The Mountains of Taiwan

March 2019: Two Days in the Mountains in Search of Taiwan's Endemic Birds

When I was a little kid (six or seven) I had a couple of what I called "big books", one of which was a cheap coffee-table-type slab called Encyclopedia of the Natural World or something of the sort.  It may have been short on science and biology but it had lots and lots of photographs and a series of painted plates that were designed to show the variety of species and the range of adaptations and forms of life around the world.  There might be a page on Lizards for example that featured Komodo Dragon and Marine Iguana along with Basilisk, Gila Monster, chameleons, skinks and geckos.  One page covered whales and dolphins, another butterflies, or trees, or primates; all of nature covered in perhaps 30 pages.  Birds were represented by perhaps four pages and maybe sixty species selected to show the awesome variety of the birds of the world.  There were Ostriches and Cassowaries along with Birds of Paradise and Hummingbirds, Penguins and Albatrosses, Parrots and Lyrebirds.  I spend a LOT of time staring at these pages as a kid, and imagining seeing all these wonderful, strange and exotic creatures.  Even at that age I was familiar with the common birds that lived in our garden and could draw comparisons between the familiar in the yard and the exotic in the book.  One species that still sticks in my mind to this day, perhaps because it was so unlikely as one of the chosen sixty, was the 'Formosan Firecrest' an incalculably more exotic version of the Goldcrest that we had in Wales.  Who knew that it would take me 45 years to actually see one ....

Thursday, March 28 - Taipei

An evening flight from Hong Kong after business meetings and I finally made it to Taiwan, something I had been planning to do for literally years.  I was met a the airport by Kuan-Chieh Hung otherwise known as "Chuck", founder and owner of Taiwan Bird Guide who picked me up in a rental car for a three hour drive South, getting ready for birds first thing Friday morning.  The only bird I recorded that evening was Savanna Nightjar which was calling near a gas station at a late night gas stop.  We also stopped at a 7-Eleven and picked up a bag of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and junk-food ... apparently the food options were going to be pretty limited in the mountains the next day ... this was not going to be a gourmet food trip.

Friday, March 29 - Dasyueshan Forest Road

Dawn found us in the foothills as we began two days of birding the famous Dasyueshan Forest Road, a paved two-lane route that snakes up through the mountains, crossing different types of woodland habitat and offering opportunities to see almost all the endemic birds of Taiwan.  Here the birding sites were defined by kilometer numbers but the best sites could also often be spotted in advance because there were photographers already there looking for the star birds at various known and traditional spots.

White-eared Sibia and Steere's Liocichla

At our first major stop we joined a half dozen photographers at what was clearly a stakeout and while we waited for the main target I got my first Taiwan endemics with Taiwan Yellow-Tit, Taiwan Yuhina, White-eared Sibia, Black-necklaced Scimitar-Babbler and several others all visible along the road.  We also took some time to track down some calling birds like the beautifully subtle Steere's Liocichla and the elegant Rusty Laughingthrush, then chased a fast moving group of Rufous-crowned Laughingthrushes up the road a bit to get good views.  Probably a third of the island's endemics in the first hour, not a bad start.

Rusty Laughingthrush and Rufous-crowned Laughingthrush

The star bird at this spot though was SWINHOE'S PHEASANT, one of the two stunning endemic pheasants to be found on this road and this spot was something of a photographers' stakeout for it.  Sure enough, after twenty minutes of waiting, a male casually walked down through the woods and crossed the road right in front of us accompanied by the whirring of multiple cameras.

Swinhoe's Pheasant

The pattern then for the rest of the day was similar, we'd drive another half mile up the road then stop and bird.  At each stop we added more endemics or some other cool bird like Little Forktail, not endemic but a lifer for me and a very neat species.

Little Forktail

Eventually mid afternoon, we made it to the top of the road where a nature center of sorts, a parking lot, and a concentration of several dozen photographers marked the stakeout for MIKADO PHEASANT.  We joined one of the stakeout stops for a while, not my favorite type of birding, so inevitably I got antsy and we wandered off to look for birds before returning several times to check again for pheasants.  There were of course more endemics in the area, the confiding White-whiskered Laughingthrush, Taiwan Rosefinch, Black-Throated Tit and Taiwan Fulvetta.  There were also some (to my mind) very European birds like Eurasian Nutcracker and White-backed Woodpecker in the higher altitude pines a reminder that were were in the Palearctic after all, albeit the Eastern Palearctic.  That last fact also reminded me that I hadn't seen my Formosan Firecrest, now re-named as FLAMECREST, yet so we kept an eye out and got brief views of one in a mixed flock a little later on.  Not exactly what I wanted but there was still tomorrow and for now we were focussed on pheasants.

Taiwan Rosefinch and White-whiskered Laughingthrush

By now the light was starting to soften and we still didn't have a Mikado Pheasant although the photographers didn't seem too worried and sat quietly at their stake-out seemingly confident that the birds would appear.  I was getting bored though and the temperatures were dropping so I was very happy when, on our third of fourth visit to the stake-out a female Mikado Pheasant wandered out of the bamboo and started feeding on the road near the photographers (the feeding of birds is illegal here, but clearly widely done and there was grain scattered on the roadside in several places).  The first female was later joined by a second and, even though I was ready to leave when we saw them, we then had to stay as we were trapped by the photographers who were shooting literally thousands of photographs of the birds and we couldn't pass without flushing their subjects.  In the end the delay was fortuitous though as a male pheasant wandered out to join his females.  What a spectacular bird.

Mikado Pheasant

Eventually the birds wandered off and we could make our way to a government guest house, a decidedly local buffet dinner, and rooms complete with great piles of blankets to guard against cold night temperatures.  I at least slept incredibly well.

Saturday, March 30 - Dasyueshan Forest Road

Up early again and some birding around the lodge produced another female Mikado Pheasant and some decent views of Taiwan Partridge, which we'd heard the day before but not seen.  We also got some Taiwan Barwings in the trees at the lodge and a close encounter with a Taiwan Serow, a strange endemic goat-antelope that I'd hoped we might be able to see while I was there.

Reeve's Muntjac and Taiwan Serow

Most of the morning we spent working a nice, quiet (no photographers) trail near the top of the road.  Almost as soon as we'd left the parking lot we encountered a very tame male Mikado Pheasant right next to the trail and spent a fair amount of time enjoying the bird at close range without the constant whirring of cameras.  A much more satisfying experience than the one surrounded by photographers the day before, and it got better when we also got good views of the Flamecrest and added a few more of the last endemics we needed on the mountain.

No cropping this one, just too close.

Coming down from the mountain mid-day we made a stop at a fern farm in the foothills to look for another set of birds.  There were a few endemics more easily found here and we were able to get them all fairly quickly.  There was Taiwan Bamboo-Partridge, Collared Finchbill, Dusky Fulvetta and Taiwan Scimitar-Babbler and by now we were down to the last three possible endemics (assuming the nomadic Taiwan Thrush wasn't around and we didn't have time to go to the South for Styan's Bulbul).

Black Bulbul and Collared Finchbill

Next up was Taiwan Hwamei, easy to hear but not easy to see ... but we needed to see it because escaped Chinese Hwamei have become established on Taiwan.  We spent a fair amount of time stalking a singing bird before being able to see it well and satisfy ourselves that we had a 'good one'.  With that in the bag we were just about to drive to another location to look for Chestnut-bellied Tit, when one popped up on a power line right over our heads ... we were definitely on a roll, and one bird away from getting all of our targets in two days.

Malayan Night-Heron

Taiwan Blue-Magpie

Our last target was Taiwan Blue-Magpie but on the way we stopped to look for Malayan Night-Heron in a local park (this species seems to love exclusively in parks and gardens as far as I can tell).  Finally we successfully tacked down the magpie at Shimen Reservoir and headed back to Taipei for a night in a motel near the airport and the long journey back to the US for me.  I was absolutely exhausted but very happy to have seen basically all the available Taiwan endemic birds in such a short time.  Of course two days was nowhere near enough to do justice to this unique island but we did see an awful lot and Chuck worked his ass off to make sure I had a great experience.  So will I be back?  I'd like to think so, there's still the Styan's Bulbul after all, and the way things are getting split these days I'm sure there'll be reason to re-visit ....

Ever feel like you're being watched?  Taiwan Serow in the forest