Birding Hailuogou Glacier Park, Sichuan Province

The park forms part of Gongga Shan, at 7,551m the 11th highest peak in the world ! But don't worry, the birds are much lower down !The entrance to the park is at the top end of the main street of Moxi. Moxi itself can be reached by direct coach from Chengdu, or via Luding. Ya'an is the nearest city at the edge of the Sichuan basin. There was, fortunately, very little damage to the area during

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Scaly-breasted Wren Babbler

Well, this blog "does what it says on the Tin" ("Header" actually)So here are a couple of pics taken in China on our May visit...Scaly-breasted Wren Babbler at Hailuogou, SichuanDark-breasted Rosefinch, Hailuogou Glacier Park, Sichuan

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Home Safely

We're safely back in Hong Kong, very fortunate to be only mildly inconvenienced by the horrors elsewhere.We were in Hailuogou, near Gongga Shan, when the quake struck. We were actually on a bus at the moment of the quake and didn't feel a thing. We stayed in our hotel in indecent comfort for three more days as the number of incoming tourists dwindled. Eventually the park officials decided to

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Ianthocincla (Garrulax) bieti

Our main purpose for this trip was to meet Bjorn Anderson (from Beijing) in Muli, SW Sichuan, and toghether look for this laughingthrush in an area attractively called Mahuang Gou - "Leech Valley". Ben King had seen it in the area in 1989 and his account of the trip is in the 1988 (!) Hong Kong Bird Report. I imagine that the Muli forestry officials already knew the species was there.Jemi and I

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Our dream came true!

It was an interesting experience to see the White-speckled Laughingthrushes in the areas that we had searched two years ago. It seems that no one had come to find them. They are the forgetten birds in a forgotten corner in China. Hope they can survive from generations to generations!Thanks to White-speckled Laughingthrushes, our dream came true!

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在路上了

在路上了，離家前的不安感覺...已被對新鮮行程的期盼取代了。 擾人的感冒的也好像...留在香港沒跟上飛機來。今夜愛戀成都，在不眠星光下， 投入陌生床舖懷抱，為明天做個美麗的夢！

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On the Road Again

We're away to Sichuan Province on the 28th, so our birding has taken a bit of a "Back Seat" in the last few days.If the infrastructure and/or the authorities allow I'll try to be more diligent with posts from rural south-west China.Watch this space (but don't hold your breath)

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Garrulax sukatschewi

A good Chinese endemic, Snowy-cheeked Laughingthrush was originally collected in the 1880s by M.Beresovsky in the Min Mountains of northern Sichuan. It is named after V.P. Sukatchev, his financial supporter. You can still see them at Wanglang National Nature Reserve, where I took this pic. last week. We're off to India tomorrow, and my normal, patchy disservice may resume in mid-December !

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Pere David's Tit

Wanglang, Ping Wu County, Nov 17th 2007. Wanglang has a common border with Jiuzhaigou, and should have most of the same birds without the distraction of a zillion Chinese domestic tourists.... but it seems to be largely ignored by overseas birdwatchers.This is part two of my "plug" for Wanglang....Pere Armand David was one of the "Greats" of Chinese natural history pioneering. He spent many years

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Here's looking at you, kid !

It's a Chinese Muntjac, of course. I walked around the nature trail at Tangjiahe in Sichuan on 12th November, and saw several of them. It really is nice to see large mammals in China.We also saw Takin wellTangjiahe in winter folks, it's a good place to visit !

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