white wagtail was the first sighting

The hills were green and pretty

at about the 23rd km milestone, we stopped and staked out two locations for the first of our endemics….

The female Swinhoe’s Pheasant was the first to show….

and then another showed up by the roadside

and eventually the magnificent male Swinhoe’s Pheaasant deigned to show and came down from the sloped forested area to join his ladies…

the magnificent Swinhoe’s Pheasant with strikingly blue plumage and red wattles…the first of our endemcics

the back of the Swinhoe;s pheasant

He was quite oblivious to the presence of passing cars…this is the 23rd km bend where we found him

Up close the bright red face …

we then moved on to a nearby copse of trees and heard the distinct tok-tok-tok of a woodpecker….alas I could only manage this blurry partial shot of the also endemic white backed woodpecker

Grey chinned minivet female

another view

white eared sibia with characteristic white plumes radiating back from the eye

white eared sibia

another endemic, the yellow tit

yellow tit and here we can jsut make out the black pointed crest on the head

green backed tit

black thraoted tit

another view of black throated tit with rufous tinged chest which can just about be seen here

The gorgeous Taiwan Barbet also called the 5 coloured barbet in mandarin

and this was a lovely sighting, the eyebrowed thrush

eyebrowed thrush

eyebrowed thrush

and then this brilliant blue and orange bird appeared unfortunately with strong backlighting…the endemic vivid niltava

Here the vivid niltava in the foreground and I’m not sure what the lighter coloured bird in the background is….

the foliage was pretty too

and so ever higher we went in search of our other main target bird, the other harder to find, Mikado Pheasant…we headed to the 50th km mark…

At the 50km mark, there is a pillar, car park and visitor centre…

it was still very misty and wet in areas

we staked out an area to wait for the pheasant but this little bird showed up instead…the female rose finch

and she quite enjoyed having a bath

and finally just behind the toilets(!!) emerged the regal Mikado Pheasant, the bird featured on the Taiwan $1000 note.

the tail of the Mikado Pheasant is very long…serpent like…

before long, he was joined by his mate, the much less dramatic femal Mikado Pheasant

close up of MIkado Phesant’s face in the rain

Male and female Mikado Pheasants

A map of the DaXueShan national forest reserve

A walk in the forest after lunch amongst the Cypresses

the berries would be attractive to the birds..

and so it proved with the appearance of this attractive bird…the Taiwan Barwing

Taiwan Barwing with its lunch..the bars on its wing clearly seen here.

Taiwan Barwing…yet another endemic

Taiwan Yuhina with its characteristic chestnut crest

they were quite common but were very active and hard to shoot

Taiwan Yuhinas

returning to the 50km point, our guide triumphantly showed us yet another endemic, the white whiskered laughing thrush….

the white whiskered laughing thrush

with its colourful wings

and blue tinted tail

and as we started out descent at 4pm, we stopped off at the 23km mark again to look for one last endemic…

The Taiwan Partridge

a group of 6-7 of them were huddled near the road! Our final endemic of the day..

so we descended in the dusk light..

and had a lovely hakka dinner in the little village at the bottom of daxueshan