BWT Travel Guide
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The coast at the<br />
southern end of<br />
Taiwan, showing<br />
the beautiful<br />
forested hills<br />
Grey-chinned<br />
Minivet<br />
this spectacular hawk were displaying.<br />
With our eyes now partly in, we hit the<br />
northern tip of the island, at Yehliu Geo<br />
Park. The car park was jammed with<br />
coaches, and the paths densely crowded<br />
with parasol-wielding, shuffling masses.<br />
But, after a couple of hundred yards, the<br />
crowds vanished and our group ploughed<br />
on to the Magic Toilet, a shaded loo block<br />
renowned as a migrant stopover, where<br />
we added Japanese Paradise Flycatcher<br />
and Arctic Warbler to our trip lists.<br />
In the early evening, we paid our<br />
respects to a pair of local celebrities. At<br />
the Chingsui Wetland at Jinshan a young<br />
Siberian Crane had arrived in 2014. By<br />
autumn 2015 it had developed a healthy<br />
symbiosis with a local farmer, who dug<br />
in the paddyfields while the Crane stood<br />
beside him, looking for morsels.<br />
Also there were great flocks of mixed<br />
herons and egrets, Black Drongos,<br />
Spot-billed Duck and best of all,<br />
a beautiful female Painted Snipe.<br />
For the next few days we would<br />
venture south. Despite having<br />
a population of<br />
24 million people,<br />
most of Taiwan,<br />
away from the<br />
western plain, is<br />
covered in lovely,<br />
forested hills and<br />
mountains. It<br />
didn’t take too long<br />
driving through the<br />
hills to encounter<br />
Alpine Accentor<br />
(endemic<br />
subspecies)<br />
A classic Taiwan<br />
endemic, the<br />
Swinhoe’s<br />
Pheasant<br />
(this is a male)<br />
our first flock of the one bird I wanted to<br />
see above all others, Taiwan Blue<br />
Magpie; a spectacular, blue, black and<br />
white, red-billed, long-tailed beauty of an<br />
endemic bird! Taiwan Scimitar Babbler<br />
(like a big grumpy, white-throated Wren)<br />
was very pleasing, too, rather rescuing<br />
a rainy second day, largely on the road.<br />
On our third morning we made<br />
a tactical decision to check out the car<br />
park area, first thing, at nearby Taroko<br />
National Park. It is<br />
curious how often<br />
car parks are the<br />
best places! This<br />
one yielded some of<br />
the best birds of the<br />
trip, with the small<br />
trees dripping with<br />
endemics, flocks of<br />
them: Taiwan<br />
Yuhina, like a<br />
Crested Tit, but<br />
unrelated, and<br />
calls like a<br />
Goldfinch; Yellow<br />
Tit, a big, feisty tough guy tit with an<br />
open yellow face and long crest; and<br />
Varied Tit, of the potential split Taiwan<br />
subspecies/species. Then there was the<br />
gorgeous Grey-chinned Minivet (like<br />
a colourful, arboreal, red wagtail).<br />
That morning we rose through the<br />
spectacular Taroko gorge, heading up<br />
into the mountains. We stopped off for<br />
a coffee by a Sacred Tree (don’t ask me<br />
why it was sacred), where we were given<br />
honey on a cocktail stick (don’t ask me<br />
why). And, as luck would have it, a group<br />
of endemic laughingthrush-like bird, the<br />
Steere’s Liocichlas (don’t ask me how to<br />
pronounce it), were in the bushes nearby.<br />
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