Gretchen - you seem to be well into Pikas - so here's another Sichuan species - we think it's Royle's Pika Ochotona roylei - this one was taken 3 years back on a trip to the Tibetan Border town of Dege.
As for the book - we'd love to share the stories and sights of natural Sichuan with the largest possible audience - but in these days of digital rather than paper pages - it seems that the best way of getting our message over is through the net - and particularly by jumping onto such a popular birding site as birdforum. I'm afraid specialised books - which any work on Sichuan birds, no matter how coffee table its appearance, would be - tend to gather dust on bookshop shelves - that is if you can even find publishers interested in producing them. Saying that we'd love to do shorter articles for magazines and other journals, and at the moment are in the very embryonic stages of contemplating giving some lectures while making, early next year, a proposed visiting to the UK.
By the way on the subject of getting our stuff on the net - we've recently started to contribute again to our Sichuan birds blogspot site (we've gained entry through a VPN connection) - I'll try to focus more on that during the next few days.
As for stories well here's a good one that ties up that Dege visit to our recent trip that took in Wolong. Mengbi Shan, Ruo Er Gai and Baxi.
Those Pikas aren't the only rodents in our lives - we used to be the proud owners of a couple of Hamsters - which sometimes used to accompany us on our trips.
That combined pics where Meggie is holding the Hamsters, in their cage, is taken at what is commonly regarded the most dangerous spot of the G318 route to Lhasa - the 5000m Bird Mountain pass that comes just before you get to Dege. The sign in the inset says 5050m - at that exact moment we were thinking that we had the honor of being with the highest Hamsters in the world.
The day we were to leave on newest trip the last Hamster died - after a very long 3 year Hamster life. We decided to bury the deceased at Wolong - and the next picture is of the Wuyipeng buildings at the top of the ridge, close to which our Hamster was buried - see inset for the grave. The ceremony was conducted with full honors and some corn and sunflower seeds for the next life. So if any of next seasons Wuyipeng birders see a ghostly Rodent like apparition floating over the paths - I'm afraid that's something to do with us!!!!!
As for Wuyipeng - those buildings seems in a pretty bad state of neglect - talking to reserve folk they don't reckon anyone, apart from Panda researchers or reserve staff will be using them this year. The hotels down in Wolong are also very limited. With the panda center out of action not many Chinese tourists are bothering stopping - so the the motivation to open early has rather stalled. The second day we were there - this is around the 25th Feb.- they started work on renovating the poshest of the bunch - Wolong Hotel - but weren't talking about it opening this season.
As for the birds our Hamster can gaze down upon from its celestial paradise, well they're all still in place - as you can see from the pics of - Golden-breasted Fulvetta and a winter flock of Grandala, a little further up the road towards the Balang Pass.