BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Hopkins" data-source="post: 3021341" data-attributes="member: 44242">Day 5 – June 28, 2014I took a walk around the grounds at first light, and found a hwamei mixed in with a flock of black-chinned yuhinas.  I also heard a distance white-spectacled warbler.  Then it was back down the mountain - last chance for chickens!This time, the pygmy cupwing was back in his spot, but like the last time, he refused to come out and play.  Right near there, we got a look at a couple of buffy laughingthrushes.  A little further on we had another Cabot’s tragopan.  This one walked along the road a bit then went into the brush, but we were able to get out and re-find him briefly.  Just after that two forktails flew off the side of the road.  I thought they were little forktails, but Forest didn’t see them to confirm.  The male chestnut-bellied rock-thrush was on the same perch as two days before.  Next up was a small flock of laughingthrushes, who flew off but then came back to give us good looks and identify them as lesser necklaced laughingthrushes*.  A few kilometers from there, Forest stopped the car and pointed out a male koklass pheasant* right beside the road.  As he walked away, I was able to get out of the car, and watch him walk downhill into the brush.  I even was able to get a record photo of him.  Finally some variety.  After a u-turn, we discovered a pair of silver pheasants* at about the 11 km mark – a little lower than expected but welcome nonetheless.  And we finally connected with a few white-spectacled warblers.  They’re supposed to be fairly common at the top, but we only had the one small group a few kilometers down.After that, we collected our bags, paid our bills and headed back to Fuzhou.  But on the way down, we found a definite little forktail*.  That gave us all of the fortails for this trip.  As we came down to the inhabited areas, I pointed out a bird on the wires in the rice fields.  We stopped and discovered a Chinese sparrowhawk.  We tried to get closer for pictures, but he flew off.  As we got down to near Xinqiaoxiang, we heard masked laughingthrushes but didn’t stop to see them.We arrived back in Fuzhou at about 3:30.  My flight wasn’t until 7, so we went to a place near the airport called Wenwu Sha to kill some time. This was a mix of fish farms and marshy areas.  Forest said it’s good in the winter, especially for shorebirds, but it was worth a stop in the summer to see what was around.  We added a couple common moorhens and a red-whiskered bulbul, saw a couple Kentish plovers, and had great looks at zitting cisticola and yellow-bellied prinias.  We also had the expected little and cattle egrets, oriental magpie-robin, long-tailed shrike, light-vented bulbuls, and a few barn swallows.  After a bit of a scare getting stuck in the mud, we made it back to the airport, where Forest dropped me off and we said our farewells.  Of course, my return flight to Shanghai was late.  That’s more like the China I know.Bird of the day:  Koklass pheasant</blockquote>

Verification