Status of Sichuan Birding Sites 2024
A quick summary of the how birding possibilities have changed at the top Sichuan birding destinations – there has been a lot of change since the pandemic pause in regular birding trips to what we have today. Some of it rather bad – like a surge in tourist development/numbers, increased safety regulations that have closed off some key areas to birders, the new Giant Panda National Park that has put more birding sites inside restricted reserve zones and more. But this is balanced up by the good of, new sites coming online, an increase in hide birding opportunities, more Sichuan birding exploration and site-finding through the growing army of local birders and a better and faster road network, literally allowing you to travel to sites that formerly took at least a day’, now reachable in hours.
The result of all of this is that although some iconic sites – like Balang have been seriously degraded - we haven’t lost any species ticks and in fact have gained some better chances to see formerly very difficult mega-ticks – like Sichuan Partridge and Biet’s Laugher.
Even the big upsurge in domestic tourism has its plusses – more hotels to better standards – if nothing else Sichuan birding has become a little more comfortable!
Despite the disappointing changes, 2024 brought us some great birding, and included one trip where we exceeded the 330 species mark https://ebird.org/tripreport/259887 - proving Sichuan is still a world class birding destination.
Balang – once among (if not the) the most important birding sites in Sichuan. A variety of developments, mostly negative, have brought about some big changes. However, most of the important species that were formerly found here, and now made difficult by increased traffic or new access problems, can now be found at other sites
The old road onto the top pass - now closed for motor traffic and, although you may be able to sneak up there, officially closed for hiking. This is due to a fatal accident and new safety laws for national parks. The new road now goes through an 8.8km long tunnel and the closures start at both ends of this. On the east (Wolong) side, there’s a guard who lives in a hut, with an alarm system to alert him if anybody tries to pass. If you can get past there’s 4.5km of walking uphill that starts at 3,800m going up to a bend at 30.897078° 102.924284°, at 4,000m – not that steep and on an old, deserted road, but still a stiff trek at these altitudes. The bend brings you to an area where you have chances of decent views of the major species – Tibetan Snowcock, Snow Partridge, Chinese Rubythroat, Kessler’s Thrush, Alpine Thrush, Grandala, Red-fronted Rosefinch – but unfortunately a lot more difficult than the old days of just being able to drive the road. The alternative, at the east tunnel entrance, is to scope the ridges and watch for snowcock/partridge/grandala – but these invariably are only brief and distant flight views at considerable distance. Most of the species you see here you can get at other sites – but good views of Grandala, Red-faced Rosefinch and Alpine Thrush become more difficult.
On the west (Rilong) side there’s presently no guard, but the walk to birding areas, with species like snowcock and rubythroat is a lot longer – however birding at where the gate starts at this side is good with species like White-browed Tit Warbler, Crimson-browed Tit, Sichuan Tit, Chinese Fulvetta, Streaked Rosefinch and Blood Pheasant all present.
The Monal site (Chinese Monal, White Eared Pheasant, Koklass Pheasant, Chestnut Throated Partridge, Blood Pheasant) - still open (the old road, replaced by a short tunnel at 30.881855° 102.965614°) but since winter 22/23 has had the addition of some fencing and gates to make a very messy dung-filled sheep pens. The site has largely been deserted by the masses of Chinese photographers – there are now a couple of alternative and easier monal sites, the most popular at Kangding.
Road leading to the monal site from Densheng (30.857387° 102.971741°) – with the increase in motor traffic, both cars and heavy trucks, even early morning road watching can now be unpleasant, and road walking pheasants are generally a thing of ancient history. Increases in tourism have also brought has also seen nearly all of those little open patches where birders would find Firethroat, Sichuan Thrush and so many interesting passerines have now been taken over by illegal barbeque stands – hopefully they will eventually be moved – but in 2024 they were still degrading the best and safest birding areas off the road. Firethroat and other species are still present but there are other, more pleasant, sites to get these birds.
Wolong and Lama Temple – Lama temple now has a hide, with Golden Pheasant and Red-winged and Barred Laughingthrushes. Hopefully this hide will remain open and but even without feeding birds come in for water. This area also has Firethroat.
A raised tourist railway, on huge concrete stilts, is being built all the way from Dujiangyan to Rilong and there’s considerable construction work to Dengsheng – although this doesn’t seriously impact birding possibilities it has made roadside birding difficult and is another source of traffic and disturbance.
New Wolong site, Genda – road leading up valley behind the new Panda Centre (31.105332° 103.322480°). Gives another chance for Temminck’s Tragopan, and Barred/Red-winged Laughingthrush
Labahe together with Erlang Mountain (old Erlang Road) east and west side
Much is the same at this site as with pre-covid times – but there are two significant and positive changes:
A new cable car has been opened that takes visitors to a boardwalk at 3,500m – here not only good chances to see rather tame Chinese Monal but great chances to see alpine species like Spotted and Chestnut-crowned Bush Warblers and Golden Bush Robin.
Secondly – the long boardwalk is again open that leads from 30.191603° 102.419291° to 30.180551° 102.426980° - birds here can be Temminck’s Tragopan, Great, Brown, Three-toed Parrotbill, Black-faced Laughingthrush – in open bamboo areas chances for Grey-hooded Parrotbill, that bamboo area also has Firethroat – have seen Moupinia in scrubby areas under boardwalk – good place to watch for the flocks of Speckled Wood Pigeon that frequent the area.
The rest of Labahe – is pretty much the same. Tragopan, Lady A, Fulvous Parrotbill, Three-toed Parrotbill are star birds - Firethroat breeding in scrub bordering main driving road about a km from bottom cable car station – one of easiest places to get Brown Bush Warbler – bottom road has woodland with Slaty Bunting – on bottom road watch out for trees with red flowering mistletoe, good habitat for Yellow-bellied Flowerpecker – woodland area close to end hotel is good for Fire-capped Tit - Streaked Barwing and Gold-fronted Fulvetta occasionally seen.
Old Erlang Road: east and west side – within an hours drive of Labahe gate and still a good site despite the area now being included inside the Giant Panda National Park, which has resulted in restricted access – chief birds are west side very easy and common Emei Leaf Warbler and the possibility of Streaked Barwing and west side Rufous-tailed Moupinia and in 2024 we recorded a pair of Eye-winged Parrotbill.
The east entrance to the old road has a gate – but in 2023 there was big hole in the fence to allow locals in to collect medicinal herbs. However, 2024 saw a new and massive pylon/power cable project and the work was going on inside the gate with a gate guard not permitting any type of access. Hopefully by 2025 this is finished, and we can again find a way in. However, Emei Leaf Warbler can be found on the main-road side of the gate in the forest/secondary growth on the valley sides – it can also be found a little further up the road at the Erlang Tunnel entrance east side, where there is car park close to forest. Here we have also seen the Barwing, but only on a single occasion.
The west side of the road was (2024) also suffering from this cable work – but you can still drive in for around 4 km before you come to a manned barrier – and so far we haven’t found a way past this. However, the main bird here – Rufous-tailed Moupinia (Babbler) can be found well before the barrier and also watch out in same area and habitat for Parrotbills, most of which will be ashy-throated but also the newly split eye-ringed.
Sichuan Partridge Hides, SE Sichuan – an area that most birding trips ignore but holds ticks not possible in other parts of the province – Sichuan Partridge (Sichuan endemic, extremely range restricted), Indochinese Green Magpie, Silver Oriole and occasional records of White-winged Magpie. The most visited site used to be the Sichuan Partridge reserve of Laojunshan, but now we have a far more accessible hide site, located at a remote mountain village in Muchuan County. Also present are some iconic Sichuan species: Temminck's Tragopan, Lady Amherst's Pheasant, Silver Pheasant, Emei Liocichla (also a hide for this skulky species), Buffy Laughingthrush and Red-winged Laughingthrush. Accommodation is simple homestay style - but the food provided is fine and you get private bathrooms, with hot showers. and most having sit down western style toilets. With new motorway connections between Chengdu and Yibin, drive time now is around 3.5-hour from the airports.
This site is close to locations for the Oriole and Green Magpie.
South Sichuan, Xichang Area – another area that is off normal itineraries, but another that has been brought far closer by new motorway infrastructure – now only a 4-hour drive from Longcanggou. Here we leave the seasonal Sichuan Basin and drive to an area where the avifauna is influenced by the region’s subtropical climate, especially its mild winters. Around Xichang we find the endemics - Yunnan Nuthatch Yunnan Fulvetta, Eye-ringed Parrotbill (recently split from Yunnan Parrotbill, Sinosuthora ricketti ) and species not generally seen further north, like – Crested Finchbill, Hill Blue Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied Fairy Fantail, Rosy Minivet, Bar-throated Minla, White-throated Kingfisher, Grey-headed Swamphen and Open-billed stork – at sites further south we’ve found Black-tailed Crake, Black-breasted Thrush, Pied Bushchat, Indochinese Roller, Blue-tailed Bee-eater, Mountain Tailorbird and Upland Pipit. The area is also only a 5-hour drive from Lijiang and the Biet’s Laughingthrush site. A good area for a winter trip.
Client Photo: Rob Baars
Tangjiahe – not much change except the price of accommodation has rocketed at the hotel – without discount now going up to around 700CNY/night. We got Tawny Fish Owl on all the 2023/24 trips. Motianlin still has photographable Tragopan – Przewalski’s Parrotbill still accessible with paying for a permit and hiring local park guides – but expensive and if done at a normal pace, a day’s tough hike up and a day to find the bird and hike down. Expensive, time consuming/exhausting and sometimes complicated to sort the permits and permissions - now new possibilities for the parrotbill at other sites – with easier less complicated access. Zappey’s Flycatcher breeds close to the hotel – listen for loud and distinctive song.
The big change has occurred outside the park – in the construction of new motorway routes that now bring Chengdu that much closer – now only a 4.5-hour drive from the airports
Wawu Mountain – formerly a very popular birding location but then closed for years for a tourist development – that at one point allegedly went bankrupt – was brought back to life and finally opened in 2023. I have to admit, I’ve not been since the reopening – we now get all the Wawu birds – including four former star birds, Grey-hooded/Three-toed Parrotbill, Sichuan Treecreeper and Emei Liocichla - at other sites that fit better into the itineraries we use. And apart from that, Wawu is very expensive compared to other sites.
However, according to reports you still get great birds there - still the parrotbills and most of the other goodies – but it must be degraded as a birding site because you now can’t explore the lower park with private vehicles, and apparently you are not allowed to walk the access road and must travel by park bus. My suspicions are backed up by Ebird reports that seem to suggest that former key birds, Emei Liocichla, once quite an easy tick in roadside bamboo habitat, is now almost absent from lists, and at the summit Sichuan Treecreeper now seems far outnumbered by Hodgson’s. Luckily there are replacement sites for all these species.
And that price – during summer 2024, the summit hotel was over a 1000RMB (around £105/$140) – the other alternative is to stay at entrance hotel at around half that price but have the inconvenience of park bus to cable car – later up and earlier down.
Hailuogou (Moxi area) – used this site to compensate for the events at Longcanggou (parts of the upper park becoming inaccessible) and the old closure of Wawu – pre-covid it became the most dependable site for Streaked Barwing/Sichuan Treecreeper and a new site for Blue-fronted Robin. Unfortunately, in 2024 we didn’t find the Barwing, but it was reported on Ebird, but we did get the Treecreeper and Robin. There’s also a wide range of alpine species, including Rufous-bellied Woodpecker Temminck’s Tragopan, Golden Bush Robin, Pere David’s Tit, Rufous-vented Yuhina and a variety of laughingthrushes and rosefinches. There’s also a cable-car that goes up to a modest 3,600m – I’ve tried a couple of times, with a lot of tourist traffic and without great birding results. However, Gould’s Shortwing has been recorded on more than one occasion in lower non-breeding habitat – which raises the possibility that this species might be breeding on bare rocky habitat of the high mountains (Gonga Mountain, highest peak east of the Himalayas), and around July, when these birds are breeding, it could be worth a try???
The big plus in 2024 was the ability to overnight in the park – there’s just one hotel inside the gates, upmarket and themed on photography, but it has halved its off-season prices to just 500CNY night – this gives you the chance to bird before the first tourists arrive on the 08:00 bus and to bird in the evenings, when they’ve all left. When we stayed there in June, we were the only guests (outnumbered by the staff) – fingers crossed this isn’t another tourist enterprise that goes bust. Otherwise, its one of the hotels in Moxi town and that first bus into the park and last one out around 17:00.
The area around nearby Moxi town also has some interesting birds – 2024 summer, during the first June trip, there were an amazing number of Yellow-bellied Flowerpeckers on Loranthaceae mistletoe infested trees, but three weeks later not a bird to be found – indicating the nomadic nature of this species as it raids clumps of nectar/fruit bearing mistletoe and then moves on. During May 2023 we recorded a singing Black-breasted Thrush just outside town. Eye-ringed Parrotbill are in the area, on the pass leading to Kangding there are a variety of alpine birds that include Tibetan Snowcock and high hillside scrub holds moupinia and Chinese Fulvetta.
Client photo: Nick Green
Longcanggou and surrounds – unfortunately the main park that included the top and middle sections, habitat for many of the park’s best birds, including Grey-hooded Parrotbill, were closed pre-covid due to various tourist developments and the establishment of a Giant Panda reintroduction centre. Since that time birding at Loncanggou focused on lower sites, especially the river valley we call Dove Tree Park, where the two star birds are the arch skulker, Gold-fronted Fulvetta and Streaked Barwing. There’s also an interesting trail that starts at the upper hotel village, the one close to the Loncanggou main gate, that used to be an old walking path to Wawu – here we got our 2024 Fulvetta – but further up that track are Bar-winged Wren Babbler. Beware – a paved path with lots of steps, but if it rains, some of those slabs become as slick as an ice rink.
Although degraded and now, over weekends and peak holiday periods, rather crowded with tourists, still a good area that’s worth a visit with a good bird list that contains Emei Leaf Warbler, Buffy Laugingthrush, Sichuan Bush Warbler and Golden Parrotbill. Unfortunately, Emei Liocichla seems far less frequent on current Loncanggou lists, but outside the park there are sites within a couple of hour's drive where you can also find Grey-hooded, Three-toed, Brown and Great Parrotbill.
Ruoergai and Baxi – long gone are the days when Ruoergai town just had one functioning hotel, now another major tourist hub but still an area to find many Tibetan grassland species. These include the pinktail, snow finches, 3 larks including Tibetan, Citrine Wagtail (black backed), the ground tit, White-browed Tit, Saker Falcon, Upland Buzzard, Black-necked Crane, Tibetan Shrike and Tibetan Partridge. The major annoyance is the destruction of a lot of quarry area, which was habitat for nesting birds of prey and home to local mammals. Bizarrely, in the name of ecological restoration, capping them over with soil and planting grass,!!!!! For Saker and Buzzards, that has meant we now see more of them nesting on pylons. There’s also a lot more fencing but the grassland is a vast area with lots of tracks and still plenty of great birding opportunities.
17km from Ruoergai and just below the eastern edge of the plateau grassland is a forested area around Baxi village. The road has been improved and now it’s a comfortable day’s drive, with time for excellent birding, from here all the way to Jiuzhaigou. The habitat in this area is still intact, and 2024 gave us all the important species – Sichuan Jay, Chinese Grouse Blue Eared Pheasant and Snowy-cheeked Laughingthrush
Our last Rufous-headed Robin at Jiuzhagou 2015, Client Photo:Miguel Rocco
Jiuzhaigou and Surrounds – formerly, the main reason to visit Jiuzhaigou was the chance of seeing Rufous-headed Robin, but unfortunately sightings of this rare and enigmatic species dried up at its usual sites around 2015. Most of the other key birds – can be seen in forest outside the park. A new access road has been built to the west of town, and parts of the almost deserted old road make for good birding with Snowy-browed Nuthatch, Pere David’s Tit, Chinese Song Thrush and very easy Chinese Leaf Warbler. On the arid east side, you have chances for Long-tailed Rosefinch (spp. Henrici) and although landscaping work has cleaned up a lot of the native scrub/long grasses there are still Spectacled Fulvetta and Parrotbill in the area. Birding areas further to the west and east give other Jiuzhaigou species – like David’s Bush Warbler and Three-banded Rosefinch – and additional species like Chinese Rubythroat and Crested Tit Warbler.
Jiuzhaigou is a very scenic area but it’s also China’s most visited national park. Although many of the best birding areas inside are quiet, with most visitors using park busses and just stopping at the famous scenic sites, it can be pretty manic and exhausting – if you don’t like crowds (unfortunately you can’t totally avoid them), this is not the place to come!