At 11:39 AM 4/16/97 -0400, wrote:
>I will be going to Chengdu, the capitol city of Sichuan, China 29Apr97 thru
>07May97....
>I would appreciate any advice or guidance for weekend birding in or near
>Chengdu.
>
>I would appreciate any guidance for books on birds of China.
I hope you've been warned that Sichuan is the most populous province in China!
The only field guide is by DeSchauensee, which is not great and has errors.
A few years ago I thought I might get to go there and bought some trip
reports from Steve Whitehouse's service in England. One by A.G.Goodwin has
several pages around Chengdu: "Du Fu's cottage...a park in the outskirts...
probably the best place to go birding in the city", reachable by bus. Then
there's Emei Shan, "one of the top birding sites in China", about 2 hours by
train (this guy spent over 3 weeks there!). Sounds like you'll be there the
perfect time. But, hey, if you're going to go that far, why don't you take
some more time and get into the foothills (where the panda reserves are)?
For example, Ben King's tour company has annual tours to Sichuan... there
are 600 species, a bunch of fancy pheasants, etc.
Do you have access to the WWWeb? There are several places to look for trip
reports. E.g. I see the
Dutch Birding Travel Report Service
(http://bonny.hol.nl/~mebweb/dbtrs/index) has several on China, including
one just on Emei Shan.
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