June 1-22, 2025 with Doug Gochfeld & Shay Xie
As the calendar turned over to June of 2025, the very first Field Guides tour to the wondrous hills of the green province of Sichuan, China finally launched. The adventure we set forth on was long-awaited by both guide and participants, after several years of delay (mostly thanks to covid). The brief post-tour analysis: it was most definitely more than worth the wait.
Brevity, though, does not befit such comprehensive itinerary through so breathtaking a land. Our highlights were myriad, from an astonishing FIVE Red Panda sightings and Asiatic Black Bear as the highlights of a strong cast of mammals, and 13 chickens detected (of which 12 we were able to eyeball) out of a realistically possible 15. We excelled at rosefinches as well, with 14 species (including stunners like Three-banded and Long-tailed), seven species of redstart, 14 species of laughingthrushes and allies, and 9 species of parrotbills. We even detected 18 species of Phylloscopus warbler, much to your guide’s delight, and most folks came around to appreciating these often dull plumaged but energetic little feather puffs. We had great experiences with Przevalski’s Pinktail, Chinese Rubythroat, Siberian Rubythroat, Tawny Fish-Owl, Eurasian Eagle-Owl, Himalayan Owl, Snow Pigeon, Black-necked Crane, Ground Tit, Tibetan Lark, Little Forktail, Golden Bush-Robin, and Pygmy Cupwing, and also nice experiences with Wallcreeper, Bearded Vulture, Brown & White-throated dippers, and the regional specialty Firethroat.
We started in the ancient city of Chengdu, often credited as the first place where paper money was used, and the human heart of the province. Our first birding location was the botanical garden, on the northern outskirts of the city, and here we made our first acquaintance with a couple of dozen species. Fittingly for a trip that features a great diversity of each, we found our first parrotbills (Vinous-breasted), and our first chicken (Chinese Bamboo-Partridge), and got excellent looks at each, with the bamboo-partridge even scurrying across the path a couple of times! Collared Finchbill, Amur Paradise-Flycatcher, and Tiger Shrike all duly entertained us during our stroll, and then it was time for lunch and then the several hour drive north to our next waystation.
By the time we reached the front gate of Tangjiahe National Nature Reserve (NNR), after a detour around a closed road, and down some incredibly narrow streets that made us appreciate our excellent bus driver, Mr. Swum, we were ready to get out of the bus and look at some birds. Sure enough, we pulled up to the gate, got out, and almost immediately were on a Tawny Fish-Owl, while some Red-billed Blue-Magpies chattered away in the trees on the other side of the bus. As we continued our drive into the park, with dusk fast approaching, we were able to procure the two charismatic avian stream denizens of the park, Brown Dipper and Crested Kingfisher, in relatively short order – everything was coming up aces!
Our next day and a half at Tangjiahe featured us continuing to ease into the avifauna of the region, as well as see some real charismatic mammals! We did our first reckoning with the many species of Phylloscopus warbler on our route, tallying Alstrom’s (feeding young no less), Chestnut-crowned, Claudia’s, and Kloss’s (Leaf) Warblers. Some other species of note here included the oh-so-junco-like Slaty Bunting, a cooperative pair of White-backed Woodpeckers, Fujian Niltava, and the relatively recently described Zappey’s Flycatcher. Mammals, however, are where Tangjiahe excels. Aside from the omnipresent, and sometimes menacing, but sometimes endearing (and sometimes both simultaneously) Tibetan Macaques, other mammals that we saw here included Tufted Deer, Chinese Goral, Masked Palm Civet, Pere David’s Rock Squirrels, a close Sichuan Takin (an exhilarating highlight!), and plenty of Reeve’s Muntjac. However, our gold star highlight mammal of the park, by far, was found at the very last moment we could have found it, as we were making our way out of the park: an Asiatic Black Bear!!
After spending some time communing with a thousand-year-old Ginkgo tree in the park, we set our sights to the beyond, and took off for our next spot, with, incidentally, another mammal focus. We got to the snub-nosed monkey forest mid-afternoon, and started our ascent up the boardwalk. While we were here specifically to see the habituated troop of Golden Snub-nosed Monkeys, the forest also provides some nice bird habitat, at an interesting elevation. We climbed about 200 meters in elevation over the course of half a mile, and stopped to get excellent point-blank views of a Pygmy Cupwing, brief glimpses of a very noisy Sichuan Bush Warbler, Gray-crowned Warbler, Stripe-throated Yuhina, and our first of what would be many Elliot’s Laughingthrushes. The Golden Snub-nosed Monkey setup is a bit of a strange one, with the animals showing up a couple of times a day, when food is put out for them, to an area that is built and managed to look like a monkey playground. While this encourages them to be more sedentary than a usual troop would be, this provides both a rare opportunity for tourists like ourselves to see these animals up close, and a good incentive for the locals who manage the area (and charge an admission to the reserve) to keep the forest in good health, and not poach the animals.
The next morning, it was off to the west, and up in elevation. We crested a high elevation mountain pass, getting our first experience in the alpine zone, and what a start it was! The crisp, windy highland featured a pair of Grandala, the male’s unique deep blue defying description or categorization, a Chinese Rubythroat, red gorget vibrating as it sang away from the bush-tops, and Tibetan Snowcocks, voices cascading down from their ridgetop homes, where they kept a low profile (though not low enough to hide from our eagle-eyed group), while casting vigilant watch on the pair of Golden Eagles below. After lunch on the other side of the pass, it was back up for a crack at the upper slopes below the pass, and our first encounters with White-browed and Crested tit-warblers, Godlewski’s Bunting, Spotted Bush Warbler, Siberian Rubythroat, Sichuan Tit, Pere David’s Laughingthrush, three species of redstart, and four species of rosefinch!
The next morning featured an early wakeup, and we did some more birding locally before heading up onto the legendary Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Highlights from the morning included a great experience with a pair of Blue Eared-Pheasant, Tibetan Serin, another Phylloscopus party (Buff-barred, Hume’s Sichuan Leaf, Yellow-streaked, Alpine (Tickell’s), and Greenish), Maroon-backed Accentor, and an amazing spectacle of a couple of hundred Snow Pigeons, and over a thousand Plain Mountain Finches in some local ag fields. Drizzle met us upon our arrival onto the plateau, but it didn’t prevent us from tallying Eurasian Eagle-Owl, and our first Saker Falcon, followed by a couple of great specialties in Snowy-cheeked Laughingthrush and Spectacled Parrotbill.
Unfortunately, rain persisted to the next day, so our trip to the Baxi Forest area was unproductive, and we cut it short in favor of heading back into the open country. We worked through a drizzly morning, getting out at several stops to scan for what we could find. Adorable Plateau Pikas were perhaps the most numerous animal of the day, and amidst their habitat we found Rufous-necked and White-rumped snowfinches, Upland Buzzard, and the strange Ground Tit. We took the rain (and some brief bouts of June snow!) as an opportunity to look for Tibetan Fox as we drove to a somewhat out-of the-way lake – we came up empty on the fox, but scored Little Owl, Tufted Duck, Black-necked Crane, Asian Short-toed Lark, Tibetan Horned Lark, Daurian Jackdaw, and a surprising pair of Isabelline Wheatears, clearly on a breeding territory. After lunch, though the light and intermittent drizzle persisted, we decided to do some of the walk around Flower Lake, which paid off with great views of Salim Ali’s Swift, the huge (for a lark) Tibetan Lark, Citrine Wagtail, Red-crested and Common pochards, Ferruginous Duck, a great pick of a Tibetan Sand-Plover by Xie, and the most adorable Black-necked Crane chicks you could ever imagine. We spent the rest of the afternoon on a quest for Tibetan Fox, as well as a sojourn down a breathtakingly beautiful gorge that included a spectacular rhododendron show, and finally, at long last and as we were heading back to the ranch, Xie spotted a Tibetan Fox resting in a roadside field. After a little bit of digging, where it almost completely disappeared into what was presumably a pika burrow, it emerged and sat right down. Despite not coming out of the hole with a tasty treat right then, it was seemingly satiated and sleepy anyway, perhaps full from some earlier pika meal. We spent some time enjoying this cool-looking canid, and there was much rejoicing.
Continuing on our whirlwind exploration of this expansive land, we pulled up stakes from Xoige, and worked our way out the plateau in a direction different from which we had come. Przevalski’s Pinktail, in its very own monotypic family, was the major gem of the day, but Giant Shrike, Azure-winged Magpie, a rare-for-the-area Japanese Sparrowhawk, and a colony of Rock Sparrows played more than worthy supporting roles, especially for a day devoted mostly to travelling.
The second half of the tour was characterized by a winding route through the mountains just south of the eastern end of the plateau. “Shan” is the word for mountain here, and we visited shans a plenty: first Mengbishan, then Balangshan, then onto Erlangshan, and finally, our beloved Wawushan. In between, we also made visits to Wolong, Labahe NNR, and Longcanggou. We went up, and down, and up, and down, in Mr. Swun’s trusty bus, park vans, various cable cars, and even a little on foot. Mengbishan provided a buffet of new and great birds: White Eared-Pheasants, Sichuan Jays, Collared Grosbeaks, Long-tailed Thrush, Crimson-browed Finch, Przevalski’s Nuthatch, a pile of rosefinches including Himalayan Beautiful, Streaked, Pink-rumped, and the stunning Three-banded, and spectacular experiences with Giant Laughingthrush and Chestnut-throated Monal-Partridge. The next few days was a constant windfall of new birds: Wallcreeper, Blood Pheasant, Dark-rumped, Dark-breasted, Sharpe’s, Long-tailed, and Red-fronted rosefinches, Blue-fronted, White-throated, and White-capped redstarts, Chinese Fulvetta, Snow Partridge, Chinese Monal, Bearded Vulture (or Lammergeier, for those who prefer more evocative names), Alpine Accentor, and even scope views of male Golden Pheasant in the dark recesses of the forest.
Erlang Mountain, in all its huge electrical pylon-covered glory, provided Firethroat, Lady Amherst’s Pheasant, Southern Nutcracker, Streak-breasted Scimitar-Babbler, Rufous-tailed Babbler, Yellow-throated Bunting, Chinese Babax, Sharpe’s, Vinaceous, and Blanford’s rosefinches, Black-headed Greenfinch, shockingly good views of Barred Laughingthrush, and a jaw-dropping experience with the bold and in-your-face Golden-breasted Fulvetta, one of the fan favorites of the trip. We continued on to Labahe, and the avian show continued, though the procession of new headliners continued: Chestnut-crowned Bush Warbler, Chestnut-headed Tesia, White-winged Grosbeak, Golden Bush-Robin, Fulvous Parrotbill, Himalayan Red Crossbill, Red-billed Leiothrix, Rufous-gorgeted and Ferruginous flycatchers, Necklaced Woodpecker, an endearing family of Little Forktails, and in a recurring role, more Lady Amherst’s Pheasant. We also saw a few Red-and-white Flying Squirrels, and a group of 16 Sichuan Takin while here. These great birds and mammals, however, were NOT the primary highlight of our sojourn at Labahe. The birding came to an absolute standstill when Claire exclaimed “RED PANDA!” Excitement turned to mild panic, which turned to elation, all in the span of half a minute, as each of us went on our own journey of knowing it was there, to not seeing it, to seeing it, to seeing it well. This amazing animal made several appearances in the moss-covered trees before disappearing into the terrestrial bamboo thicket below, and it eventually came up to the edge of the road, and after a thirty second or so look at us, where time seemed to stand still, it ambled back into the bamboo and disappeared for a final time!
Our final two locales of the tour were Longcanggou for a single overnight, and Wawushan for two. Rain afflicted us during our stay at Longcanggou, but we still miraculously pulled out the most difficult endemic there, Gold-fronted Fulvetta, and watched it with our umbrellas forgotten and cast away on the ground at our sides. We got rained out of seeing Brown Bullfinch, but we did get very good views of Emei Leaf Warbler (and more importantly heard it well!), Golden Parrotbill, Emei Shan Liocichla, and Golden-breasted Fulvetta, and also got reasonable views of Buffy Laughingthrush and Temminck’s Tragopan. We then said goodbye to our bus for a couple of days, ascending the cable car to stay on the mountain for two days. Wawushan is known, along with Labahe, as one of the best places to see Red Panda in Sichuan, and we had three more encounters over our two days at this location, bringing us to an astonishing five individuals (after a second brief sighting at Labahe) for the tour. Down the slope around the hotel, Great Barbet finally put in an appearance, and we had a really nice show from the fastest bird in the world (in a level flight), White-throated Needletail. Meanwhile, up at the tippy top, the avian stars were Black-faced and Red-winged laughingthrushes, Black-headed Sibia, Hodgson’s Treecreeper, Scaly-breasted Cupwing, and a quad of special parrotbills: Three-toed Parrotbill, Great Parrotbill, Brown Parrotbill, and the tricky, but eventually cooperative Gray-hooded Parrotbill, all of which we saw really nicely!
Here is a list of the mammals we identified during our traverse of this amazing Province:
Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta)
Tibetan Macaque (Macaca thibetana)
Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana)
Gansu Pika (Ochotona cansus)
Plateau Pika (Ochotona curzoniae)
Moupin Pika (Ochotona thibetana)
Woolly Hare (Lepus oiostolus)
Himalayan Marmot (Marmota himalayana)
Perny's Long-nosed Squirrel (Dremomys pernyi)
Pere David's Rock Squirrel (Sciurotamias davidianus)
Pallas's Squirrel (Callosciurus erythraeus)
Swinhoe's Striped Squirrel (Tamiops swinhoei)
Mainland Red-and-white Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista alborufus)
Flying Squirrel sp.
Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)
Tibetan Fox (Vulpes ferrilata)
Asian Black Bear (Moon Bear) (Ursus thibetanus)
Western Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens)
Asian Badger (Meles leucurus)
Masked Palm Civet (Paguma larvata)
Reeve's Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi)
Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus)
Sika Deer (Cervus nippon)
Eastern Roe Deer (Capreolus pygargus)
Sambar (Rusa unicolor)
Chinese Goral (Nemorhaedus griseus)
Sichuan Takin (Budorcas tibetana tibetana)
After our two and a half weeks together, we finally had to say goodbye, to both each other, and to this great corner of the world that held our rapt attention each and every day. This was a tour featuring fascinating contrasts, from the astounding pace of technological and infrastructure development, to the vast swathes of protected forest harboring all manner of vibrant flora and delightful fauna. Thank you, each and every one of you, for accompanying me on this maiden voyage to Sichuan, the first of hopefully many for Field Guides. I look forward to encountering you all again, be it serendipitously in the field, or on another tour, perhaps even exploring more of China’s avian bounty of laughingthrushes, babblers, and who-knows-what-else! Until then, I wish you each the best of life and birds, and hope that this trip list provides a great way to re-live this lovely tour.
-Treeswift
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/408658
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/csi25TRIPLIST.pdf
-Doug Gochfeld (Treeswift)