China mammals

Hi all

Like a few others on here I travelled to China recently – the bulk of the tour was on an Oriental Bird Club fundraiser to Qinghai. Depsite being primarily a birding trip we saw a fantastic array of mammals due to the knowledge of our superb guide, Jesper Hornskov, who will hopefully add a trip report at some point. Anyone travelling to this region would do well to arrange it with him! There were also a few troublesome rodents (see my reply to Sjef Oller’s post), one of which is pictured below – if anyone has an ideas please let me know.

The main reason for this post though is to draw attention to some other possibilities people may not be aware of. After Qinghai, I travelled with Jesper to Beidaihe on the Hebei coast – famous for migratory birds, but not so much for mammals. This Wildwings report gives an idea of what can be seen:

http://www.wildwings.co.uk/trip-reports/beidaihe14checklist.pdf

To these sightings I can add that Tolai Hare can be seen on the saltmarsh in Beidaihe, and Jesper has seen Amur Hedgehog there in the past, though I failed. The Great Wall at Jiaoshan (c50mins from Beidaihe by car) is good for the squirrels – you can get a chairlift to decent habitat on the ridge  .

However, on Jesper’s advice, I found two Amur Hedgehogs quite easily around the grounds of the CITIC Hotel at Beijing airport between 9-10pm one evening – a good place to stay if passing through Beijing.

The only other mammal sighting in Hebei was a pipistrellus sp around my hotel near Hengshui Lake  – I guess Japanese Pipistrelle is most likely.

Mike