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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lerxst" data-source="post: 3696105" data-attributes="member: 118326">Update time...Week 13: March 20 – March 26, Yunnan, ChinaWorking Days: 5New species identified: 13Total to date: 63425.4 % of goal, 25.0 % of year used<a href="https://legallyblindbirding.net/2018-gbwy-2/" target="_blank">https://legallyblindbirding.net/2018-gbwy-2/</a>Our first trip to China was to the city of Kunming, in the Yunnan province in the south. This is only about two hours from Bangkok. As it sits in the mountains, the climate of the city is said to be always spring-like, and indeed it extremely pleasant there. On Saturday morning we arrived at dawn at Mt. Xishan, to the west of the city. This is a lovely spot with a long road that gently climbs up through the forest. There are some trails, too, and at least one restroom along the way; at the entrance there are a variety of food options. Per the eBird hotspot map it is the best area in the city, and I can imagine that a weekday visit here could be very productive indeed. Key word: Weekday.But on a weekend? Don't bother. Or at least, arrive very early and don't walk too far up the road.. after about 8:30 AM, it is almost impossible to bird here. Both sides of the road were filled with droves of people moving along as if on conveyor belts, as everyone is forced to hug the roadsides in dense lines because the center is occupied by an endless current of tour buses and other vehicles. Fast-moving, horn-blaring vehicles. Not a scenario amenable to scanning the trees, repositioning your person to get a better angle, or listening for calls.But wait, there's more. Some of the other visitors had the curious habit of bringing their music along for their nature walk, kindly sharing it with everyone by eschewing earbuds and opting instead for a nice, low-fidelity, bluetooth speaker. Because nothing adds to the experience of a morning walk through the forest like loud, distorted, mono recordings of your favorite music to mask out those objectionable natural sounds. (I will never, ever understand this.)Adding to this atmosphere, our local 'guide' did very little to help us find birds. Every other time I looked over at him, he was looking at his smartphone. And not in order to pull up recordings or do anything related to birding. I guess he was checking his email or the news. Of the birds we did see, my wife found most of them, because the 'guide' usually walked right past them. When he did stop and scan, it was almost always at a spot where there were no birds. I have never seen a more disengaged and oblivious birder, much less 'guide'. To his credit, he did figure out that a different, less busy spot might be preferable for the afternoon. So we birded some roadsides in the foothills and picked up a few more species, but eventually this too became an exercise in vehicle avoidance first and birding second. Then at about 5:00 PM, several hours before sunset, he announced that we were done birding for the day. Given that he seemed to have no clue about where else to go, we didn't bother arguing with him about this. There seemed to be a language barrier problem here as well. Just another part of the international birding adventure!On Sunday we spent the morning at the Kunming Botanic Gardens, which was far less noisy and free of the roaring buses. It is a nice park and the birding was fine. Happily our 'guide' did manage to find us a Scaly Thrush, which was a splendid bird. All the more impressive given that he spent even more time reading his emails that morning than on the previous day, when he was too distracted by all the traffic and crowds, I suppose. So I'm going to have a conversation with the company that set us up with this individual. Meanwhile, if you plan to go birding in Kunming and are looking for a guide, I can tell you who NOT to contact.Also the Field Guide to the Birds of China by John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps is simply not a good book; it gets at least one species, Spectacled Fulvetta, completely wrong. Imperfect bird books are a fact of life, but this one is particularly obnoxious in that it cost upwards of $50.  We are only a couple weeks away from our only extended trip (10 days) of this effort: to Ethiopia and South Africa; that will push the species count back up nicely. And get us away from the crowds. Yay.</blockquote>

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