The drive from Maerkang up to the Tibetan Plateau and our eventual
arrival at Roergai always produces a wonderful variety of birds and passes
through some of the most amazing scenery of any birding tour. Today was no
exception and provided an appreciative group with a mouth-watering selection of
very good birds, with everybody contributing and continuing what had become a
very jovial tour. So after driving through a spectacular gorge for many
kilometres with a fast-flowing mountain stream tumbling alongside us we had
breakfast at a roadside restaurant, and finally gave up counting White-capped Water-redstarts when the
total exceeded 30 by 7.30am!
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| Ibisbill |
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| Ibisbill |
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| Ibisbill |
How can you get any better than an Ibisbill being the first goodie of the day? Peter
spotted something along the river that warranted a quick 8-point turn and sure
enough there it was, on a rocky island mid-stream and is a bird not normally
seen on this route through Sichuan. How lucky were we? Our next stop saw us
scanning some bushes where Chinese
Beautiful Rosefinch was present, although the sight of a Pere David’s Laughingthrush scuttling
between the bushes was a little more to our taste. A little further along and
we were watching our first Azure-winged
Magpies flying back and forth across the road, as well as several Daurian Jackdaws and some Oriental Skylarks in the fields as
well. Roadside birding from a moving vehicle is never easy but a nice male Hodgson’s Redstart prompted a hasty
exit from the coach and after a bit of a search we relocated it perched on the
telegraph wires, and we also has a White-throated
Dipper here as well.
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| The start of the plateau |
As the road wound its way ever higher we reached the
Tibetan Plateau and the scenery became spectacular with wide open vistas and
beautifully shaped hills all the way across the horizon. One of the major birds
up here is Black-necked Crane and it
didn’t take long for us to find the first of exactly fifty to be seen today,
with one group of fifteen very close to the road.
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| Black-necked Crane |
The other key bird is Hume’s Ground-tit which proved to be
quite common the further into the plateau we ventured.
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| Hume's Ground-tit |
Every time we stopped to
look at something we found more new birds, so when a Common Tern was spotted we also picked up Citrine Wagtail, Brown-headed
Gull, a soaring Black Stork
found by Graham, and several lovely Twite.
Black-eared Kite was becoming
increasingly common, and we continued the raptor theme with a female Amur Falcon perched on telegraph wires
being something of a surprise, and several huge Upland Buzzards as well. However, pride of place went to a stunning
Saker Falcon and as we scoped it on a telegraph pole we noticed a nest nearby in
a small cliff with 3 young.
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| Saker Falcon at nest |
What an unbelievable sighting. But we were
definitely on a roll today and when we finally nailed the endemic White-browed Tit, as luck would have it
a huge Eurasian Eagle-owl flew up
from the bank above us and into a small quarry where we watched it fly around
several times before perching on the top where it was mobbed by a Kessler’s Thrush! Wow!
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| Eurasian Eagle-owl mobbed by Kessler's Thrush |
We also counted
11 Little Owls as we drove along, as
well as Black Redstart, Siberian Stonechat, plenty of Ruddy Shelducks, and finished the day
with a small group of White-rumped
Snowfinches. In the evening we drove to a restaurant in Roergai and
celebrated our success with a fine meal and some local fire water!
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