A 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar on March 28, 2025. The earthquake happened 18 hours before we boarded our flight to Tengchong. From there we would drive to Shiti Village, approximately 200 miles (~320km) from the epicenter of the quake. Shiti Village is located in Yunnan Province, where the quake caused damage to several homes. Thankfully, the impact in this part of China was limited and all of our planned birding locations remained accessible. Across the border in Myanmar (Burma), however, the destruction was devastating. This was the largest earthquake to hit the country in over a century.
Shiti Village (pronounced exactly how a 14 year old boy would hope) is a small town in Southern China essentially on the border with Myanmar. Over 450 bird species can be seen in this area, nearly a third of all known bird species in China! Because of this extraordinary biodiversity, along with a large, community-run avian tourism industry, Shiti Village is widely considered one of the best birding destinations in the country.
To get to Shiti Village it was a full day of travel.
It looked like this: Wake up at 0430, get to airport, depart on our first 2 hour flight, arrive in Chengdu, have a 3 hour layover that turned into a 5 hour layover with a delay, have another 2 hour flight, arrive in Yunnan, drive to the police station 3 hours away because they require foreigners to register there first, then drive another hour to arrive at the hotel.
A day that started at 04:30 didn’t end until 22:00. That kind of day is hard for adults so we knew it had to be a bit hard on the kids too but they really were troopers! (Roger only had one major meltdown on our layover before falling asleep on Dada’s lap for a very necessary nap.)
But sometimes a long travel day is necessary to get from one place to another. And we were arriving in a place that contained so many goodies.
For anyone wondering, Ross left for China with a life list of around 8,060. He hoped by the end of the trip (including Japan) he would see around 300 lifers!
Our first morning in Shiti Village did not disappoint. We walked a dirt road with trees on either side hoping to find Naung Mung Scimitar-Babbler, but even though we missed the #1 target bird, it seemed no matter where we looked there were just birds everywhere. It stayed birdy late in the morning thanks to the overcast sky. The dirt road was very, very enjoyable birding and we saw birds like Pin-tailed Green Pigeon, Blue-bearded Bee-eater, Stripe-breasted Woodpecker, Golden Babbler, Spot-throated Babbler, and Orange-headed Thrush, among others.
It was a bit of a trip down memory lane because we were seeing birds we hadn’t seen since our first trip to SE Asia, just over a decade ago!
Roger was also an absolute angel, playing in the dirt and piercing leaves with a stick. He was compliant to all of our asks to continue walking or backtracking. Half the time he was asking adorable bird-related questions and the other half of the time he was playing quietly in imagination land. Meanwhile Harvey made all of the baby sounds he could, ranging from happy coos to annoyed whimpers to angry cries. He wriggled constantly and did not want to be in the carrier but it wasn’t a place I could put him down to let him play. I guess if it’s not one baby, it’s the other.
Travelling with two babies is no joke. Ross and I will happily go on record saying that travel with one kid is fairly easy. I’m not sure we were cognizant of that while we spent 3 months in Australia while Roger was just 10 months old. But two babies is another game altogether!
The number of birds we could get in Shiti Valley was almost overwhelming.
We didn’t have a super long list of potential lifers but having not seen so many of these birds in so long, we were keen to see them again.
Outside of that first morning birding along the road, the rest of our time in Shiti Village was spent going to hides. Oh, bird hides. Again, I like hides I think they serve a purpose, but for an avid birder, they can be a bit of a burdon. Especially with kids. Birding the hides in Shiti Village (where there’s over 30 hides!) is a bit like selecting options from a menu. The locals would advise which birds were “stable” at which hides and at what time you should visit. Some hides provided the opportunity for a large variety of species where others were very specific (usually for hornbills or raptors, etc).
Ross remarked that hides were the golden handcuffs of the birding world.
The phrase “golden handcuffs” is most often used in the business world to describe being financially trapped in a job because the pay or benefits are too good to walk away from. I can’t say how often the term is applied to birds, but I couldn’t think of a better way to describe how we felt. The hides promised potential success, yet choosing them meant giving up the freedom and satisfaction of finding the birds on our own terms. And you never know how many hours you need to put in for the target(s) to arrive. There also was no guarantee they would come to the hide at all.
Hides are necessary. They serve a purpose. As I’ve said before, I actually do enjoy them on occasion because they give close, access to skulky birds that would otherwise be hard to see. (However, I do not recommend taking two small babies to hides, especially ones where silence is necessary. 0/10 do not recommend. It caused me quite a bit of anxiety.)
But it seemed in Shiti Valley that hides were the best option. We passed dozens upon dozens of hides along the road. The locals make their livelyhoods from these hides so essentially you can show up with a list of birds and be given a list of hides to visit to see everything on your list. Although, of course, there is never a 100% guarantee. While you can always walk along the main road, there is no trail system in Shiti Valley so if you’d rather not worry about dodging speeding cars, best to go have a seat.
We decided to spend time at Hides 23 (failed attempt at White-tailed Flycatcher but got Blue-naped Pitta), Hide 2 (Rufous-throated Partridge, Gray Peacock Pheasant, a total of 46 species!), and Hide 3 (failed attempt at parrotbills the first time, Rufous-headed Parrotbill the second time). Although the hides were successful, it was late in the season. December through early March would be much more productive.
By the last morning, Ross had three main targets: Rufous-headed Parrotbill, Pale-billed Parrotbill, and Collared Babbler. All three could be seen at “Hide 3.” The question was should we go there, or should we try to find them on our own?
We spent the last morning, you guessed it, sitting in a bird hide with our golden handcuffs on.
While we saw Rufous-headed Parrotbill early, by 09:30 Ross decided it was time to be a real bird watcher. We walked the road amongst the bamboo hoping to find a flock but no such luck. We did however see Hodgson’s Hawk-Cuckoo and a classic SE Asia specialty, Long-tailed Broadbill.
And then, walking up the road a different direction we connected with both of our other targets, Pale-billed Parrotbill and Collared Babbler! Unfortunately looks were quite poor and had we connected with them in a hide the views would have been 10x better. But after walking we asked the hide owner if our targets had arrived and neither had shown up. Had we sat there, we would’ve dipped both. Sometimes you just need to break those handcuffs off.
Wenjia, our English translator was ‘with’ us in Shiti Valley but she spent the majority of her time in a different hide than us, targeting a different group of birds. She didn’t care about our lifers because she had her own list of lifers she wanted to see so we didn’t see her much outside of meals. In fact, this is the only picture I have of her from our entire time:
It was here in Shiti Valley that Ross had concocted a plan.
He was hell bent on going to the Dulong valley to tick a very important bird that he could not easily see in India — Slaters Monal. Being in southern Yunnan in late March, we were already starting to feel the effects of birding somewhere at the “wrong” time. This was only going to get worse in Baihualing where most of the good birds were already moving up to higher elevation and not visiting the hides with regularity anymore. While our original itinerary had us in Shiti Valley for 2 more days, we opted to leave early to adjust our trip and visit areas that would allow us to connect on more high elevation targets!
Can I just say again how great it was for Ross to be able to dive his own vehicle?!
This birding took place March 30-April 1, 2025
Here’s an eBird checklist if you want to check it out: First morning along dirt road and Hide 2