Today is dedicated to birding, we are hoping to see quite a few of Taiwan endemics while driving up Daxueshan Road, one of the premier birding areas in Taiwan. And for this we have hired a guide for the day, to ensure we can find as many as we can as we have limited time only. The guide is coming at 6AM which is before breakfast at the hotel but the reception people, quite nicely, have prepared a packaged breakfast, just some fruit and juice but still a nice gesture. At 6AM we exit through the front entrance we never used till now where our guide is waiting, it is time to start our adventure.
The first stop our guide makes is at…a gas convenience store. The reason is that we have to buy lunch. Supposedly lunch at a lodge restaurant was included in our trip but the restaurant is closed so this is were we buy substitutes. This works for us, it takes less time away from birding and we can choose some weirder items like baked sweet potatoes and especially Taiwanese tea eggs, that we eyed with suspicion before but really really want to try.
The first stop is still in the lowlands and we park in the middle of the village to look for Taiwan Hwamei which are supposedly found here quite often. In fact we see one quite fast but the photo is not that great unfortunately as it hides in the shrubbery almost immediately.
We also see here our first collared finchbill and a plain prinia but then it starts raining so we retreat to the car, it is time to get higher. In fact the weather forecast for today is horrible with heavy rain predicted but in the mountains who knows, we can be hopeful right?
The road goes up and up and up with some nice views of the valley from the many switchbacks we encounter.
We stop quite a few times to look for birds but there is nothing special. In fact the only special bird we see on this stretch, a Taiwan Bamboo-Partridge just crosses to road as we are just driving along. So the guide stops and we have time to enjoy some great views before it goes into hiding again.
And up and up we go, there are bouts of rain and there is fog but it is not as bad as we expected. Which is good of course but who knows how it will look when we will get even higher?
The first major stop is at the former Swinhoe Pheasant viewing point, now transformed into a more generic birding platform. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out what happened, it seems that multiple rules were implemented to ensure that birds are not fed or called in with recordings which likely reduced the number of pheasants here.
In fact we don’t see any at this stop but it is still very popular with birders. There is a Danish tour and also another tour as far as we can tell and all of them are looking for partridges here. Including us it seems but with no luck unfortunately.
But at least we see a small waterfall and when returning we notice one more endemic bird, a Morrison’s Fulvetta. We show it to everyone else that otherwise would have missed it, well probably the Danish group has seen it before in their tour but for us it is a first.
And then up and up we go until suddenly the road is blocked. There is a mudslide ahead and they are working to clear it so the road is closed for minutes at the time. The guide tells us that we can stretch our legs so we do just that. And then when we look down we see something huge moving and we cannot believe our eyes, a Swinhoe Pheasant. We call to the guide excitedly and then follow the pheasant for a while from a distance trying to take at least one good photo of it in the dense brush.
And then we continue into the park and higher elevations, described in a different post, quite an adventure with lots of special birds. Upon returning late in the day we stop once more at the birding platform to look for partridges, maybe we are more lucky now?
But no, we are not at least with partridges. But we are lucky with Flying Squirrels, while looking up we see our first Taiwan Red-and-white Giant Flying Squirrel which is as the name implies quite a giant squirrel. The guide is also excited telling us that he has never seen one during the day, they are nocturnal almost exclusively. We take lots of photos and then satisfied return to the hotel for a celebratory dinner.
