A slightly better birding day today than others. On the way to the subway I was wondering where the heck everybody was because there were so few people about, which is not exactly normal for Beijing! Then I remembered that it was the first day of the Moon Festival holiday (that's why I had gone to the zoo and Summer Palace on the previous days, to avoid the crowds that would be at both). I met up with my good friend baboon at the Olympic Forest Park. It was drizzling all morning, with the occasional spot of actual rain, but nothing too dampening. At first it seemed like today was going to be just as useless as the other days, with the only birds about being tree sparrows and the two regular magpie species. A common kingfisher made a brief appearance (as common kingfishers usually do!), then nothing for a while. I decided that I wasn't going to bother doing any more birding in Beijing because it was just a frustrating waste of time. However we found a grove of trees that were heaving with yellow-browed warblers (and probably others, but I could only get sights on yellow-browed), which were also joined for a short time by a mixed flock of great and yellow-bellied tits. A couple of little grebes were paddling around in a stream nearby, and a grey-capped pigmy woodpecker passed by. Cutting over a bank on a muddy little-used track (most people at the park just use the paved roads) we found an area of rough grassland. A large and very falcon-like cuckoo was sighted briefly on a powerline but not well enough for me to know which species it was. Some vinous-throated parrotbills were good to see (I'd already seen them in South Korea, but I like them and they are the only species of parrotbill I've seen), a few dusky warblers were around as well, and I spotted a little group of Chinese bulbuls resting in some reeds. A little concrete dam had a line of mallards sitting on it, amongst which was a (possibly genuinely wild) male mandarin duck and below which was a common moorhen. A grey-headed woodpecker was picked out in the top of a tree after it called, which was very nice. I had seen lots of mandarin ducks at the zoo the other day and not counted them, but baboon tells me that they actually are real wild birds there for free food and not the zoo's birds, so I've added mandarin duck to the trip/year/life list.
All of that took about four hours and there didn't seem to be much else around, so we left the park and walked to the National Zoology Museum Of China –yet another natural history museum which I had only just heard about! Before the museum we stopped for much-needed food at what appeared to be a specialist donkey-meat restaurant, judging from the menu. Any part of a donkey you want, it was there in some form, from kidneys, livers and intestines through to donkey udders and, er, “donkey pizzles”. In my efforts to eat my way through the domestic animal kingdom I had yet to consume donkey, so donkey for lunch it was. And very good it was too. I have to try and find a cat-meat restaurant next.
The Zoology Museum was brilliant. I thought it was going to be small, but it takes up three floors. It is only a new museum too, having been built for the Olympics when they were held in Beijing. The ground level starts with Chinese mammals – highlights being a stuffed baiji and spotted linsang – and then Chinese birds including Chinese monals and ground jays. I took a photo of a Hume's ground jay so I can pass it off later as a photo of a live wild bird. The lower level has a mix of exhibits including more mammals (including a Blainville's beaked whale), crustaceans and arachnids. There was a neat display in here of Formanifera models scaled up to the size of sea-shells. The upper floor had butterflies and other insects. Really highly recommended to visit. I would have spent much longer here if the signage had been in English instead of only in Chinese, but still easily worth the 40 Yuan entry fee.
When I got back to Nanluoguxiang where my hostel is, the street was filled with people. Literally filled. A congealed sea of people. It took fifteen minutes to move what should have taken one minute. I do suspect there are too many people in China.
So far while I've been in Beijing I have seen people transporting themselves on foot, skateboard, bicycle, moped, electric scooter, motor scooter, motorbike, some weird “pedal-cars” made of two bicycles side by side, bicycle rickshaw, motorised rickshaw, car, truck, bus, and most unexpected of all, this thing:
Solowheel
When you ask somebody about the golden monkeys, maybe you could try say "Jin Si Hou" instead of "golden monkey", I guess? Hope you could meet your first snub-nosed monkey before the evening of tomorrow!
