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Saturday, 5th June;
Xinglong Mountains, Gansu province
The Xinglong Mountains are just over an hour's taxi ride south-east
of Lanzhou - the provincial capital of Gansu province.
Its close proximity to a city of more than three million
people poses a potential problem for anyone who goes birding there. My advice is to avoid the weekend, when thousands of people
escape one of the most polluted cities in China and make for the clean mountain air and beautiful forest.
Unfortunately,
my schedule could not be altered, and my only full birding day of this 10 day research trip (people not birds) was on a Saturday.
My plan was to keep ahead of the crowds by arriving early and moving up the mountain ahead of the day-trippers, a
plan that would work very well indeed.
I arrived at 6.30am, bought a ticket at the gate, and headed up the mountain.
I walked from 2200 metres above sea level to about 2,700 metres amid 50 metre-tall primary conifers.
The first
bird of the day was a singing Yellow-streaked Warbler (357), followed by a group of Elliot's Laughingthrushes
(358) that emerged from the bushes next one of the many small temples on the mountain.
While I was watching
the Elliot's, and listening to the chanting of a robed monk, offering a prayer to the low morning sun, a Chestnut
Thrush (359) perched in the open.
A pair of Beavan's Bullfinches hopped around my feet.
Wonderful birds, that I had last photographed on New Year's Day on Emei Shan in Sichuan.
A Eurasian Treecreeper
was too far away to be photographed, and a Chinese Nuthatch was photographed, but poorly.
Sichuan Leaf Warblers
sang from the treetops of the secondary growth, but the leaf warbler I photographed wasn't singing and I have never seen Gansu
Leaf Warbler (which I guess might occur here) so I'll leave it as Leaf Warbler sp.
Another bird
that failed to make it on the 365 list was a Willow Tit sp that I suspect is a Weigold's
Willow Tit, but I don't have the time to dig around for confirmation or otherwise.
White-capped Water Redstart
(360) and Plumbeous Redstart (361) performed well and I managed to get my best ever photos of these
two characterful species.
I spent a lot of time checking the upper branches of the conifers for one of my favourite
birds - Crested Tit Warbler - which I had photographed here on December 11th last year. As I was craning my neck I saw a Nuthatch
fly past me and land on a lower branch, about 50 yards away.
I picked my bins up, immediately found the bird,
and let out a "YES!!", while picking my camera up and firing off several distant shots. This is not only a "new
one" for the 365 challenge, but it's actually a bird I had never seen before:
Przewalski's Nuthatch
(362) A pair!
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