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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lerxst" data-source="post: 3698970" data-attributes="member: 118326">It is Sunday night in Bangkok, and time for an update for Week 14. We just did another weekend jaunt up to Yunnan, China. Specifically we visited Zixishan, which is a mountain area about three hours west of Kunming. Or I should say three hours from the airport which is east of the city. One of those three hours is spent mostly crossing the city itself.Working Days: 5New species identified: 21Total to date: 65526.2 % of goal, 26.9 % of year usedWell this weekend certainly went better than the previous one. We arrived around 11:30PM Friday night and immediately started the long drive out to Mt. Zixi. After a couple hours sleep we were birding at sunrise on Saturday. Sunday (today) we were limited to three hours in the morning before needing to head back to the airport. This is a much nicer environment than what were had visited on the outskirts of Kunming; you can pull off on the roads and walk them and bird without interruption for the most part. There are visitors but not hordes; most people seemed to be visiting the temple (which was good birding in the early morning). As far as I can tell there is one hotel here and one or two restaurants.The area is predominately pine forests that are teeming with passerines, especially leaf warblers. Those we could identify included Tickell's and Pallas's Leaf Warblers, Arctic Warbler, and the very easy and striking Black-faced Warbler. Also enjoyed Yunnan Nuthatch, Red-tailed Minla, Godlewski's Bunting, Black-browed Tit, and two Scimitar-Babblers: Streak-breasted and Black-streaked (ugh, what names). A few Hume's Pheasants were on the road this morning. All told, in our two weekend visits to Yunnan, which amounted to about three full days to bird, we netted 75 total species, with 34 of these new for the year. In May we will head further north to Sichuan for a pair of visits; will be interesting to compare and contrast with Yunnan.So I as expected, the percentages (species goal and weeks of year used) have crisscrossed and we are now playing from behind. This setback will be temporary, as we are headed to Ethiopia late Thursday night, to start a ten day Africa trip. I don't expect to have a report on that until about April 17, which is when we get back to Bangkok.Thanks for reading, and the continued interest in this massive disruption to my bank account!</blockquote>

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