China: Yunnan

Phew! It's been way too long since i've posted anything here, so here we go with our Yunnan Adventure...

Our flight arrived in Kunming 11.15am local time and after meeting up with the rest of the group who had arrived earlier we ate lunch before setting out on the 3 hour drive to Chuxiong. Along the way a few common birds were seen such as Eastern Cattle Egret, Little Egret, Oriental Turtle Dove and others. Approaching Zi Xi Shan around 4pm the road had become blocked by 

a large crane so with no other alternative we began walking along the road through degraded habitat and feeling like luck was not on our side, with a close Long-tailed Shrike the only bird of note. Luckily our coach appeared pretty quickly and we continued up the mountain, eventually entering much better habitat. 

Our main targets here were nuthatches, and after leaving the coach and having a quick look at some Green-backed Tits, we had well and truly nailed Yunnan Nuthatch within a few minutes! 

Yunnan Nuthatch

This individual was very confiding and paraded around us for a good ten minutes allowing everyone to soak up the views and take some great photos. Just a few hundred metres further along the road and we were watching Giant Nuthatch reacting quite strongly to my ipod in the canopy of some tall pines right over the road. And that was a wrap. We left and drove just half an hour to a decent hotel and some much needed sleep.