Giant panda!

Giant panda is perhaps the most iconic mammal in the world and this month I got a chance to spend eight, sometimes gruelling, days searching for them in the Foping reserve in the Qinling Mountains of central China. The terrain was appalling, steep valley sides covered in dense bamboo made for some excellent exercise and not a little swearing. We lost four days to rain and low cloud but the other four days netted us two panda sightings.

The first came on our first day in the field and was a rather distant 'birder's' view, binoculars and close observation required. The animal was above us on a bamboo-covered hillside and slowly ate it's way into view before eventually running out of food and moving off out of sight. Nice because it was behaving naturally and the view was long but also frustrating because it was partially obscured and at long-range.

So another sighting was much desired and after a great deal of personal exertion on our third day tracking and huge and expert effort from our local team we had a brief but close encounter with a young, radio-collared male. I made an effort to record this on video (see below). Next year the tour includes an extension to see red panda, it just gets better! Roll on next year!

Postcard from Foping

Just completed an enjoyable and successful giant panda tour at Foping (China). China was amazing and I cannot wait to return. We saw two giant pandas, so stay-tuned for a panda video in a later post.

One of the mammal highlights of the start of the tour was a close encounter with a group of golden snub-nosed monkeys at a feeding station near the access gate to the panda reserve.

Despite the late date, a few butterflies were still flying in the Qinling Mountains, including this common beak (Libythea lepita).

The area around our chilly accommodation block at Sanguanmiao research station was great birding in the mornings before we headed out and on rainy days when panda tracking was not possible. We definitely developed a patch mentality about these orchards and clearings and enjoyed finding birds like this Asian barred owlet and a handful of late migrants like olive-backed pipit, Pallas' warbler and little bunting.

The Foping forest is in great shape and white-backed woodpeckers occurred at a density I have never experienced before. We got used to daily sightings of this special woodpecker.

Another mammal highlight was a morning devoted to climbing up a valley to see the enormous red-and-white flying squirrel. Our trackers 'encouraged' them to fly down the valley for us. Awesome.

Rufous-breasted accentor was a common inhabitant of the abandoned and overgrown fields on the edges of the nearby village.

An eagerly awaited tick for me was grey-headed bullfinch, we saw small flocks daily in open areas.

Chinese babax was also a bird I was looking forward to and they proved to be common around the research station.