• 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.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Sichuan Birding (1 Viewer)

Sorry John - I missed your post asking for JZ info - and although you've already traveled through, here's a few words on that park.
The first thing is that unless you're really interested in Rufous-headed Robin then it can be challenging and testing destination for any birder.
The first problem is the recent price hike that means tickets are now only sold on a one day entry basis (before you bought the ticket for 2 days) - this almost doubles the entry price to the park ( they're selling a day ticket for 220RMB + 90RMB for the park bus - a whacking 310RMB/day).
The second is the time restriction on being able to bird the park - you can get on a park bus earliest at 7.30 - meaning birding will start after 8.00 - the latest you can be in the park is around 5.00 - and security are already bussing people out of the the end of road destinations like primeval forest by 16.00!!!!
The increase in security - these guys are dressed in ties and black nylon suites, making them look like a parody of the mafia - makes overnighting in the park extremely difficult.
Rh Robin is to be found on at least a couple of "banned to the public" off the official boardwalk tracks - but too many birders getting caught stumbling along these routes will probably result in fences or some other preventative measures!!!!! Our one day visit during rain gave us A female Rh Robin - loads of Indian Blue Robin, Spectacled Parrotbill, Chinese Nuthatch, Three-banded Rosefinch and remeber the Spectacled Fulvetta that can be found in the scrub on hillsides outside the park area.
For those who enjoy a quiet unspoiled type of nature - the crowds at JZ can be frightening - 30,000/day in the peak season (at the new prices that's 9 million RMB/day). However most of the visitors stick to the famous sites and there are still areas where you can avoid them.
JZ is of a quality that makes a visit a interesting if expensive experience - but if you'd ever want to make a return trip is a whole other matter!!!!!!

I'm afraid we didn't take any good pics on our wet JZ day - but a pic of rainy Chestnut Thrush from another damp destination just about sums up our birding that day!!!!!!!
 

Attachments

  • chestnut thrush.jpg
    chestnut thrush.jpg
    211.8 KB · Views: 156
Last edited:
I'm currently guiding a tour round Sichuan - all the usual suspects appeared at Jiuzhaigou, on the plateau and at Mengbi Shan though a couple of interesting notes:

Buses at Jiuzhaigou - at the moment then actually begin to run at 0700 and end at 1830 (both days we were there). Amazed how much Zechawa has transformed from the tiny little Tibetan village to a huge shopping frenzy, it certainly has lost its appeal. However, Jiuzhaigou was still as magical as ever and the Rufous-headed Robins seemed to be doing ok (min. 4 territories at one spot).

Big surprise was seeing a drake Falcated Duck at Flower Lake, north of Ruoergai mixed in with other wildfowl - anyone else seen this species in Sichuan recently? I have no idea on its current status. Also pleasing to see was good numbers of Saker about - minimum of 8 in one day.
Also good to see was a Chinese Grey Shrike nesting in the same bush as on my previous visit 3 years back, this time with 2 large chicks.

Today at Mengbi Shan a party of Sichuan Jay's eventually showed themselves along with a good run of galliforms and Crested Tit Warblers.

Wolong tomorrow!

Cheers,

James
 
Hi James - we also got that Falcated drake on Flower Lake together with a female. During winter this species is not that difficult to find in Sichuan - but this was also the first time for us to find it at Ruo Er Gai. The sighting made on the 19th May was also the latest we've seen it during spring.
The water level on the lake was low and there were many waders - including flocks of Pacific Golden Plovers (with a couple of Grey Plovers also present), Temminck's stint, Black-tailed Godwit, Curlew Sandpiper and Spotted Redshank - all giving good evidence of a rich Wader migration over Sichuan. Another Duck species that we don't usually see was Garganey - we got a couple of these.

As for that bus at JZ - sounds like you struck lucky - they were already making us head towards the areas closer to the park gates at 16.00!!!!! I think a tactic in JZ is to stay out of sight - we were on the boardwalks at primeval forest and the security guys were making a sweep of all the visitors in that area to ask them to move down into the lower regions of the park. We'll be at JZ again in a couple of weeks or so - lets hope our bus will start at 7.00 this time!!!!

The pics are of one of our Ruo Er Gai Sakers - still bloodied around the bill, our Chinese Grey Shrike, which conveniently showed up at the very start of the first proper day's birding in this area and one of those nice black backed Citrine Wagtails that are a feature around the lake.
 

Attachments

  • Saker Falcon.jpg
    Saker Falcon.jpg
    301.5 KB · Views: 170
  • Chinese Grey Shrike.jpg
    Chinese Grey Shrike.jpg
    79.5 KB · Views: 168
  • citrine wagtail.jpg
    citrine wagtail.jpg
    329 KB · Views: 169
Last edited:
Nice photos again!

Forgot to mention the Gull-billed Tern at Hongyuan - no idea on the status of this in Sichuan, any ideas?

We just finished the Wolong area. First time I've been back since the earthquake and it was hard to take in the scene having been so familiar with it previously. Landslides were terrible - prevented us reaching the Wood Snipes for dawn and also stopped us from heading to Wawu Shan via Chengdu - we have had to go via Baoxing (wherever that is!).
Balang Shan was typically magnificent though - managed to hit all our targets in one day despite the poor early morning weather, even jamming in on a monal in the late afternoon at my second locality having dipped at the usual spot due to fog.
Wuyipeng was great - Firethroats were far more showy than I'm used to and 10 tragopans in 24 hours was a nice surprise!

Looking forward to a wet Wawu tomorrow....

James
 
I 've never seen that Gull-billed Tern (neither in Hongyuan nor elsewhere). Could be on passage?

Really horrible wet weather! Never experienced 48h (and still counting) of non-stop-rain during 12years in Chengdu. I had to skip my birding weekend on a mountain between Ya'an and Wawu. Went to my mother in law on the country side instead and had a lot of cockoo calls there from the terrace:
Asian Coel
Eurasian cockoo
Large Hawk cockoo
Indian cockoo
 
Hi Sid,
Just want to pass on our sincere thanks to you and Meggie on a fantastic 28 day trip that you hosted for us. We all thoroughly enjoyed the trip and had a great experience seeing some epic birds.

I personally had 170 lifers from a trip list of well over 300 species.

I would definitely be interested in another trip, Yunnan maybe, some time in the future.

Regards Si
 
Hi James,
Hope you had a good time at Wawu Shan ! Baoxing used to be known as Mupin, and you may have seen a couple of posters on the way through calling that route the "Pere David Road"... it is where the first specimen of Giant Panda was brought to Pere David in , I think, 1869. We visited Fengtongzhai Nature Reserve nearby in 2006, but found the hills were too steep for easy birding.
 
Hey John and Jemi,

Yes, it was great driving through that fabulous gorge, especially knowing about Pere Armand David collecting in that area, the scenery was some of the most stunning I have come across in Sichuan.
Those hillsides are way way too steep to do anything, thankfully Lady A is far easier at Wawu Shan!

Wawu Shan was excellent, I managed a lifer thanks to Sid funnily enough, Red Panda! Stunning views and seeing both pandas in 30 days fulfilled a childhood dream.

Currently in Lhasa having had wonderful views of 40 Lord Derby's Parakeets feeding in roadside trees between Bomi and Lulang. This morning Tibetan Eared Pheasants feeding on scraps around a nearby village and plenty of other interesting species.

Cheers,

James
 
Thanks for the info china guy. We enjoyed the beauty of Jiuzhaigou but the price tag is crazy and the anti non-tour group attitude verging on the offensive. The path on the west side (to long lake) is permanently closed. There are guards everywhere, one of whom followed us perhaps due to the individualistic glint in our eyes. And some of the tour groups do get away from the bus stops. We got the first 7am bus to the forest, but the next bus to arrive, 5 mins later, packed a full tour group of screaming women, who literally wailed like crazed banshies all the way round the forest track. When one of them saw a squirrel they went wild, and one started throwing sticks at it.

Still i did see Rufous headed Robin, and the scenery is stunning. But its attractiveness as a birding destination is severely damaged by all the things you mentioned. I would not choose to go back there - but im glad i went once.

John
 
James you timed your Sichuan visit pretty well - just after you guys left the the heavens really opened and we got the wettest June period for 12+ years. These deluges caused a mass of landslides - and during our second trip visit to Wolong, every morning we had to wait until after 8am before the landslides were cleared - with visibility and conditions almost always pretty grim when we got to the prime birding spots on the high pass. No matter, although we lost out on Monal we still were able to get target birds like Red-faced Rosefinch, Chestnut-throated Partridge, Brandt's Mountain Finch and White-browed Tit Warbler - and were able to catch up with other species such as White-eared Pheasant and (male) Grandala at other locations (Mengbi and Zhedou Shan).
Those landslides caused a bizarre piece of birding luck - sinking in oozing landslide mud on the Old Erlang Road, while I was trying to find a path forward - two Gold-fronted Fulvetta flew past my nose - and the others in the group were able to get this rare tick.
We've just done JZ and got our Rufous-headed Robin - luckily the type of habitat where these secretive birds are founds attracts very few visitors - which makes for a peace and quite that is of course usually a rarity in the more popular parts of the park.
We've got plenty of pics from this present trip which include a Red Panda (Meggie's Panda which was seen independently, on the same day, of the Panda our's and James' group were observing) - and an animal lifer for us - a Wolf - seen on the Ruo Er Gai Grasslands. But those photos will have to wait another few days before we get them online.
Pics on this post are - White-throated Redstart - displaying how small that white throat actually is. Black-necked Crane - as ever easy to see at Ruo Er Gai. Tibetan Snowcock - from our first trip (missed due to weather on the second) - from the high pass on the road that leads from Baxi to JZ (also showing how any low cloud obviously makes birding very difficult at these 4000+m heights).
 

Attachments

  • white throated redstart.jpg
    white throated redstart.jpg
    168.6 KB · Views: 154
  • Black necked crane.jpg
    Black necked crane.jpg
    352.9 KB · Views: 158
  • Tibetan Snowcock.jpg
    Tibetan Snowcock.jpg
    199 KB · Views: 176
Last edited:
Glad to hear that the mudslide brought you one (two) nice birds, but sounds like it's been a little challenging. Meggie's got great pics as usual! Love the "white throat" and the crane is quite handsome. Nice view of the snowcock - I think I wouldn't have seen it ;)

Looking forward to when you get more pics sorted out (including wolf?!?)
 
Wawu Shan logistics

Hi, I'm looking for a little advice on Wawu Shan (or maybe Emei Shan or both).
I'll have about a week extra time after a birding buddy departs for home, in early August, and am thinking that Wawu Shan would be a good destination.

Since its just me, its probably a little expensive to hire a car to get me there, but I found one site that claimed to be a bus schedule Chengdu - Wawu Shan, two departures a day, 4 hour trip. Does this sound right? (There's no dates on this site, I don't know how recent it is.)

Would I be able to get from Wawu - Emei by bus? Is this worth doing? I read a couple reports of Emei Shan in August that claimed it was too crowded to be enjoyable, long lines for cable car at 5AM, etc.

Thanks,

Bob
 
Hi Bob - there seems to be more visitors going to Wawu - so I suppose that bus route direct from Chengdu is shipping groups of tourists into the park. 4 hours for this route seems correct - and this bus maybe takes you directly into the park. As far as normal public transport is concerned you would need to get a bus, from Chengdu, to the largest town close to Wawu - Hongya - and then transfer from there to a bus that would take you to village at the Wawu gate. To get up to the middle area, where you find the cable-car station and the hotel/restaurant, you then hitch a lift with some form of park transport. In these areas there is usually some form of minibus transport that will take you to a destination (just flag down any minibus that seems to drive in the direction you want to go) - sometimes as part of a route with fixed fare - or sometimes as hired transport where you bargain a price with the driver.
In Chengdu there are various bus stations - but those buses that serve tourist destinations often leave from the city center bus station next door to the Traffic Hotel. This hotel, or Sam's or Sim's hostels all have travel agency folk who speak English and may be able to help with ticketing etc.
As for getting to Emei from Wawu - that should also be quite possible - either by minibus or regular bus route - just practice your pronunciation of Emei Shan - and use a little body language and you'll have no problem. 3 hours should get you to Emei. There are various parts of Emei that will get you away from the tourist throng - a lot of the good birding is in the middle and lower areas.
We're actually at Emei right now - we wanted to get back to Wolong but the road conditions in that area are too dicey at the moment for us to try that option.
As for pics - well today I've got the spectacles from Jiuzhaigou - Spectacled Parrotbill and Spectacled Fulvetta - both of which we found outside the park area.
 

Attachments

  • spectacled fulvetta.jpg
    spectacled fulvetta.jpg
    175.8 KB · Views: 179
  • spectacled parrotbill.jpg
    spectacled parrotbill.jpg
    193.4 KB · Views: 186
I've put some sound recordings from my recent Sichuan trip on xeno-canto, including Snowy-cheeked Laughingthrush (we saw three without the need for playback though).

The hillsides outside Jiuzhaigou brought us nothing: highly frustrating to see those spectacled jobbies! Probably too early for Rufous-headed Robin... we didn't see any guards below the Upper Seasonal Lake where we could get off the bus (but had a close shave elsewhere).

Could only reach Long Lake "early" by going up with the workers: this gave us an hour of peace (would have been longer if one of them hadn't overslept!) Still too late for Blue-eared Pheasant, but saw that at Wanglang (after a long discussion at the entrance). Sichuan Takin at Long Lake (found by one of those guards) was excellent.
 
Last edited:
Hi Sid,
Greetings from sunny Norfolk
Was that a male Rufous headed Robin you saw at JZ this time.?
Also nice to see the Snowcock pic again, that was such a jammy tick for us all.

All the Best Si (and the Homo Vulgaris)
 
Hi Si - on this last trip we heard Rufous-headed Robin singing - and although they'd respond to playback it didn't make them any easier to see!!!!! It took around 10 hours of watching before our group started to get decent views of a male bird - but they were determined and kept plugging way. In fact our 2 JZ days were 99% dominated by this species.

Xenospiza - we were using one of your Snowy-cheeked Laugher calls - the pic which was taken from the Baxi area is a bird that your recording pulled out of a dense bush. Our experiences of finding an early bus up the Long-lake road exactly mirror yours - we to had to join the worker's transport that left at 7.30 - but that was still early enough for good birding.

The other pics in this post - are a lazy looking Red Panda from a drizzly Wawu (Meggie's panda which was the second sighted that day) - and that Wolf at Ruo Er Gai - the animal is molting into its summer coat.
 

Attachments

  • snowy cheeked laughingthrush.jpg
    snowy cheeked laughingthrush.jpg
    273.3 KB · Views: 153
  • red panda.jpg
    red panda.jpg
    280.2 KB · Views: 150
  • wolf.jpg
    wolf.jpg
    250 KB · Views: 141
Last edited:
Ah, great photos there Sid. We got similar views of Sukatshev's Laugher close to Long Lake - we managed to get up to Long Lake early by chatting up the driver and diverting the whole bus of Primeval Lake bound tourists to Long Lake instead!

Amazing how Long Lake has progressed in popularity, I remember on my first visit years back there was hardly a sole there - we were able to walk round the right-hand side of the lake and all the way up to the scree zone, way above the forest to 4300m - keep an eye out for monals up there if you miss them at Balang Shan (fortunately we didn't need too ;-) ).

Gripped by the wolf - Tropical Birding saw them up there too, I probably ignored some of the dogs for that moulting wolf you saw.

Great shots of the panda, mine are attached - brings back good memories Sid!
Also attached are Tibetan Grey Shrike, Firethroat, Grey-hooded Parrotbill and a proper panda from my trip to Shaanxi.

James
 

Attachments

  • what-is-this.jpg
    what-is-this.jpg
    97.6 KB · Views: 133
  • ghp.jpg
    ghp.jpg
    162.2 KB · Views: 127
  • Firethroat-(7).jpg
    Firethroat-(7).jpg
    124.6 KB · Views: 164
  • TGS.jpg
    TGS.jpg
    127.2 KB · Views: 119
  • Giant-Panda-(169).jpg
    Giant-Panda-(169).jpg
    98.6 KB · Views: 113
Xenospiza - we were using one of your Snowy-cheeked Laugher calls - the pic which was taken from the Baxi area is a bird that your recording pulled out of a dense bush. Our experiences of finding an early bus up the Long-lake road exactly mirror yours - we to had to join the worker's transport that left at 7.30 - but that was still early enough for good birding.
That's a very nice shot indeed... the one I recorded still didn't hang around long enough for a good picture (our photographer should practice more). Our chances for wolf were destroyed by a snow storm.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 6 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top