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Sichuan Birding (4 Viewers)

We were lucky with those Bamboo Partridge pics - the usual contact is through its very distinctive 'beeper-ray' call - but occasionally they will show!!!!

Today was a bad day that turned good. Still out in NE Sichuan - our destination was totally clouded out - to such an extent that the small, winding mountain road was getting a tad dangerous. So it was a turn-around and back down the valley for a bit of river watching.

It turned out to be a brilliant move - with a female Baikal Teal as our reward. We found her in a pretty grotty stretch of water - together with 5 Common Teal- where earth movers and front-end loaders were dredging the river for stone and sand. A lot of the rivers in China are having their natural banks totally trashed in this manner - but in the long run it sometimes seems to create some good habitat for Waders and Duck - even if it does destroy landscapes and the natural river ecology.
Our pix show well the facial spot that ID's the Baikal - the flight shot shows how they differ from female Teal.

We also watched the Ducks face a natural danger - as a Peregrine did a long lazy fly-by. But the ducks sat tight on the water - and the Falcon flew on.
 

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Sid and Meggie,
Great to see all your Yunnan photos.
Your description of avoiding fast-moving lorries while distracted by great birds brought back Gaoligongshan (Pianma Road) memories for us.
VERY jealous of the Rufous-necked Laugher - we still need this one.
 
Female Baikals don't get to look more clear cut than than - nice one - and great to run into it in such a random place. I agree with Shi Jin about the flight shot - never seen such a good comparison.

Ps John is being coy about his own Baikal Teal - also found on a river nowhere near a proper wetland - one of the coolest patch birds ever in HK in my opinion!

Cheers
Mike
 
I am often amazed on how many different faces the activity of bird watching can have - apart getting the ID of certain species or subspecies there is so much fun in just watching the birds: Yesterday and today I went to Qinglong Lake in the eastern outskirts of Chengdu, as this could be the only place left where our ducks usually spent their winter. They disappeared from all the other lakes and riversides around Chengdu this year.:h?:
And I first was rewarded with a Common Coot that was hunting (!) two Little Grebes. Everytime it was close by they dived off and the Coot apparently was puzzled. When they came up again, the hunt started from the beginning. The Coot also dived a few times... without success, as both the Coot and the Grebes emerged from two different spots again. They really featured a twenty minutes circus show.
 

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However, this wasn't the only reward during these two days.
For me the biggest rewards was - no - not the high number of ducks (I'd guess between 1000 and 1500) and that we finally found them, but a bird I have been looking for up in Aba Prefecture/Amdo and where else it is supposed to show up according to reports but without success yet:
Chinese Grey Shrike
It was just hanging there in the air, heading down to get some food, coming up again, standing still in the air again ... great!
Unfortunately we just arrived at the lake five minutes ago and didn't prepare the camera in time. So, no image of this rare bird.
So were the other ducks: they were too far for giving a clear picture. Only the Coots, Grebes and Mallards stayed closer to the waterside.
Nevertheless, there were so many ducks in the middle of the lake and their existance gave me a good feeling (nobody knows what will happen to them in the next year).:
Common Golden Eye, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Spot-billed Duck, Northern Shoveler, Eurasian Wigeon, Common Teal, Garganey, Common Pochard, Feruginous Pochard, Common Merganser, Great Crested Grebe etc, and probably much more.
Most of them were far in the middle of the lake and asleep. I am sure that there must be Bear's Pochard and Baikal Teal amongst them as well.


Here's another picture of a bird I took a few days before Christmas:
Robin Accentor
That was on a trekking tour at the west side of Minya Konka (=Gongga Shan). These birds (a loose flock of about 20 birds) gathered around a five-houses-village at about 4100m(asl). And they were everything else than shy. The missing eyebrow and a clear line between the orange and the grey at the breast makes the difference to all the other accentors.
 

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Hi Sichuan Jiujiu

Really liked your account of the coots and little grebe. It's so much fun watching things like that.

Very well done on finding the shrike. Was it one of the Tibetan (sub)species - ie the one you find up in Aba - which apparently come off the plateau in winter and get all the way over to east China?

Warm regards from a very cold Beijing!
 
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Yes, Jiujiu, an interesting story about the coot - I have never seen anything like it, so it's quite interesting. I'm not familiar with the Robin Accentor either - very nice pic! Thanks for sharing your finds.
 
Hi Shi Jin! I guess the shrike was coming from the high plateau. However, I always failed to see it there. So I just can guess.


Regarding accentors: This area is really great for accentors: YulongXi, Konka Monastery, Tsemet Pass...
The trip this winter gave me Alpine, Brown (see image below) and Robin Accentor. Roufous-breasted you find there all over the year and also almost everywhere else.
The Maroon-backed Accentor was very common in October: got about 100 views of it within four days.
So, winter is the season for these birds. In Summer they are dispersed and mostly much higher up (>4500m).
 

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Coots massacre Dabchicks

Here in Norfolk, I've seen a pair of Coots systematically kill newly hatched Little Grebe (traditional name above) chicks, over the course of a few days. They didn't seem to eat them, either, but just leave them floating in the water. It almost seemed as if they did it because they could and didn't like the intrusion on their territory. They harassed the parents, too.

It was distressing, but there was nothing to be done. 'Nature . . . in tooth and claw' and all that.
 
Yes, I agree. It really looked like a territory fight. On the other hand, this lake is not very big and there is hardly enough space for so many winter guests at all. Coots and little Grebes are residents on this lake, so why the conflict between them and not between other birds? Maybe because little Grebe is just the smallest. ;)

Here another picture from that lake. Grey Heron in big numbers. Another example how crowded it is.
 

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Talking about crowded.

Here is another set of photos I want to share with everybody. These were taken on the same trip at Minya Konka last December. Again, this was in the vicinity of a small village (YulongXi).
Mountainfinches (Plain and Brantd's) and Horned Larks are squeezing themselves in order to get a small patch of grass in the thick layer of snow.

Each time they rose, there was a big noise of about 1000 birds making a loop and getting down again. Impressing.
 

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Nice pics - Jiujiu,
we're out in roughly the same area right now - but today we did the Old Erlang road - from both ends.
As usual the Chengdu/Sichuan Basin side was a mass of mist and there was a fair deal of snow - but in that mist there were some epic birds. Top of the morning list came Dark-rumped Rosefinch - a single male and a number of females - but there were also Golden-fronted Fulvetta, White-browed Fulvetta, Black-faced Laughers, Wall Creeper and a single Alpine Accentor.
As ever on the other side of the Erlang Mountain - the Tibetan Plateau side - there were blue skies - a complete climate change. Here we got Rufous-tailed Babbler, White-cheeked Nuthatch and 3 Lady A Pheasants.
Here are some of today's pics - male and female Dark-rumped Rosefinch, the Nuthatch and a female Lady A - which as usual is a pic taken through the windscreen - but at least this one chose to stay fairly still before it decided to bolt !!!!!!!
 

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Thanx Marmot - hopefully we'll get much better Lady A pics - but it just seems every time we get a mega-view of this bird we haven't got the camera!!!! Tomorrow we'll be heading up a Lady A track - the old Moxi to Kangding road - which is now out of use. However when on foot you have to be very lucky to get good views - yesterday's male was while we were hiking a path - half a second of tail - then when I finally found him with binos just a quarter second view of his head feathers as he dissolved into the brush.
Today we went high - driving the present Moxi to Kangding road - which lies in the shadow of the mighty Minya Konka range (also known as Gonga Shan).
In a place like this you really do feel like you're close to the top of the world - if you're in doubt your lungs will give you the message.
Birds today were scarce - we were looking for signs of Monal - but after a stiff climb all the gamebird we got was a lot of Pheasant poo - which could also have been Blood Pheasant.
Beyond the treeline in the rhody scrub we got the usual White-browed Tit Warblers, a couple of Chinese Fulvetta and three White-throated Redstart. Down at the treeline there were some Three-banded Rosefinch and lots of Nauman's Thrush.
And of course can't forget Lammergeier - a bird that matches the majesty of these mountains.
Pics are of yesterday's Rufous-tailed Babbler, a female Three-banded Rosefinch, a Lammergeier eyeing up my cheese sandwich, those mountains - and pictorial evidence of the effects of altitude - that's a sleeping birder who was supposed be on a Monal stakeout - but if the truth be known I also took a nice 4000m doze while at least 1000 pheasants walked straight passed my snoring nose!!!!!!!
 

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Jiujiu - interesting picture of the birds in the snow - guess you don't usually have such deep snow out there? (or maybe it is normal?)

Chinaguy - nice pics also - the pair of dark-rumped rosefinches is particularly good as a set showing both well.

Sure are lots of nice birds down there!

cheers, Gretchen
 
Hi Gretchen - both Jiujiu's and my pics are taken in an area - Moxi/Minya Konka - just on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, 5 hours drive from Chengdu. The biggest mountains here go over 7000m and are the highest east of the Himalayas. On the top peaks there are glaciers, and during the winter snow often falls at the lower altitudes. At the moment most of the lower snow is melting - and the sun is beating down from clear blue skies - so our biggest weather problem isn't counting toes after boughts of frostbite - but having to tend to sunburnt faces!!!!!!
Today we took a couple of tracks that are the remains of the old mountain roads that served during the evil days of mass logging - but are now almost totally deserted. These areas make a great escape from tourist packed Moxi - and after parking the car we only saw two Yak herders who were out looking for a lost dog.
Birding again was tough - its warm - so not so many noisy large flocks in the valley bottoms. But the scenery and hikes makes up for that - and what birds we do see are usually very interesting.
We arrived too late for a serious morning Pheasant watch - but during the evening we got a fleeting glimpse of a chicken diving into cover - no doubt a Lady A. Soon after the trees were echoing in screeches, grunts and barks - as a large troop of Short-tailed Macaques storm-trooped over the forest floor. When these guys are about forget Pheasants - they're most probably in mortal danger if they cross paths with one of these apes!!!!
Today was a good Owl day - apart from a collared Owl - we also heard a Northern Boobook. If Owl spotting was an Olympic sport Meggie would be a gold medal winner - she spots all our Owls and found the Boobook at great distance in a tangle of trees and saw it fly. I have a theory she must have been some kind of small owl-prey rodent in her last life and holds a constant look-out for these birds - needless to say I couldn't find it!!!!!!!
There's a lot of good Bamboo in this area - and today we found Three-toed Parrotbill - always a great bird this flock made a good show.
And again we got the bird to match the setting - a pair of soaring Golden Eagles. Just as yesterday's Lammergeier the Eagles made a show while we were eating a picnic lunch. This phenomena has allowed us to make a very important ornithological observation - the Lammergeier appeared while I was eating a sandwich made of nasty processed cheese - while today our Eagles appeared over the horizon while we were feasting on rather superior Emmentaler - this obviously proves that Golden eagles have more taste!!!!

Today's pics - are a Collared Owl, a cheese hungry Golden Eagle, a Three-toed Parrotbill who's just about showing his toes and Meggie walking an upper section of our track.
 

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