The alarm went off after only 4 hours sleep. Having had only 90 minutes sleep on the overnight flight from London the night before, it was a seriously groggy start to the day, though I still recall the singing Large Hawk Cuckoo in the predawn darkness. We drive west in the dark, leaving Dujiangyan and head into the earthquake zone. On 12th May 2008, eight years ago to the day, this area was the epicentre of the Sichuan earthquake , a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people with another 20,000 missing, presumed dead. 370,000 were injured and 4.8 million people were left homeless. The road through the epicentre, which winds alongside a river at the bottom of a steep valley, is still being rebuilt. After an unpleasant (a relative term compared to the human suffering as a result of the earthquake) 15km of potholes and rough track we reached the entrance to a tunnel. It was unclear whether the “road” went through the tunnel, which appeared to be still under construction, or on a dirt track around the hill. Roland chose to go in. We drove into the darkness, not knowing whether we would emerge into daylight on the other side of the mountain or drive into a huge piece of tunnel excavating machinery. After what seemed like an eternity, we see daylight – we were through! We cleared the earthquake zone and began noting birds – our first Blue Whistling Thrush and the first of many hundreds of Plumbeous Water Redstarts we would see. We entered a large valley and began driving uphill towards Wolong:

We arrive at Wolong just before 7am, have a quick breakfast of noodles, then drive a short distance to park at the bottom of the valley. The only way was up. The first thing I noticed about the mountains of China was that the treeline is insanely high. In the Alps the highest decent trees are at around 2000m, higher than that the slopes become bare. In China the treeline finishes at around 3800m – nearly 2km higher! This means you can be walking though deciduous forest and still be well over 3500m high. I found this disorientating and was constantly amazed by how high we were, the landscape gave no clues.

A vision of black, blue and white

The trail was steep and climbed 600 metres pretty quickly. We ignored some common birds on the way up as we wanted to get to the Blackthroat site as early as possible. After 40 minutes of steep uphill walking Roland paused and called, “singing Blackthroat”. The bird was still present. However, seeing this bird would be much harder than hearing it, as it is one of the world’s great skulkers. In fact there are at least 2 birds, possibly three, present, in an area of secondary growth at about 2400m. This is exceptional luck. The first record of Blackthroat at Wolong was just last year. As we were considering a 10 hour drive, each way, to see Blackthroat later in the trip, the unprecedented arrival of multiple birds at Wolong was a huge bonus. Although, as we were to discover later, what Lady Luck gives with one hand, she will take with the other. The nearest Blackthroat sings regularly, but will not allow us a glimpse. Roland recounts a tale of a well known bird tour leader seeing a Blackthroat hop into a small patch of bamboo. He went in and waited, prepared to give the bird time to re-emerge. Six hours later he gave up, without seeing the bird again. We hear our Blackthroat change position occasionally, but the hours begin to pass and still we have no sightings.

Habitat at Wolong, 2400m

We listen, we look. We change our position. We try playback, we try silence. Still the Blackthroat sings from deep within close cover. We retire back to our hollow for some food. I enjoy the instant rise in blood sugar levels and feel my concentration rise and the background tiredness fade slightly. The Blackthroat has stopped singing, we think about other things. Suddenly there is a loud burst of song, Blackthroat song, from just behind us. It is so loud, pure and close that Roland says “Is that birdwatchers?”. Could there be someone on the main track using playback to try to tempt the Blackthroat into the open? Then Ian, pointing frantically, hisses “Its here! It’s here!”. I look up behind me and there, not 3 meters away, perched on bare branches just above us is a vision of black, blue and white: a male Blackthroat. We can see the complete black throat, the underparts glowing white in the darkness under the canopy, the back is blue-grey. There is no time to reach for a camera. I don’t even see the bird in binoculars. Just as my tired, slow brain takes in that we are in the presence of one of least known birds on the planet, it flicks to a perch just up hill of us – still only a few metres away, looks around and is gone. The whole encounter lasts for perhaps 5 seconds. There are scenes of quiet celebration and palpable relief.

The glowing, orange cushion of Wolong

Sleep deprivation and jet lag now begin to catch up with me and I find myself literally nodding off when we sit down, my eyes involuntarily closing. I try to concentrate on staying awake, aware that this is a critical time. We find ourselves sitting in a small hollow a short distance from the main track. I glance up at a tree-filled depression just above us. There is a strange orange glow coming from it, as if someone has turned on a bedside light with an orange shade. What is that? Am I hallucinating? I move away from Ian and Roland and peer over the rim of our hollow into the depression behind us.

Perhaps it is because I have had less than 5 hours sleep in two nights, but I can clearly see that there is a bright orange cushion moving through dense vegetation into the depression, some 5 metres up hill from me. Slowly, so slowly, the penny drops. It is a Tragopan, a male Temminck’s Tragopan and, although I can only see it’s back,  it is coming directly towards me. This is, arguably, the best bird on the planet. Looking back, this was a moment for great cool, for holding my nerve under the pressure of sleep deprivation and excitement. As it was, I humiliate myself. I slide back into the hollow where Ian and Roland are waiting and, barely able to contain my excitement, hiss “male Tragopan, coming towards us, its coming right towards us!”. I reach to grab my camera, pick it up, miss my footing and nearly fall on Roland. “You are moving around too much, it won’t come” says Roland quietly. Too right I am. No half-aware forest floor dwelling bird is going to continue it’s path towards a flapping birder, hissing and falling all over the place. I peer over into the depression above us again. It is empty. The orange glow is gone, the close encounter did’t happen. I have just seen my first Temminck’s Tragopan, yet I feel completely deflated.

We move on up the trail and become aware of the midge bites that we have all suffered whilst awaiting the Blackthroat. Our hands are covered in itchy red bites. We pick up some other nice birds, a soaring Mountain Hawk Eagle, Grey-headed Fulvetta, Long-tailed Minivet, Verditer Flycatcher, Vinaceous Rosefinch, Brown-flanked Bush Warbler and our first taste of the many phylloscopus Warblers – Claudia’s Leaf and Sichuan Leaf being the commonest.

Ian’s hands after the black biting midges of Wolong. The red bites remain itchy for days.

Pygmy Wren Babbler –  a cracking little fella, with a loud distinctive three note song.

Mountain Hawk Eagle, the only raptor of the day.

Verditer Flycatcher

A panarama from “on top” of Wolong, at about 2700m.

Eventually reaching level ground we get easier views of the canopy species. There are Rufous-gorgeted Flycatchers, Green-backed Tits, Sooty Tits, while Himalayan Cuckoos call from nearby hilltops. Being able to watch the many phylloscopus warblers moving through the canopy from above was a real treat. These gems will get their own blog post at some point.

Ian pauses to use the bushes and this toilet break produces a great bird. Ian notices a movement through the bamboo and finds a large parrotbill perched close by, at around head height. The obvious white eye-ring, dark lores and supercilium all indicate it is a rare Three-toed Parrotbill. It promptly peels off a strip of bark, drops into a low bush and begins nest building. Result!

Shortly afterwards we find another parrotbill, this time a monster: a Great Parrotbill. This is by far the largest member of this unique family of birds. It clambers about above us, like a huge thrush. 

“I hope that’s not the pet name for his penis”

In western male culture, when one man strikes a pose on the roadside, legs apart, arms flexed at the elbows, any other men present will instinctively turn away, leaving their companion to empty his bladder in relative privacy. So when Roland announces that he has to use the bushes, Ian and I turn away from him and start scanning for birds 180 degrees away from Roland. This move, strongly subconsciously, nearly reflexive, almost prevents us from seeing one of the most desirable birds of the trip. For Roland, mid-stream so to speak, sees a small bird hop out from the bamboo and begin to feed on the path. It is close enough to him that even without binoculars the startling bright red throat is immediately apparent. Ian and I, still standing 10 metres further down the path, backs turned towards him, hear his shout: “Firethroat!”. In strange contrast to my hysteria over the Tragopan, I am calm enough to pull out a quick one liner: “I hope that’s not the pet name for his penis” I quip. We run towards Roland, throwing cultural behavioural norms out of the proverbial window. As we arrive Roland calls “Firethroat on the path!”. And there, out in the open, is a truly magnificent Firethroat:

The reality of what we have just witnessed takes a few days to sink in. Blackthroat and Firethroat, both seen within a couple of hours of each other on the very first day of our trip. This has to count as a dream start. Not even in our wildest dreams could we have hoped to see two of China’s three rare robins on day one.

Nine months later I found myself on board a British Airways Dreamliner, grateful that Chinese economic expansion had tempted the company to offer direct flights from London.

It was dawn on Wednesday 11th May and we were circling Chengdu, the capital of the south-western province of Sichuan. A glance at a map of China reveals that there are many cities the size of Chengdu plus many that are much larger. Shanghai now has an estimated population of 34 million people. I was shocked to discover that Chengdu has a population of over 18 million and that there are 15 cities in China larger than London, with populations of over 10 million people. 1.38 billion Chinese have to live somewhere and increasingly where they live is in huge sprawling cities. Rural migration into the cities has reached the point where parents leave their child at home to be raised by it’s grandparents, the so-called “left-behind children“, while they search for work in the cities. In poor populations it still is usually the case that there is only one child per couple, despite the state relaxing the One Child policy on 1st January 2016 to allow two children before a fine is imposed.

Bird deaths at the airport

But it wasn’t the population of the city below me that first attracted my attention.It was the size of the roads. Even from the air I could see 6, 8 and 10 lane superhighways, vast, wide roads. This was a country trying to catch up with the needs of its ever growing population. The consequence of millions of people recently becoming able to afford cars generated the second thing to strike me: air pollution. There was a yellowish haze settled over the city. Only objects in the near distance appeared remotely clear, the buildings in the far distance were nearly invisible in the smog. I was already looking forward to leaving town and we hadn’t even landed yet.

Unfortunately landing produced an even more depressing spectacle. Along the far side of the airport were long lines of mist nets, each several meters high and each holding the bodies of hundreds of slowing dying birds. These nets have been erected to prevent bird strikes on aircraft. Unfortunately they only seem to catch much smaller birds, ones that could not possibly pose a threat to a rotating jet turbine engine or the passengers on board. These birds are attracted to the only large area of grass around the city and this story is repeated at airports across the country (see this Birding Beijing article). This proved to be our first experience of many Chinese state projects, done on the sort of massive scale that only a dictatorship can actualise. In China, the state owns all land. Whilst an individual may own a house, the state can decide to drive an 18 lane superhighway through your valley leaving you with nothing but a compensation claim.

Having the potential for absolute control inevitably leads to absolute state paranoia. For the visiting birder this can also have consequences. For example, there are no large scale maps available. Only the state has access to this information. The tourist is just left with nice colourful small scale tourist maps. Visiting tourists are also unable to drive in China (unless they want to go through the process of acquiring a Chinese driving licence). After some research and some discussion between Ian (in Adelaide, Australia) and myself (in Oxford, UK) we decided that we would see more birds if we used someone who knew the birding sites and could also act as driver and translator.  Roland Zeidler was our man.

Plastic fantastic

I arrive at Chengdu airport and was processed with incredible efficiency. However, I was greeted (image below) with a scene of a plastic, idealised version of nature: Pandas at play. This is something that it would appear the Chinese authorities are striving for in their management of their national parks. This theme would reoccur throughout our stay in Sichuan.

Nature must be neat, with wild animals gambling quietly on sun dappled lawns. Paradoxically, it is an almost simplistic Disney inspired version of the natural world, which has nothing to do with biodiveristy, habitat protection or the complex wild, wet, insect and bug laden systems that have evolved over millions of years and supports a billion forms of life, but which human activity seems intent on reducing to nothing in a matter of generations.

My bag was the first one out and 30 minutes after landing Roland ran through arrivals to met me. Roland is a genuinely nice guy. A gentle man, whose natural Germanic organisational skills run up against the steel wall of Chinese state bureaucracy on a regular basis. Naturally such frustration will build up and occasionally spill out, sometimes leading to amusing outbursts. To hear Roland’s German accent cursing the Chinese destruction of forest with choice phrases such as “Zees people should be shot in zee head!” or upon seeing the horrendous plastic Las Vegas style township in Jaizhougou and grimly sighing “One bomb izz not enough” was very amusing. And we agreed with every word. Roland is also a good birder, knows most of the calls and can use payback to bring the trickier birds out. We estimate that Roland enabled us to see at least 60% more species than if we had visited the birding sites independently and gone in without a guide.

As Ian was not arriving from Australia, via Hong Kong, until that evening Roland and I went birding in Chengdu for the afternoon. We first stopped at the river, just south of the largest building on earth (in terms of volume). There is nothing else I can add about this building, it is just one huge block of steel and glass. I believe there is a beach complete with waves inside. The view from the river:

I had my first good looks at Asian Red-rumped Swallow, with their distinctive heavily streaked breasts:

The local doves were Spotted, the local finches were Grey-headed Greenfinches and there were White-cheeked Starlings, Plain Prinias, Long-tailed Shrikes, Crested Mynas and Vineous-throated Parrotbills in the bushes. The margins of the river held Little Egrets, Chinese Pond Herons and Night Herons, plus Little Ringed Plover and Common Sandpiper.

In the late afternoon we visited the Bailu Wan Wetland in south east Chengdu. This was a rather more scenic spot, though once again a sanitised version of nature and the sprawling city loomed, never far from sight:

Chinese Grosbeaks, Black-winged Cuckoo-Shrike and Oriental Magpie Robin were the highlights:

All hotel rooms begin with an 8

That evening we picked up Ian from Chengdu airport. Roland then gives us some great news. Sid has called to say there is at least one Blackthroat singing at Wolong. This is one of our major targets, but with the usual sites being inaccessible it would have required a 10-12 hour drive each way to stand a chance of seeing one of the world’s rarest and least known birds. To have one (or more?!) singing at a site just 2 hours away, meant a rapid but essential change to our itinerary. We decide to visit Wolong the very next day and overnight at a hotel in Roland’s home town of Dujiangyan.

Dujiangyan gave us our first experience of Chinese hotels and their obsession with superstition surrounding the “lucky” number 8. We were given rooms numbered 8405 and 8406. But when we entered the lift there were only 6 floors in the hotel. Roland explained that the number 8 is seen as a lucky number in China and therefore all Chinese room numbers begin with number 8. So we had to go to the fourth floor and find rooms 405 and 406 and ignore the 8. Similarly, hotels will try to get as many 8s into their phone numbers and wifi passwords as possible. We quickly noticed that often the wifi password were eight 8s in a row. In fact on a couple of occasions we didn’t even ask for the password, but just entered eight 8s and were logged on. This makes having a wifi password seem somewhat redundant: if in China just try eight 8s.

I hit the pillow at 1am, the alarm set for 4:40am. Having only had 90 minutes sleep on the plane the previous night, I was not not looking forward to hearing my alarm the following morning. Except that it would mean we were heading for Wolong!

I have come to realise that my very favourite birding is high altitude birding. There is something about the combination of stunning mountain vistas, combined with the very special birds that live up there and the very physical exercise involved in getting up high, that is very appealing. First from the Alps, then to the high peaks of the Tarus Mountains in Turkey, to the Atlas range in Morocco and even further to the Canadian Rockies, some of my favourite birding experiences have been above 2000 metres. Such special habitats also hold very special birds.

In the summer of 2015 I received an email from Ian Reid, formerly of Oxford, now a resident of Adelaide, Australia, informing me that he had a significant birthday in May 2016. Ian asked if I would be interested in helping him celebrate with a birding trip to somewhere special. He enclosed a list of potential destinations, but due to my inexperience of south-east Asian birding, most of the names meant nothing to me. However, one destination jumped out of the page at me: Sichuan in China. Spring migration in China? Now that sounded VERY interesting. A little research revealed that Sichuan was not one of those Chinese island migrant hotspots with, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, Siberian migrants jumping out of every bush. Instead it appeared to offer a combination of high altitude birding with many fabulous mountain species, combined with the chance to see some of the most highly desired eastern migrants. Having seen the colours and sounds of spring migration in Europe and North America a trip to Sichuan in May also presented the possibility of seeing spring migration on the Eastern Flyway.

Three rare Chinese Robins

Rufous-headed Robin, Blackthroat, Firethroat. The holy grail of world birding. Three of the world’s rarest, least know birds. All beautiful robins, but all complete skulkers, never coming out into the open, always singing or sitting deep within cover. A nightmare to glimpse, let alone see well. They would be tough to get to, let alone tough to see. Perhaps only a few thousand people have ever seen these three species. Learning that a trip to Sichuan would give us a chance to get close to, if not actually see, three of China’s rarest robins only added to the excitement of planning the trip.

It was time to respond to Ian’s email. Beginning with the requisite “I thought you turned fifty ten years ago” line, I jumped at the chance to explore eastern Tibet and western Sichuan. The trip was on! 

Ian did most of the basic research. Sid Francis is the go-to man for those wishing to go biding in Sichuan. When we contacted Sid in summer 2015 he was already booked for our available dates in May 2016, however he recommended his colleague Roland Zeidler, a German birder (now there’s a rarity) who has lived in China for 18 years, is fluent in English and Mandarin and has been birding Sichuan for the last 10 years. We took the plunge, booked Roland and began saving, planning and researching for the trip.