Beijing, part two

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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 local zoo contact Sun Ge 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. Sun Ge picked out a grey-headed woodpecker 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 Sun Ge 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: http://solowheel.com/

The next day I went to the Botanic Gardens in search of Chinese nuthatches. I was quite tardy because I was tired, so I decided to sleep in, and I also had to pack my bags to put in the luggage storage room because I was leaving for Xian that evening, all of which meant I didn't leave the hostel until 8am. Unexpectedly the sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun was visible!! The forecast was for 28 degrees which seemed about right. First I took the subway to Beigongmen station, and from there I had to take a bus to the gardens. I couldn't even get near the first two buses which came, due to the huge press of people surging onto the road as they arrived and forcing their way through the doors. If lemmings took buses, it would be exactly like that. I managed to get on the third one, where I did a good impression of a sardine in a can. The traffic was crawling; it took over an hour to get to the gardens (twenty minutes on the return trip!) and by the time I got there it was already 11am, time for first lunch (or second breakfast: I have to keep skipping meals). I ate a mini-ham while sitting under some conifers, the tree of choice for Chinese nuthatches – but not those particular individual trees unfortunately.

It wasn't long before I did find a pair of Chinese nuthatches, off the paths away from all the people, and what great little birds they are! They are called nuthatches because they stick nuts into cracks in trunks and then hammer them open, and that is just what this pair were doing, although because they are just little birds they were doing it with pine-nuts and their beaks were like needles that seemed about to break from the hammering. Otherwise I didn't really see anything else apart for the usual birds (tree sparrows and magpies.....). However a nice surprise was a red squirrel darting through the trees, my first Chinese mammal. I tried finding the “Wild Valley” which I'd been told was in the northwest of the gardens, but there's something seriously screwy with the map boards around that place. I had come in the South Gate, gone north up the main road past the conservatory, and then up a road which should have been northwest but according to the maps was northeast. I tried again and ended up in the same place. I figured the map must be a mirror image or something, so took the other direction. At each map I noted where I was, and went in the northwest direction according to the “North” symbol on the map. I ended up back at the conservatory which really confused me! If you keep heading north how do you end up back south again?! I gave up and left, because I was mainly there for the Chinese nuthatch anyway and I'd seen that.

I had been going to visit the Natural History Museum that day as well, but it had already got late in the afternoon by that time and I didn't really want to try another Beijing bus in the holidays, so I flagged it and went back to the hostel. It was almost time to head to the train station anyway and I'd been to two zoology museums in Beijing already.

The Beijing Train Station is huge. It's like an airport. The train was at 7.30pm and arrived in Xian at 8.45am the next morning. I was booked at the Warriors Youth Hostel and there was supposed to be a free pick-up when I arrived at the station. There was not. I waited for half an hour, and was joined by two other travellers waiting for their pick-up from another hostel which also didn't show. In the end we all took a taxi to Warriors because they didn't know where their hostel was, and they ended up staying in the same dorm as me. I was a bit peeved at having to take the taxi but when I mentioned the pick-up hadn't been there the girls at the desk straight away admitted they had forgotten about it and gave us the money we paid for the taxi fare. They were also full-on brilliant at spending ages looking up information for me on their computer about how to get to the Zhouzhi Golden Monkey Reserve (tomorrow, if all goes to plan), so I have no hesitation in recommending Warriors Youth Hostel as the best place to stay in Xian! The girls hadn't even heard of golden monkeys before, which rather surprised me, and they certainly hadn't heard of the crested ibis. Everyone is somewhat bemused by me because they have never met anyone who wants to go look for animals instead of going to the usual Xian attractions!

My last few posts probably haven't sounded like I've been having much fun, but I am enjoying myself still. There was the obvious frustration at not being able to find birds in Beijing, but that's just the way it goes. I really like China so far, even if what amounts to the entire population of New Zealand is on the street around me. Transfers between subway stations are like the exodus scenes from War Of The Worlds or something. Beijing's a good city, the Downtown Backpackers where I stayed was much better than average, and so far I like Xian too. So it's all good.

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