We had the luxury of a 6am breakfast in the restaurant
before checking out a few sites close to Rilong, and which turned out to be an
extremely pleasant few hours. Around some conifers we saw Goldcrest, Bar-tailed
Treecreeper, plenty of warblers, and best of all a pair of superb Crested Tit-warblers that gave very
nice views.
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| Streaked Rosefinch (female) |
Along the road we saw several Common
Rosefinches, as well as a single Streaked
Rosefinch that literally dwarfed its commoner cousins and was clearly a third bigger again. With the sun shining
and wonderful scenery as always in Sichuan we set off on our Black-browed Tit hunt which was only
successful for Trevor and I, and I have no idea why the pair we saw shot off
down the slope never to be seen again.
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| Rufous-bellied Woodpeckers |
So we left on the 5 hour drive to Mengbi
Shan, passing through quaint Tibetan-style villages along the way and at one of
which we enjoyed a delicious lunch.
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| Mengbi Shan |
It was mid afternoon by the time we made it
to the mountain and in bright sunshine there wasn’t much singing at all, so we
made the best of it with nice views of White-browed
and Pink-rumped Rosefinches, Rufous-vented Tits, White-bellied Redstart and our first Collared Grosbeaks.
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| Collared Grosbeak |
As we watched a
pair of these huge birds at least 3 Sichuan
Jays emerged from the slope below us and clambered around the conifers, at
one stage being chased off by the grosbeaks.
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| Sichuan Jays |
Unbelievable! I spent two whole
days last year searching this site for these very special endemics, and we had
nailed them within the first half an hour of arriving here. In fact we enjoyed
repeated views of them for a long time before they flew up the hill and out of
sight.
So a great start to our time on Mengbi Shan and with a whole day
tomorrow I’m hoping we can do quite well….Weather permitting…
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