Day 7 - 3 June, 2016

From the eighth floor of our hotel in Luding we awoke to a full day birding on Erliangshan. 

From our itinerary; 

"Erlangshan is the best place for Lady Amherst's Pheasant, and also a good place for Chinese Song Thrush, Barred and Black-faced Laughingthrush, Streaked Barwing, Firethroat, Yellow-bellied and Black-browed Tit." Btw - shan is Chinese for mountain.

What the iterary does not say is that there is spectacular scenery with snow capped peaks, rising over 3000 metres in elevation. And the views generally are excellent for Australian eyes, unaccustomed as they are to seeing any sort of relief....

Like many places in China while there are clearly birds around they hide and skulk and are rarely obvious. So bird listening rather than watching is the order of the day. And just bird listening can be pretty frustrating....  

We did have the advantage of Summer - who knows the calls and songs and also has an ipod type device that has many of the expected species songs and calls pre loaded. 

My frustrations began with Barred Laughing Thrush - a great bird apparently. It called. WE called. It approached under the [great] cover of bushes. Two of us got glimpses. Summer saw it too. She has young excellent eyes and is practised and committed. I didn't. Another species on the growing list of 'One to come back for'.

Another to make that list; White-tailed Robin. This one remained singing deep under cover and only eagle eyed Summer saw it....

We did get some good birds though. Our Bird of the Day was a cracker - the aptly named Firethroat and most impressively it offered quite good views. Other good and new species included Nutcracker, Chestnut Thrush, White-browed Fulvetta, Chinese Babax, White-winged Grosbeak, Grey-headed Bullfinch, Long-tailed Rosefinch, Godlewski's Bunting and, most importantly, Rufous-tailed Babbler.  

Noodle Lunch in preparation

L to R - Steve, Karyll, Bob, Vince, Glenis and Ray

High Mountain Birding

We also got some good repeats; Mrs Gould's Sunbird, Yellow-bellied and Coal Tits, Oriental Honey Buzzard, Rosy and Olive-backed Pipits, Elliot's Laughing-thrush, Long-tailed Minivets, Blue Whistling Thrush and Blue Rock Thrush. Also got excellent views of White throated Needletails as we were coming down the mountain. 

Our first domestic Yaks!

Olive-backed Pipit

We finished our day slightly early with a bit [or should that be bite] of drama.Bob James, concentrating too much on the birding no doubt strayed into the bite zone of a tied dog and the dog had him; biting his shin as if to feed. After we treated his wounds and wiped his tears we needed to leave immediately so as to arrange medical care; chiefly the obligatory Rabies shot or two. Pleased to say that only Bob needed medical attention for our trip away and we are optimistic that a Rabies death has been avoided...

Oh and we got the Lady Amerherst Pheasant as per the itinerary!

Pushing Vince off the track to his death because his camera is better than mine...