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| China: Sichuan 2009 |
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My second visit to China was in April 2009 for a meeting in Beijing. So I took advantage of being there to visit Sichuan Province to try to see a Red Panda along with as much other stuff as I could find. Sichuan seemed like a promising destination for mammal watching, judging by the by-catch reported from various (primarily) birding trip reports (see for example Steve Anyon Smith’s report) that are linked to the China home page. But many of the apparently best sites were still closed because of the May 2008 which devastated Wolong and destroyed the Balang Shan Pass. Moreover, other good sites in the Tibetan region of Sichuan were shut to foreigners because of the ongoing problems. So I had to settle on visiting just two places: Wawu Shan, a mountain popular on the birding route, and somewhere Red Pandas are reported quite often, along with Tangjiahe, up in the north east of Sichuan near the Qinling Mountains. When to go: Late April/May seems to be the optimum time for birding. Late October/November is probably best for mammal watching. On Steve Anyon Smith’s advice I arranged the trip through Jia Min (aka Kate) manager of the Sichuan China Youth Travel Service (you can also email her on chinabird@163.net). She was generally quick to get back to me and helpful, arranging various bookings at short notice, though she didn’t know a great deal about mammals. I only took one book with me, the excellent A Field Guide to the Mammals of China, by Andrew Smith and Yan Xie. I was met at Chengdu airport by Mr Zhong (aka “Zorro”) my guide and Mr Cho, my fearless driver. Wawu Shan Wawu Mountain is a good 5 hour's drive from Chengdu to the south-west. It was almost dark by the time we arrived at the Gong Tong hotel, 22 km inside the park. The drive from Cheng Du was Ok though I had to grit my teeth whenever Mr Cho drove at full speed around blind corners, relying on his horn for safety. This was more of a lifestyle than a habit I discovered. We would have been considerably earlier arriving were it not for the bureaucracy of the gate staff who, after multiple phone calls, insisted we purchase entry tickets from a different place even though they were selling them at the gate. I have no idea.
The hotel is up at about 2000m, surrounded by broadleaf forest with the first patches of bamboo and azaleas. Its quite comfortable and the food was excellent though if you don’t like chilies you would disagree. We didn’t see a great deal along the road in the afternoon. In fact I saw nothing, though Zorro spotted what was probably a Perny’s Long-nosed Squirrel. Tibetan Macaques are occasionally seen along here. But a 2 hour night drive back down the road from the hotel produced at least 6 large flying squirrels. We had prolonged views of several animals but at a good distance. At first I thought they were Red Flying Squirrels. But finally we had good views of an animal lower to the ground and it was reddish brown, with browner patches dorsally and a bright orange belly. VENT bird tours had previously photographed these animals better than I could. They put them down at the time as Chinese Giant Flying Squirrels see the penultimate page of this VENT bird report. But a couple of years later I heard that they are in fact Complex-toothed Flying Squirrels and that ID fits well the picture. Mammal number one. I also saw some eyeshine near a group of flying squirrels that disappeared quickly. It was quite probably just a Flying Squirrel but could conceivably have been a Red Panda (it was quite low and in a small tree just above a thicket of bamboo).. We didn’t see anything else (Steve Anyon-Smith saw a Leopard Cat and Masked Palm Civet at night and a Siberian Weasel and Tibetan Macaques in the day here).
Small mammal trapping though was excellent: in a couple of nights we caught six species: Chinese Mole Shrew; Pere David’s Vole; a couple of Large-eared Field Mice (the first escaped before being photographed and the second died. According to the field guide both animals were too large to be a South-China Field Mouse ( the species are similar although the Large-eared flavour are supposed to occur over 2500 and I caught them at 2000m); a Niviventer fulvescens;and an unidentified shrew that escaped. It looked quite like the Lesser-striped Shrew that I caught later on the summit.
There was much concern from Zorro when a mouse bit me on the finger on my first morning. It barely drew blood. But Zorro, his manager, the hotel manager, at least three people in the restaurant, along, it seemed, with anyone else in Sichuan we could ask thought I should go for urgent medical treatment. They were very concerned when I declined, my reasoning being that the only risk I could think of from the incident would be if I let myself fall into the hands of the local clinic. But I wanted to be at the top of Wawu Shan. Red Panda’s are reported here quite often and I have heard rumours of one birder seeing three in one day along the trails of the summit. Googling “red panda wawu” confirms this, and some of the locals see them ‘often’ though this wasn’t well defined. That said, whether the frequency of reports is driven by the frequency of birders in the area or the density of the Pandas I don’t know.
A cable car takes you from the hotel up to the top: it is over 30 minutes by the very slow cable car with at least an 800m gain in elevation so I think the walk would be considerably longer than the hour and a half Zorro estimated when trying to persuade me to walk up, though when it came to walking he didn’t like to hang around so maybe he would have made it in that time. I wouldn’t have. It is then another 1500m walk from the cable car to the Xianger Hotel. Had I known it was 1500m I would not have packed quite as much for the one or two nights I was planning to spend there. Mr Cho insisted on carrying my 15kg bag. I felt a little guilty later in the day when he complained of a migraine, but I got over it, and I got over it quicker then he got over his migraine. The hotel was not as bad as I was expecting – they even had 24 hour electricity and hot water of sorts. From most of the bird reports you would never guess that the summit of Wawu Shan would be so crowded. It didn’t help that I was there over the weekend. But given the number of people taking the cable car on Friday I don’t think mid week is much better. The weather was unusually crap for April: permanent mist and occasional drizzle for my entire two days there. I spent my time walking the small network of paved, fairly flat,well maintained but treacherously slippy after rain, trails looking for Red Pandas. No one we spoke to had any special sites for the Pandas: advice ranged from ‘anywhere’ to ‘winter time’.
The Pandas were not easy to find. The crowds of Chinese whooping and littering along the trails didn’t help and nor did the weather. We did find a closed trail leading to an old monastery (From the hotel you should walk the 1500m to the duck ponds. Turn left on the main trail that loops to the waterfall and after 200m you will see the turn off to the right. I wouldn’t worry too much about the No Access sign). This looked much more promising and the amount of Red Panda scat along the trail confirmed it.
But despite walking 20km over the two days including 2 spotlight walks, each for over 2 hours, we didn’t see any mammals. The second night’s walk was in heavy drizzle and thick mist, so visibility was down to about 20m and its perhaps not surprising we didn’t score. The rain soaked my boots, my camera bag and stuffed up my mobile phone so it wasn’t a highpoint of the trip.
On the last morning, 100m from the cable car as I was leaving a Perny’s Long-nosed Squirrel ran across the trail from underneath one of the garbage cans. The only mammal I had seen at the summit that hadn’t come out of one of my Elliot traps. Small mammal trapping was, however, good at the top. I caught a Sichuan Chinese Vole, another Large-eared Field Mouse, a couple of Lesser-striped Shrews and what I think was a South-China Field Mouse, though the white tip at the end of its tail was strange.
Emei Shan Mount Emei is a shortish detour on the way from Chengdu and Wawu Shan. It’s a very popular tourist destination and also home to a large and well known population of Tibetan Macaques. We missed the Macaques in Wawu so we stopped off at Emei. A cable car runs up the mountain and Zorro thought a few monkeys would probably be hanging around the front of the temple nearest to the cable car station. It was still raining though and the monkeys hadn’t been seen for 3 days since the rain had started. So we walked 5km back down the mountain to the wild monkey ecological park: a patch of forest where a group of monkeys are every present, largely because of all the tourists coming to see and feed them.The walk was uneventful, apart from having to fend off the vulturous Sedan Chair bearers, who could see me limping and were circling for a fare. The monkey park is amusing. First, the Tibetan Macaques are impressive beasts and well worth a look, even if the experience isn’t the pristine wildnerness encounter I had hoped for (though they are wild animals). Equally impressive are the small army of staff who patrol the area with long sticks and catapults to keep the monkeys in check (one old guy was wearing a WWII tin helmet and seemed to have a bigger catapult than the others so maybe he was in charge).
I wondered whether so many people were needed to keep the monkeys at bay. I decided they probably were when I ignored the requests of one of the monkey guards to keep moving. An animal tried to climb up my coat convinced I had food in my pocket and when I tried to shake it off it seemed set to sink its canines into me. Enter monkey guard with large stick.
Tangjiahe National Nature Reserve Tangjiahe is 300km north west of Chengdu, close to the Qinling Mountains. It isn't on the regular birding itinerary. Jia Min recommended it as a place to go for mammals, especially in the light of all the Tibetans bits of Sichuan being out of bounds. John and Jenni Holmes also sent through a trip report recommending the site for its mammal watching. It took all day to drive there from Chengdu. We picked up Ma, the park guide, at 5pm at the park entrance. During the 15km drive to the hotel he spotted a group of 3 Takin, and 2 Reeve’s Muntjaks. Earlier that afternoon he had seen a Chinese Serow. Things were looking up and I was impressed with Ma’s spotting prowess and knowledge.
The hotel was empty and comfortable though the food was almost chilli-free: my taste buds missed the adrenalin rush but my guts had a chance to recuperate. As time wore on I realised the menu was very limited and one particular spice appeared in every dish and tasted to my unrefined palate like soap. So it was a good reason to cut my calory intake which had been off the chart since I arrived. The small museum next to the hotel is well worth a visit for the comprehensive, if moth-eaten, mammal collection. The roads and trails
Another road branches off about half way along the main road and travels up a bit higher. The end of this road is the starting point for the steep trek up to the high grasslands. Mr Cho was driving his usual breakneck speed and startled a Serow along here which fell on the road in a heap and took a good 20 seconds to stand up again, so I got a much better view of this great animal than I had had in the Qinlings.
A nice trail goes up the mountain opposite the hotel after you cross the river. We walked half of it and then took off up the mountain side to the top. Plenty of Pere David’s Squirrels along the trail, and on the mountain we saw fleeting glimpses of a Muntjac, a Chinese Goral and my first Tufted Deer, along with prolonged views of a family of Takin including two youngsters less than a month old. Ma saw a Siberian Chipmunk along here but I missed it.
We spent some time spotlighting on the road that runs on along the river past the hotel. At the start of the trail there are some old livestock buildings and a couple of Pearson’s Horseshoe Bats were using them as a night roost. We spent an afternoon above this trail looking for Bamboo Rats. It was a very steep, wet and immensely slippery climb to reach the right elevation and then we had to struggle through the Bamboo groves looking for fresh holes. We found some old burrows but nothing inhabited. A pity because not only did I want to see a Chinese Bamboo Rat, but it would have been fascinating to watch Ma catch them. I didn’t see the trap but it involved several pieces of flexed bamboo and a wire noose. Apparently Bamboo Rats like to keep their tunnels sealed with earth. So we would have removed the earth and set the trap. When the rat went to the opening of its tunnel to replace the soil it would have moved through the noose and taken the juicy bamboo root left as bait, thereby triggering the bamboo to flick up and tightening the noose. Like something out of the SAS survival book.
Other small trails lead off of the main roads and we walked a few but none seemed much better than the others. We weren’t allowed to small mammal trap in the park but we did manage to catch a Korean Field Mouse by hand.
The high grasslands So a reasonable trip. Twenty-two species of mammals in a week with eleven lifers. If it wasn’t for the weather (which was unusually bad for late April) and the closure of the Tibetan parts of Sichuan I think I would have added at least another 6 species including Red Pandas. Somewhere to return to, preferably in early winter, and once places like Wolong and Balang Shan Pass - damaged by the earthquake - have reopened. I was also told by Ma that Bao Xing National Park, in the south of Sichuan is a good place for Red Pandas. Mssrs Zhong, Cho and Ma couldn’t have tried harder to find me the animals I was after so my thanks to them and Dion Hobcroft and Steve Anyon-Smith for their advice and trip reports.
Stuff I missed I was disappointed not to have gotten up to the alpine pasture to see the Blue Sheep. I had also hoped to see Hog Badgers which are present but very hard to see most of the year, though in October/November time they are much easier and often walk along the roads. Forest Musk Deer are also around but very wary and difficult to find. Other good mammals which I didn’t look for include Giant Pandas (very hard to see) and Himalayan Black Bears (quite easy to find in the autumn when they feed on acorns). But even a few of the birds were worth a second glance....
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Chinese Serow 
