Snow Leopard, Pallas’s Cat, Eurasian Lynx, Red Panda and other recent China mammals
In October 2025 I traveled in Sichuan China and Qinghai (flying into Chengdu and Xining) as part of a mammal and bird search with a British bird tour company, Ornis.
Our Ornis leader (and an amazing birder) was a Belgian living in Canada, Joaquim Bertrand.
The official trip report from Ornis may take a few months I am told, but will be available eventually.
We visited a variety of sites, guided on the ground by Chinese birder and tour leader Kevin Zhong, who knows all of the stake-out sites eg in the “Valley of the Cats.”
Kevin is booked one to two years in advance, but can be reached at
<birdtours@hotmail.com>
and he speaks English.
Our mammals were as follows.
Eurasian Lynx (Gouli Valley)
Pallas’s Cat (Gouli Valley)
Snow Leopard (Gouli Valley)
Mainland Leopard Cat (monal site, Lianghekou)
Gray Wolf (Gouli Valley)
Tibetan Fox (Gouli Valley)
Red Fox (Gouli Valley)
Asian Black Bear (Tangjiahe and Lianghekou)
Chinese Red Panda (Wawushan)
Eurasian River Otter (Tangjiahe)
Masked Palm Civet (Tangjiahe)
Asian Badger (Gouli Valley)
Northern Hog Badger (Tangjiahe)
MacNeill’s Red Deer (Gouli Valley)
Reeve’s Muntjac (Tangjiahe)
Takim (Tangjiahe)
Chinese Goral (Tangjiahe)
Blue Sheep (Gouli Valley)
Tibetan Gazelle (Gouli Valley)
Przewalski’s Gazelle (on journey)
Yarkand aka Goitered Gazelle (wetlands; site name to follow)
Malayan Porcupine (Tangjiahe)
Wild Boar (Tangjiahe)
Wooly Hare (Gouli Valley)
Plateau Pica (Gouli Valley)
Norway Rat (Tangjiahe)
Large-eared Field Mouse (Apodemus sp., Tangjiahe)
Swinhoe’s Striped Squirrel (Wawushan)
Pallas’s Squirrel (site name to follow)
Purney’s Long-nosed Squirrel (pheasant hide)
Pere David’s Rock Squirrel (Lianghekou)
Golden Snub-nosed Monkey (site name to follow)
Tibetan Macaque (Wawushan, Tangjiahe)
Rhesus Macaque (Wawushan)
I recommend Kevin as a guide fully, completely, and loudly. (Good luck finding a gap in his schedule.) I am not sure that Ornis has this itinerary booked again; ours may have been a one-off sort of tour. In the Valley of the Cats we did have lynx, Pallas’s cat, and snow leopard all in one day (and wolves). We also had a run-in with a ranger who thought we were somehow associated with National Geographic and had some issue with our visas, which he had no authority to question. Well, what can I say? There are officious, overly self-certain people everywhere. On average, as others have reported, the Chinese people were friendly and curious — I did think I am now a rising star on Chinese TikTok, based on all the selfies I participated in.
Charles Hood
hoodcw at gmail dot com.
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