After birding at the lower elevations it is time to reach the mid elevations that are part of Daxueshan National Forest Recreation Area. Today and especially here we have our first encounter with our Taiwan nemesis the dreaded stairs. They come in all shapes and sizes, never equally distanced and never just a few. Like at our first more serious step, we descend lots and lots of stairs and then we noticed there are a lot more left….
The area where we arrive is quite nice but unfortunately it is very quiet. Our guide was looking for something specific, not sure what, but for certain it is not here so we return back up to the car, now climbing all those tens or hundreds of stairs.
Soon after is the official entrance gate where our guide pays the toll and then immediately after is a large parking area where we stop. The idea is to look for birds but while here why not at least visit the huge Sacred tree? It is another characteristic of Taiwan to protect many old trees as sacred trees, quite nice.
We then explore the parking area looking for birds and just enjoying the picnic places and interesting sculptures. It is quite cloudy but it is not raining which is really a boon to us.
It is quite a large parking lot and as it befits a Taiwanese parking area it has a toilet block and a shrine, with the toilet block being by far more common in our experience.
But we are here to hike on a famous birding road, road 210. It is closed off for vehicles but walking is permitted so on we go exploring with our guide and looking for any interesting birds. It is quite a scenic road especially with the fog in the distance and we enjoy our walk on a surprisingly level road.
And here we find our second Swinhoe pheasant and even our first Formosan rock macaque. We are a bit stressed out given our previous encounters with macaques in other countries but here they are quite chill and do not really care for us, which is just fine for us.
After all the rain the road is wet, which is not really that surprising given that we are in a jungle. A very beautiful jungle though, this is probably our preferred trail for today from a scenic view.
But we are here for the birds and besides the pheasant the most special ones are the White Eared Sibia, an endemic but quite common at higher latitudes as we soon learn, and a group of Ashy Wood Pigeons. In fact that is what excites our guide the most, he even wants to take photos of our photo to send to other guides, fun.
And then it is time to continue up as we make our way towards the upper elevations passing small waterfalls along the way. We are looking for the end of the road where we will spend quite some time looking for birds as described in a separate post.
As we return we stop also at the Visitor Center along the way. It is open but there is no time for it, we are already late on our return. But still our guide decides that we should take a quick look around the visitor center and look for any interesting birds.
At this point we are quite tired from the many ups and downs during the day so we are quite depressed when the trail is down and then down again via some unending stairs. However we cannot complain, it is a nice trail and this is what we paid for after all :).
Here we catch some of the better glimpses of two of the endemics we noticed before, the Taiwan Whistling Thrush and the Taiwan Yuhina. Both are quite beautiful and can be quite funny to watch especially the Yuhinas.
We know notice that we are following the Forest Bathing Trail, it is one of the most difficult ones we have seen, we are more bathed in sweat than any type of serendipity. But at least at the bottom of the trail we find something special, a couple of very spry yellow throated marten that seem to be laughing at us as we barely amble past them.
Going up we pass the lodgings and the restaurant. We know the restaurant is not open from our guide but the accomodation doesn’t seem to be open either. Not sure if that is permanently or just temporarily but it is quite weird and might explain why we weren’t able to book a place to stay during our preparations.
And then it is time for one last climb as we make our way back towards the car via seemingly unending stairs. But overall it is a nice area it would be worth to visit it when we have more time in the future. Today we are continuing south for one more stop in the lowlands before returning to Taichung.
