Sichuan and quick stops in Lijiang and Nanjing, December 2024

Chinese Takin (Budorcas tibetana), Tanjiahe Nature Reserve

When I visited Sichuan in 2009 I had very little information about the mammalwatching there. I enjoyed my week but a few years later it was clear that I had to return. Trip reports – largely from tours with Sid Francis – were featuring a set of top tier mammals I had missed including Chinese Red Panda, Forest Musk Deer, Chinese Mountain Cat and Hog Badger.

I had a trip planned for the summer of 2020 which didn’t happen for the obvious reason. But in December 2024 I returned with a group of fellow mammalwatchers that you may know from this site: Coke Smith, Curtis & Lindsay Hart, Keith Barnes, Charley Hesse and Bob Shipbaugh.

Tonkin Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus avunculus), Yunnan

I organised the trip with Sid Francis. I could introduce Sid later in the report but I want to do it now, because his humour, story telling and toasted cheese sandwiches deserve a report in their own right. As does his career. Sid has Welsh heritage but grew up in the English midlands so he has an accent reminiscent of a Ozzy Osbourne (when he talks that is – I don’t remember any singing). Before he settled in China he was a shepherd in the Falkland Islands (yes, really), a mechanic on overland Africa trips and a truck driver delivering aid to Bosnia during the war in the mid 1990s. He was also a school teacher in Denmark where he worked with kids from Somali street gangs. I am sure I have missed a few things. He has an infectious laugh and enough stories for a Broadway one man show. There are many words to describe him but ‘woke’ probably isn’t one of them. I could go on but you get the picture. He was also, along with his brother in law, an excellent guide and organiser.

We were in two vehicles: Sid has a comfortable 6+ seater minivan and ZZ was driving a 4WD. This made driving between sites more comfortable and there was plenty of room for our bags. But inevitably when you are split between two vehicles some people will miss some animals. Sid and ZZ keep in touch over walkie-talkies which worked well but the cars sometimes got separated during night drives, when the second car stopped to look at something. The system works better when the vehicle in front has responsibility for not driving ahead.

Sid and ZZ were tireless in the field and would go out spotlighting for several hours after driving all day. They could not have worked harder. And with them at the helm and a great group of fellow travellers, all of them accomplished mammalwatchers, we had the makings for a great trip.

Traveling in China

Sichuan has changed radically since I was there 15 years ago. Back in 2009 the roads were slow, the driving was reckless, the country was very much a developing one, and the accommodation was damp and miserable. I was expecting a few small improvements…

I cannot remember the last time my mental image of a place was so detached from reality. Sichuan today is criss-crossed by 6 lane highways. The average car on the road is more expensive than those you would see in the USA. And the hotels …. well Sichuan is now more like Japan. From robots delivering room service, to Japansese style toilets, this was not the country I remembered. And yet despite all the development the people were as friendly (maybe even friendlier) and the food just as tasty. I have a major crush on China as you can probably tell. And that is before I go weak at the knees thinking of all the mammals I want to watch there. So if you haven’t been to China before, or have not been recently, you might want to rethink your preconceptions.

Mainland Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), Tangjiahe Nature Reserve

I withdrew a bit of cash when I arrived in Chengdu but just about every store and taxi driver accepted payment via Alipay, Install the app before you arrive and link a credit card and away you gol. The Chinese equivalent of Uber is called DiDi which is another app worth installing. Best of all is WeChat, a sort of hybrid Facebook/Whatsapp kind of a thing that most people seem to use. It has a simultaneous translation feature so I could have text conversations in real time with someone writing in Chinese while I replied in English. Super useful.

A lot of apps and websites are blocked in China. Google maps doesn’t work for instance, nor does Gmail. Not even Google Chrome. But fear not Mammalwatching.com is China-approved! I am glad they have their priorities straight.

Coke Smith (on the right)

There are ways around accessing all of this stuff using VPNs. I tried half-heartedly but couldn’t get the one VPN I had installed to work. But this was only an issue when using hotel wifi. Most of the time I was using my US cell service plus a data only E-Sim I bought for a few dollars before I arrived. And when I had cell service (which I did just about everywhere) I could access everything I wanted. I guess the various restrictions only apply when using a Chinese ISP.

Making and changing plans at short notice is easy in China. Most air tickets seem to be largely refundable and Sid advised there was little point in booking internal flights far in advance.

Sichuan in December was very cold at times. We hit a cold snap in Ruoergai, with temperatures getting down to -15C at night with a very strong wind on top. Spotlighting from a moving car was challenging to say the least. In Tangjiahe and Labahe it was a little warmer. A little. I was usually wearing every single piece of clothing I had packed.

Tibetan Gazelle (Procapra picticaudata), Ruoergai

We ate very well for lunch and dinner. There was always plenty of food for breakfast too though I was not so secretly hoping each morning for cornflakes, coffee and croissants. Not all dreams come true. Sid also cooked up his famous cheese toasted sandwiches one night in his hotel room when we got back too late for dinner. The stories of his culinary prowess are no exaggeration.

I spent a week with Sid and the group in Sichuan, before hopping over to Lijiang to see Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkeys and then onto Nanjing for 24 hours to see Yangtze Finless Porpoises.

Sichuan

Forest Musk-deer (Moschus berezovskii), Labane Nature Reserve.

We visited three sites in Sichuan, starting in Ruoerrgai County, a day’s drive northwest of Chengdu, before working our way back south to Tangjiahe then Labahe Nature Reserves.

I tried to compress what might normally be a 10 day trip in to just seven days and six nights. On reflection this might have been a mistake. We could happily have spent an extra night in each place, not least because it took a day’s driving between each site. I missed three of the key species I was expecting – Chinese Mountain Cat, Hog and Asian Badger – and with a little extra time we ought to have picked up one or two of them. That said the cold and wind in Rouergai must have hurt our chances too.

Itinerary

Day 1 – Chengdu to Ruoergai: all day drive including several hours spotlighting. Overnight in Dazhasizhen.

Day 2 – Exploring Ruoergai area. Overnight in Dazhasizhen.

Day 3 – All day drive to Tangjiahe Nature Reserve. Night spotlighting. Overnight in the park hotel.

Day 4 – Exploring Tangjiahe Nature Reserve.

Day 5 – All day drive to Labahe Nature Reserve . Night spotlighting. Overnight in park hotel.

Day 6 – Exploring Labahe Nature Reserve.

Day7 – Return to Chengdu (me and Coke). The others went to Baoxing Nature Reserve for an extra 4 nights.

These sites are all well covered in many trip reports, plus some of the sites are places Sid has discovered, so I will not go into details here and just mention the mammals.

Ruoergai Area

Charley looking for Mountain Cats

It was – as I already said – unusually cold. Temperatures crept above freezing in the day time, but plummeted at night. It was also very windy which added many more degrees of wind chill. The area used to be Sid’s go-to site for Chinese Mountain Cats but they have become harder to find since COVID. There are various theories why, including the new road. Sid also wondered whether they might have been hit by Asian Bird Flu which has affected some cat species including Pumas in the USA.

We tried hard during our two nights and a day in the area but we dipped. Despite the new road there is a lot of great untouched habitat and abundant prey in the form of Plateau Pikas so I would be surprised if the construction alone has had much of an impact.

Obviously Sid is looking for alternative sites. And Jonas Livet saw several animals a few hours further north in November 2024 so stay tuned for his trip report.

Plateau Pika (Ochotona curzoniae)

Asian Badgers, another target, are also usually fairly easy to see here even in winter. Again we dipped. But we did see a great many foxes: more than Sid remembers seeing every before. On our first evening we must have been 30 or more Red Foxes and a dozen Tibetan Foxes during three hours spotlighting along the main road.

There were limited photographic opportunities. Many of the animals we saw were in poor light and/or distant.

Ruoergai Mammals

Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta): a large troop close in fields near the main road during the drive from Chengdu (before we climbed up to the plateau).

Woolly Hare (Lepus oiostolus): common at night

Plateau Pika (Ochotona curzoniae): abundant in the daytime.

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus): one at night and another distant animal in the mid-morning.

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

Tibetan Fox (Vulpes ferrilata): we saw plenty at night and several in the day time though none was close.

Tibetan Fox (Vulpes ferrilata)

Red Fox (V.vulpes): abundant at night but I did not take any decent photos.

Tibetan Gazelle (Procapra picticaudata): we saw several small herds on the plateau.

Tibetan Gazelle (Procapra picticaudata)

Blue Sheep (Pseudois nayaur): a hundred or so animals scattered over a hillside near a spectacular gorge (close to here).

Blue Sheep (Pseudois nayaur)

Eastern Roe Deer (Capreolus pygargus): several seen at night in different spots.

Eastern Roe Deer (Capreolus pygargus)

Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus): Bob spotted an animal next to the road about an hour after we had left Ruoergai en route to Labahe (in forest at a lower elevation before we started to ascend the mountain pass).

Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus)

Eurasian Wild Pig (Sus scrofa): a distant group seen on the drive from Chengdu before we climbed up onto the plateau.

Suff We Missed

I was disappointed to miss the Mountain Cats and Asian Badger. Although I’m not sure what the story is with the cats at Ruoergai they do seem to be more difficult than they once were, though there are still animals around. I suspect the badgers are easier when it is warmer or when it it is less painful to spotlight! It is hard to concentrate through a thermal scope when your eyelids have frozen shut.

Alpine Musk Deer are not uncommon, especially in the more forested areas including a well known gorge that we visited briefly. A section of the road into the gorge was covered in sheet ice and we did not want to drive down there after dark. The same gorge is also good for a flying squirrel species but so far as I can tell no one is sure which species they are and the animals are hard to see well.

Finally Zokors (possibly Plateau Zokors I suppose) are abundant. We saw grassland covered in thousands of zokor mounds. An impressive biomass lurks under that ground! Wandering through some of these areas at dawn or dusk in the summer with a thermal scope ought to get you a zokor. As would gently opening up a fresh tunnel and waiting for 15 minutes.

Tangjiahe Nature Reserve

Mainland Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)

We arrived at Tangjiahe Nature Reserve on dusk just before the park gates shut. Some of the parks roads I had driven along in 2009 are now closed to traffic: there is just one road through the park from the gate to the hotel. We drove it several times over two nights and walked sections of it in the day time. The mammals seem to be doing well here, despite many more visitors than when I was there in 2009.

The park road is excellent for spotlighting and we saw other visitors also taking night drives. Ungulates are abundant after dark and Keith started to call several patches of grassland the Seregegetti Plains in honor of their many muntjacs and takins.

In 2009 the park hotel was a large concrete mausoleum for the living: cold, damp and utterly unappealing. In its place stands a very comfortable hotel with electric blankets and Japanese style toilets. Plus Hog Badgers are among the animal often seen on the lawns, though not by me. Some changes are for the better!

Tangjiahe Mammals

Tibetan Macaque (Macaca thibetana): common along the road.

Tibetan Macaque (Macaca thibetana)

Pere David’s Rock Squirrel (Sciurotamias davidianus): nice to see several of these cool squirrels along the rocks on the river bank. The section of river right behind the hotel is one good area for them.

Pere David’s Rock Squirrel (Sciurotamias davidianus)

Yellow-throated Marten (Martes flavigula): two animals dashed along the river while we were driving the road in the mid morning. Coke, with lightning speed, got some great photos.

Mainland Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis): we saw at least three animals while we were spotlighting, and they posed nicely just off the road.

Mainland Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)

Northern Hog Badger (Arctonyx albogularis): the lead car saw an animal cross the road towards the park gate. Our car did not.

Chinese Takin (Budorcas tibetana): we saw Takin on several occasions, mainly at night. This animal was crossing the river as we were leaving the park on our last morning. A great species.

Chinese Takin (Budorcas tibetana)

Maned Serow (Capricornis sumatraensis): we saw one animal – apparently not in good health – close to the road on both evenings.

Maned Serow (Capricornis sumatraensis)

Chinese Goral (Naemorhedus griseus): common after dark.

Reeves’s Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi): abundant.

Reeves’s Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi)

Eurasian Wild Pig (Sus scrofa): a few.

Stuff We Missed

Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus)

My big miss here was Hog Badger, a species that most people see in the park. Half of the group saw one during a night drive – they were in the lead vehicle – and I think I probably had one close to the river in my thermal scope but couldn’t get the animal in the flashlight. With an extra night here I think I would have gotten lucky but the species is likely easier to see in warmer weather. Small-toothed Ferret Badgers are also seen here from time to time. Tufted Deer are usually easy to see here but we didn’t see any (nor did Jonas Livet a month before us). Though we had seen an animal closer to Ruerogai and so the pressure was off. Himalayan Black Bears are also around, but may have been hibernating. They are easier to see in October when they are gorging themselves on nuts.

Labahe Nature Reserve

Small-toothed Ferret-badger (Melogale moschata)

Labahe was my third – and my final – Sichuan destination. The big targets here for me were Eastern (Chinese) Red Panda and Forest Musk Deer. Hog Badgers are also here and apparently as common as in Tangjiahe.

This was the most successful of our three sites and our first night drive in particular was excellent. Again there is only one road open to traffice in this nature reserve, that runs from the park gates to the hotels. Busy in the day but it was quiet at night save for a few groups of Chinese visitors taking night safaris. And one surreal encounter with a guy riding a Segue at 10pm while spotlighting. He was also selling thermal cameras. Truly bizarre. Though the more I think about it the more I realize that a Segue is a great mammalwatching vehicle: silent with 360 degree views. But they would be better in temperatures above freezing.

There are several buildings and cleared areas along the road and these areas seemed particularly good for some species including Masked Palm Civets and Ferret and Hog Badgers.

Looking for Red Pandas

A second road in the park – open only to shuttle buses – leads up the mountain into Red Panda habitat. It snowed the night we arrived and the parking area was busy with families taking their kids up to play in the snow. You can take a cable car further up from here. We rode a bus to the top and then walked down the very slippery road to search for the pandas, while avoiding the sheet ice and the a constant stream of shuttle buses.

Labahe Mammals

Tibetan Macaque (Macaca thibetana): very common along the roads and in the hotel car parks where they aggressively look for handouts. They are brazen and will steal food from tourists or the windshield wipers off of Sid’s car.

Tibetan Macaque (Macaca thibetana)

Malayan Porcupine (Hystrix brachyura): I was surprised to see one of these at night while the snow was falling. I had always thought of them as creatures from warmer climates.

Malayan Porcupine (Hystrix brachyura)

Swinhoe’s Striped Squirrel (Tamiops swinhoei): we saw several while we were walking down the ‘shuttle-bus road’.

Swinhoe’s Striped Squirrel (Tamiops swinhoei)

Red-and-white Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista alborufus): we saw several animals along the cliffs and in tall trees next to the road at night. There is a second, grey, large flying squirrel in the park that may be Complex-toothed Flying Squirrel. We looked but didn’t find any.

White-bellied Rat (Niviventer sp.): two animals seen on a cliff face close to the tunnels. The common species in the area is supposed to be Confuician Niviventer (N. confucianus), which I had thought were usually quite brightly coloured.  These animals were pretty drab and the amount of dark fur along the back and legs suggests to me that they might be Sichuan Niviventer (N. excelsior), which – full disclosure – I would prefer as that would be a lifer. I am trying to get some expert advice. And if you are that expert please let me know.

White-bellied Rat (Niviventer sp.), photo Keith Barnes

White-bellied Rat (Niviventer sp.), photo Keith Barnes

Greater Japanese Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus nippon): one bat roosting in a small cave next to the road just below our hotel seems like it should be this species.

Greater Japanese Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus nippon)

Rufous Tube-nosed Bat (Murina leucogaster): two in deep torpor hanging from the ceiling of the tunnels just past the entrance gate. They registered no heat on the thermal imager and one was covered in cobwebs that lead to some speculation about whether it was alive or dead. This second animal (below) was the picture of good health! A lifer for me.

Rufous Tube-nosed Bat (Murina leucogaster)

Eastern Red Panda (Ailurus styani): a key target here for all of us and I found one close to the shuttle-bus road using my thermal scope (thank you Zeiss!). It was mid-morning and the animal was quietly feeding on berries. We saw it well for several minutes but the clutter of branches made photography a challenge. A lifer for me.

Eastern Red Panda (Ailurus styani)

Small-toothed Ferret-badger (Melogale moschata): seven or more seen over the two nights. A real surprise to find so many of them, including this animal which appeared at our feet after we left the car to approach a Forest Musk Deer. There were several animals running around our hotel garden both nights. They have an uncanny ability to disappear into thin air.

Small-toothed Ferret-badger (Melogale moschata)

Northern Hog Badger (Arctonyx albogularis) (?): we may have seen one animal in the hotel gardens late on our first night but our views were inconclusive. They are not uncommon in the park.

Mainland Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis): one next to the road on our first night close to our hotel.

Masked Palm Civet (Paguma larvata): we saw animals on two separate occasions including a gang of four running through the gardens of a small building a couple of kilometers down the road from the hotel.

Maned Serow (Capricornis sumatraensis): several at night.

Chinese Goral (Naemorhedus griseus): common at night.

Chinese Goral (Naemorhedus griseus)

Sambar (Rusa unicolor): abundant at night.

Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus): one animal seen after dark when we first entered the park standing next to a Forest Musk Deer.

Tufted Deer (Elaphodus cephalophus)

Reeves’s Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi): a few.

Forest Musk-deer (Moschus berezovskii): at least four animals seen on separate occasions and the mammal of the trip for me. A lifer and my first good look at any musk deer species (I had seen Alpine Musk Deer very distantly through a scope in Qinghai in 2015).

Forest Musk-deer (Moschus berezovskii)

The park is also home to introduced – and basically domesticated – Central Asian Red Deer. Not tickable in my view especially after I saw a tourist feeding one from her hand!

Stuff I missed

Giant Pandas are seen from time to time here: scanning from the lower cable car station might offer the best chances, but I didn’t have any serious expectation of seeing the species here. We may have seen a Hog Badger at the end of our first night in the hotel gardens: I didn’t get my binoculars on it but ZZ was “80% sure” it was a Hog Badger. I wanted to be convinced but I walked around the hotel gardens on both nights and saw several Ferret Badgers running around but nothing bigger. There are at least two flying squirrel species in the park. We saw many of the Red and Whites but couldn’t find the other species which might be Complex-toothed or might be something else.

During my week in Sichuan we saw 30 species of mammals, only three of which were new for me: Forest Musk Deer, Eastern Red Panda and Rufous Tube-nosed Bats. All three were in Labahe. I had hoped for a few more and with warmer weather I think I would have seen some of them. But what the trip lacked in terms of lifer mammals was made up for by the great company, scenery and the quality of many of the sighings we had.

Yunnan

Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti)

Yunnan has all the makings for a fabulous mammalwatching trip in its own right. I wanted to see the Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkeys but also considered trying to see some of the other primates while I was there including Shan State Langur and Skywalker Gibbons (see Sichao Ma’s inspiring trip report). But I had only a few days at most and I realized I needed another trip to do justice to Yunnan. Instead I settled for two nights in the city of Lijiang where I could take a day trip to see the snub-noses.

Lijiang

Sid and his wife Meggie set the trip up for me, booking a hotel and arranging for a taxi to take me to the monkeys.

Lijiang is a picturesque and very touristic city. A sort of Chinese Kyoto. The old town is walled and closed to traffic and so the manager of my hotel – the Jian She Inn – met me at the city gate to help with my luggage. It took me 20 minutes to find her after the taxi dropped me at the wrong spot and so she took pity on me and decided to accompany me everywhere for the next 36 hours including showing me the nightlife of Lijiang two nights running. I can now recommend a very fun bar but that is a whole other story.

Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti)

Sid arranged for a taxi to pick me up at 4am the next morning to drive me to the Tacheng Snub-nosed Monkey Park. Dian Dian from the hotel got up at 4am to make sure I met the taxi driver. The drive took exactly four hours along rural roads.

We arrived just before 8am as the park was opening up.

The park is quite isolated. Shangri La City is closer – but still a two hour drive away – and seems like a good option for a place to stay though it is less well connected by flights. But once you get to the park seeing the monkeys is pretty much guaranteed. They are wild animals, and so far I know have always lived in the forest there, but some have become totally habituated to tourists. They are encouraged to gather in front of the viewing platform each morning in exchange for a free breakfast of the lichens they love to eat.

Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti)

Shuttle buses take you from the park HQ a few kilometers up a road to a viewing platform. They start ferrying people up at 8:30am. I am not sure how long they keep running each day but I came back down about 10am and the buses appeared already to have stopped taking people up the hill for the day.

The buses dropped me at a brand new lodge (not yet open I think) and from there I walked five minutes to a viewing platform. Ten or so monkeys were waiting for us. Other members of the troop – I suppose less well-habituated – were lurking in the forest 100 metres away.

Although this is canned mammalwatching, it was fascinating to watch this spectacular, endangered species. These large and extraordinary looking monkeys eat mainly lichens and tolerate the bitterly cold temperatures of these mountains. We watched them eat, groom, one another, clean their teeth and of course squabble.

I was amused to watch these two juveniles get into a spat over something.

Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti)

Things escalated at which point the instigator of the argument – let’s call him Donald – pushed innocent errr – Kamala say – out of the tree. For some reason I was transported back 20 years to my failures to parent toddlers responsibly.

Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti)

I didn’t see any other mammals during my day in Yunnan. I did keep an eye out for Forrest’s Rock Squirrel which are around – including close to Lijiang – but seem easier to see when it is warmer. Something to return for.

Many thanks to Sid and his wife Meggie for setting the trip up for me, and to Dian Dian from the Inn for looking after me so well.

Nanjing

Yangtze Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis)

Jonas Livet and Rūta Vaicekauskaitė spent three days in Nanjing in November and their fabulous report on the Yangtze Finless Porpoises there convinced me I needed to visit. Jonas’s friend, and fellow mammalwatcher, Zhou Fangyi encouraged me to come whenever I wanted and introduced me to Meng Jiang – aka ‘Frank’ – who runs the Nanjing Yangtze Finless Porpoise and Aquatic Life Conservation Association and who had shown Jonas and Ruta around.

Frank is passionate about conservation and his organization is doing a great deal of very important work for the purpoises. He hosted me for my day in Nanjing and couldn’t do enough to make my visit a good one, including setting me up in the Hilton Hotel where I might – he said – see a porpoise from my window.

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In the space of 24 hours Frank took me for a night walk to see if we could find a badger in downtown Nanjing, then spent the whole of the next day searching for porpoises with me before taking me to a bat cave and then to the airport. He also arranged for me to give a presentation on mammalwatching and somehow managed to attract 80 people to attend. Most of whom wanted a selfie with me afterwards and some of whom asked for my autograph. And then he convinced the local news station that they should interview me. I would love to continue to brag about how big I now am in China but I am worried what my daughter is going to say in the next weekly recap after she reads this ….

Porpoise watchers

So it was an action packed visit and we barely paused for breath.

Jonas and Ruta’s super-detailed report gives you all the information you need for a visit to Nanjing, which – remember – is just an hour on the train from Shanghai. So if you get a stopover in Shanghai it would make for an easy side trip.

Like Jonas and Ruta I visited Purple Mountain in the city at night. I wanted to see an Asian Badger or an Amur Hedgehog, both of which they had seen in October. But – and as Frank had warned me – by the end December there were very few active mammals in the forest. In the space of three hours we saw only one Chinese Water Deer. During much of the year though Asian Badgers in particular are all but guaranteed as they visit a couple of spots where the locals put out food for feral cats. I will return.

Frank and Jonas lured me into a sense of over-confidence in how easy the porpoises would be to see.

After spending New Year’s Eve spotlighting with Frank he offered to meet me at 8am on January 1. I voted for an extra hour of sleep but was soon regretting it. The porpoises were unusually hard to find during that morning. Frank’s network of spotters were seeing them along the river but never at the same place we were at. We took a boat out and missed them: the skipper said it was the first time he had been out and failed to find a porpoise. This is surely the result of me leaving my lucky hat in Djibouti last month (though fear not it is already in New York waiting for me to collect it).

When I gave my talk at 1pm, still porpoise-less, I was somewhat distracted.

Fortunately as soon as the talk was over Frank whispered that the porpoises were active close to the hotel. Fifty selfies later we extracted ourselves from the room and had good – although distant views – of a mother and calf patrolling a stretch of river. A hundred or so people were watching alongside us.

Yangtze Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis)

Happy with my sightings – and keen for some more new mammals to kickstart 2025 – Frank drove me 45 minutes to some tunnels carved into a mountain (here) that may have been some kind of bunker. We were in search of bats.

There were three species inside. One room held a dozen or so small horseshoe bats which ought to be Least Horsehoes according to a local expert Frank contacted.

Least Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus pusillus)

The weep holes in the tunnel held several small myotis bats that were hibernating. We were told they were impossible to identify to species level without disturbing them.

Myotis species

Myotis species

And there was a much larger lone bat hanging from the wall in a room close to the entrance. This appears to be a rhinolophus or hipposideros species (thanks Jean-Michel Bompar!) and on the basis of the local bats the expert Frank contacted said that – on the basis of size – it is likely Chinese Rufous Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus sinicus). I am still debating whether or not I can add it to my life list and need to dig a bit deeper into whether it could be anything else.

Chinese Rufous Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus sinicus), probably

From the bat cave Frank took me to the airport and I was on my way to Thailand.

A busy but fascinating 24 hours. Here is an article Frank’s organization put out about my visit. I am not sure what it says but it looks seriously impressive!

Last Words

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Thank you to Jonas Livet for his help after he returned from Sichuan and Nanjing just before I left, and for connecting me to Zhou Fangyi who in turn connected me to Frank in Nanjing. I want to give Frank a very special thanks for hosting me so generously for an action packed 24 hours. Of course a massive thanks to Sid and ZZ for their superb organization and hard work: it was great to meet the legends in action after so many years reading about them. And a very warm thank you to my fellow mamalwatchers in Sichuan whose humor, patience, spotting skills and willingness to go in search of beer whatever the weather made the week there so much fun.

China has risen straight to the top of my list of countries I want to return to. And there is a great deal to return to see.