DNA anyway) is to outsource the worry by choosing one list to follow.

Cheers
Mike

I hear you, Mike. The only problem is, I want my book to reflect some originality on my part. I don't want to sell myself wholesale to a single authority. I'm deferring to the Handbook, except in cases where HBW is clearly out-of-date.

[thrush]

China probably has representatives of 107 bird families. That's my count so far as I research and write my e-Guide to the Birds of China.

The tally includes

(1) Cacatuidae (in Hong Kong, there is a breeding population of feral yellow-crested cockatoos [小葵花凤头鹦鹉, xiǎo kuíhuāfèngtóu yīngwǔ, Cacatua sulphurea])

(2) Urocynchramidae (the Przevalski's "finch," [朱鹀, zhū wū, Urocynchramus pylzowi] recently found to be neither finch nor bunting but a bird of ancient lineage)

(3) Vireonidae (the vireos, formerly a purely New World family, now include the erpornis and the shrike-babblers)

(4) Calcariidae (longspurs and snow buntings; recently separated from Emberizidae)

(5) Panuridae (bearded reedling [文须雀, wénxū què, Panurus biarmicus])

Photo: A chestnut-fronted shrike-babbler (栗额䴗鹛, lì'é júméi, Pteruthius intermedius). I photographed this bird in February in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan, China.

[thrush]

In 2012, I birded the entire year; on 1 Jan. 2012 I was on a plane to Xīshuāngbǎnnà Prefecture in Yúnnán. I spent 83 days there. In 2012 I also took major trips to Xīnjiāng, Jiāngxī, and Jiāngsū. In Shànghǎi, I wrote the text for my e-Guide to the Birds of China.

It's only fitting that I ended 2012 with a bang.

I was at Xuánzhōng Temple in Shānxī from 30 Dec. 2012 to 2 Jan. 2013. My goal: to photograph the brown eared pheasant and to improve my understanding of the birds of north-central China.

The air was bitterly cold (as low as -20 degrees Celsius) but the bright sunshine made the days cheerful. The "temple flock" of six brown eared pheasants appeared every day.

I added five new species to my collection of photographs, bringing my lifetime total of species I've photographed to 608.

Newly Photographed Species

brown eared pheasant
Chinese hill babbler
Chinese nuthatch
long-tailed rosefinch
plain laughingthrush

Sunday 30 Dec. 2012

I caught an 8 a.m. flight from Hóngqiáo Airport in Shànghǎi to Tàiyuán, the capital of Shānxī. At Tàiyuán Airport, I rented a Volkswagen Bora. I drove west about an hour through Jiāochéng to Xuánzhōng Temple.

On the 4-km road that leads from the main road to the temple, I saw azure-winged magpies. Ring-necked pheasants were numerous, as were vinous-throated parrotbills.

The temple is in a gorge at 1000 m above sea level. The hills are covered with what the locals call bǎishù (柏树, "cypress"). It's a picturesque setting.

I saw the brown eared pheasants immediately. They were on a little bridge spanning the frozen stream. These pheasants are wild birds. They come and go as they please, they don't necessarily descend to the temple every day, and their diet consists mainly of wild food, even in winter. We threw out some maize to attract them.

I had two other new species on Sunday: the aptly named plain laughingthrush (very common around the temple, very tame, and very brown) and long-tailed rosefinch.

I viewed the flock of red-billed blue magpies that live around the temple. Eurasian tree sparrows are of course abundant, and there are Far Eastern great tits. Spotted doves and common magpies live around the temple.

Driving back down the hill, I saw a hoopoe and a grey-backed woodpecker. I was amazed at the great number of ring-necked pheasants; they were foraging right on the side of the road. I was finding one every few hundred meters.

I also came across a "non-temple" brown eared pheasant. The behavior of this wilder bird differed from that of the temple flock. This bird was spooked by my car. It ran along the road until it found a place where it could dart into the bushes.

The "non-temple" pheasant was a good sign. Its presence suggests that brown eared pheasants may be numerous in the area, with some of them subsisting completely independent of the temple.

Monday 31 Dec. 2012

Today, I delighted in my long and close encounter with the brown eared pheasants. Were these birds fully wild, I'd have at most fleeting glimpses of them. But if the temple flock were in a zoo, then their behavior would be radically modified. The flock at the temple are tame enough to allow one a good, long look at their behavior, yet wild enough to retain most of their essential characteristics. I watched them fly across the valley on their short, stubby wings; I observed them occasionally perching in the trees; I listened to their guttural coos and doglike barks; and I witnessed them tussling with and chasing one another.

My camera recorded many sorts of behavior. I was using a borrowed Nikon D3 and my Nikon 600mm f/4 lens.

Tuesday 1 Jan. 2013

Another bright and cold day at Xuánzhōng Temple. The main goal today was to improve my images of the pheasants, the plain laughingthrush, and the long-tailed rosefinches. Some long-tailed tits made a quick passage through the valley.

Wednesday 2 Jan. 2013

On my fourth and final day at Xuánzhōng, a large mixed-species flock passed through the temple grounds. Within the flock were a Chinese nuthatch and a willow tit (most likely Poecile montanus stoetzneri), two species I'd not photographed before. Coal tits were feeding among the needle-leaved trees, avoiding the bare broadleaved trees, which were the near-exclusive choice of the willow tit. The Far Eastern great tits in the flock, meanwhile, were going regularly to the ground, but the coal and willow tits almost never went to the ground. Despite the extremely cold temperatures, a Eurasian nuthatch was apparently managing to find dead or dormant insects under the bark. I photographed a spotted nutcracker high on the hill behind the temple and a Chinese hill babbler feeding among a flock of vinous-throated parrotbills.

I sped back to Tàiyuán Airport, returned my car, and flew back to Shànghǎi. At Xuánzhōng, I'd ended one year and begun a new one doing what I love most: birding.

[thrush]

Here's one of the "Songar" tits (Poecile montanus stoetzneri) from Xuánzhōng Temple.

[MKinHK]

A wonderful, highly original shot of the pheasant - fabulous!

Cheers
Mike

[thrush]

Originally Posted by MKinHK

A wonderful, highly original shot of the pheasant - fabulous!

Cheers
Mike

Thanks, Mike. The pheasants have plenty of personality and are a joy to watch. The temple environment provides a unique opportunity to study these birds--they're a perfect mixture of wildness and tameness.

[thrush]

A few more images of the brown eared pheasants. There's much more to see at www.craigbrelsford.com.

[thrush]

Xuánzhōng Temple is in a picturesque setting. The "sunny" shot was taken outside the complex and shows the cypress forest that covers the hills. This is the habitat of the brown eared pheasant.

The "shadow" shots are from the valley inside the temple area. The gorge is deep and narrow, and the winter sun hits the floor for only a few hours each day. It was iron-cold down there. The temple flock were using that area each day.

[thrush]

It took much effort, but eventually I was able to get clean, full-body shots of the long-tailed rosefinch.

[thrush]

This is Urocissa erythroryncha brevivexilla, separable from the more southerly erythroryncha by its paleness and greyness. Here, note the sooty plumage on the underparts, the white being reduced to the flanks. A flock of perhaps 10 red-billed blue magpies were scratching out a living around Xuánzhōng Temple.

[Frogfish]

Superb shots of the Rosefinch and BE Pheasant Craig !

[thrush]

Originally Posted by thrush

. . . Driving back down the hill, I saw a hoopoe and a grey-backed woodpecker. . . .

Correction: grey-headed woodpecker.

[thrush]

The photos here show a local man feeding a brown eared pheasant at Xuánzhōng Temple. The bird recognized the man's call and climbed the hill to meet him. The brown eared pheasants have come to depend on Xuánzhōng Temple, but not for handouts. The greatest service that Xuánzhōng and other temples in China provide is sanctuary. They serve as micro-preserves. Poachers shy away from the holy sites, and the sites often contain a remnant of good habitat. At Xuánzhōng and other temples, many species of bird become tame and accessible, somewhat as in public parks in Western Europe and North America.

[thrush]

I'm in Běijīng, preparing to give a speech in Chinese at the gala launch of the "Illustrated Handbook of the Birds of China" (中国鸟类图鉴, Zhōngguó Niǎolèi Tújiàn), a venture to which I have donated many photographs. I happen to look out the window of my assistant's apartment, and to my surprise I see a great spotted woodpecker. My assistant lives in a nondescript complex in the middle of Běijīng (Cháoyáng District); there are only a few tall trees in the complex, and the nearest public park is a 20-minute walk from here. The ornithological significance of the great spotted is probably that the cold winter has driven even woodpeckers into unaccustomed habitats, such as the deepest parts of a huge city.

我在北京，正在准备关于《中国鸟类图鉴》发布会的发言。我提供了很多鸟片给他们。我在我助理的房子里向窗外 看时，恰巧看到了一只大斑啄木鸟。我的助理住在北京朝阳区的一个普通的小区，小区里只有一些大树，最近的公 园也要走路二十分钟才能到。大斑啄木鸟无法适应寒冷的冬天，所以，它们飞到大城市的中心地带。

[thrush]

I just got back from Beijing, where on Friday, I gave a speech at a conference for the publication of "中国鸟类图鉴" (Zhōngguó Niǎolèi Tújiàn). The book, the first of its kind in the Chinese language, covers nearly all of the species of bird in China. Photographs illustrate the guide.

The book has several problems, beginning with its English name: "Field Guide to the Birds of China." The three-volume work, which weighs 11 kilograms, isn't a "field" guide at all; a more proper name would be "handbook."

In addition, the mission of the book isn't clear. Is it a tool for research, or a book to celebrate and appreciate birds? The book includes very brief descriptions of the species, there are no maps, and Latin names are not used (only Chinese and English).

I see the "Field Guide" serving as a kind of introduction to Chinese birds for the Chinese person with very little experience. The mere size and weight of the book are impressive; the Chinese reader who knows nothing about the birds of his own country will be shocked that a book on Chinese birds can fill three large volumes.

I was invited late to join the project; only about 30 of my photos are included. I was the only foreigner in the project.

The editors had a rule: Every image had to be taken in China. The set sells for 2,800 yuan.

By the standards of, say, "The Handbook of the Birds of the World," this new "Field Guide to the Birds of China" will seem amateurish. As one of the speakers said on Friday, "This handbook needs to be a beginning, not an end."

Slowly, an interest in birds is growing among Chinese people. The "Field Guide" is a step in the right direction.

Here's the English version of my short speech, which I delivered in Chinese:

Remarks on the Publication of the "Field Guide to the Birds of China"
by Craig Brelsford
Guiguo Hotel, Beijing, China
Friday 11 January 2013

Hello, everyone. My name is Craig Brelsford. I live in Shanghai, I'm from the United States, and I'm a writer and bird photographer. I have another name, "Big Hill Finch (Da Shan Que)." Why do I call myself Big Hill Finch? Because many Chinese people, hearing me speak Chinese, think that they've met Big Hill (Da Shan), the famous Canadian man, and they say, "Wow, your Chinese is great! Are you . . . Big Hill?

I hate to disappoint them, so I say, "Yes, I'm Big Hill . . . Finch!"

Congratulations on the successful publication of the "Field Guide to the Birds of China"! This book is important and it was difficult to make. I'm honored that my photographs have been included in this book.

Only people who dare to dream could write this book. They spent five years realizing their dream, and now, look--their product is right in front of us. These beautiful volumes cover the birds of China.

Someday soon, in some city in China, a boy, perhaps 12, will go to a library. He'll have many books to choose from, but because you have created the "Field Guide to the Birds of China," this boy will choose your book. When he opens it, he'll discover a new world: the world of the birds of China. It's a rich world, it's a world that really exists, and it's a world that is out there waiting to be discovered.

Because you have created the "Field Guide to the Birds of China":

Our 12-year-old boy will take an interest in birds;

By the time he's 22, he'll love birds;

When he's 32, he'll be an expert on birds;

And when he's 42, he'll take his son out birding, fostering in a new generation an interest in and love of birds.

This Field Guide plants seeds. It plants seeds of interest in birds into the minds of its readers. That seed can grow into a love of birds and a desire to protect birds and the environment in China.

China currently is undergoing an environmental disaster. National effort is required to solve this problem. Ancient China built the Great Wall, a huge national undertaking; today, China urgently needs to create a "Great Wall of the Environment." This Field Guide is a cornerstone in the new environmental Great Wall.

I'm proud to have contributed to the "Field Guide to the Birds of China." May it lead to greater appreciation and protection of and greater love for China's rich ornithological heritage!

[AndrewHeath]

The book project sounds fascinating and thank you for sharing. I can't help but ask - what's with the price? 2800RMB is absolutely insane, particularly for a domestic publication.

I realize pictures aren't cheap, but if you sell 3 copies what's the point? The viable market segment for a book like that in China is .... ?

EDIT - to be clear I am NOT criticizing you, I am just hoping you can shed some light on the project leader(s) pricing strategy.

[thrush]

Originally Posted by AndrewHeath

The book project sounds fascinating and thank you for sharing. I can't help but ask - what's with the price? 2800RMB is absolutely insane, particularly for a domestic publication.

I realize pictures aren't cheap, but if you sell 3 copies what's the point? The viable market segment for a book like that in China is .... ?

EDIT - to be clear I am NOT criticizing you, I am just hoping you can shed some light on the project leader(s) pricing strategy.

Andrew, no idea on the pricing strategy. 2800 yuan equates to about US$450 these days, or $150 per volume. A single volume of "The Handbook of the Birds of the World" was costing about $250, if I'm not mistaken, but the quality of HBW is much higher.

Certainly the average Chinese person isn't going to buy this book. Many libraries will buy it.

[Jeff hopkins]

Craig,

I saw a copy of the books this weekend and they are really a beautiful publication. I was certainly interested in buying a copy for myself...until I heard the price.

Unfortunately, I think that price means as you stated, it will remain a wonderful library reference book, but will not be as accessable to the common person other than in that way. IMO, that's a shame.

But as you said, it's a start.

[thrush]

Today's my first day ever on Hǎinán Island, China. I flew in this morning from Shanghai. I drove directly to Jiānfēnglǐng National Forest Park. My job here is to get a grip on the avifauna of this island and to collect as many photos of birds as possible for my photographic field guide to the birds of China. Today, at the parking lot to my lodge, I found a very tame mountain bulbul (绿翅短脚鹎, lǜchì duǎnjiǎobēi, Ixos mcclellandii). I quickly got this image, a personal best shot of this species. Walking along the path behind the lodge, I heard Hainan partridges calling. I hope to find this species tomorrow. I'm of course also searching for the Hainan peacock-pheasant. Wish me luck!

I found this white-browed shrike-babbler (红翅䴗鹛, hóngchì júméi, Pteruthius aeralatus). This male was part of a bird wave today at Jiānfēnglǐng. The white-browed shrike-babbler is now considered (like all members of Pteruthius), to be a member of the vireo family, Vireonidae. This is a poor shot, of course, but you gotta start somewhere . . . and my trip to Hǎinán is certainly under way!

[Frogfish]

I've seen the book and it looks excellent, but my goodness those 3 volumes weigh a ton, almost broke my writs picking up just one volume ! I believe you can get a 30% discount at the moment.