[Tweeters] Off-topic Taiwan trip report

[Gary Bletsch]

 Dear Tweeters,



 

A few months ago, I put out an RFI about birdingin Taiwan. Having returned, I offer here a few tidbits.

 I found no guide. One suggested by severalTweeters proved to be utterly remiss in correspondence. After sending me aproposal, he stopped answering messages. Repeated, polite, earnest requests forresponse went unanswered. I decided to go ahead and bird Taiwan on my own. Theguide ended up e-mailing me after over a month, profusely apologizing, but I’dalready dropped him like a hot pot-sticker. 



 BirdingPal used to be good. When it wasnew, and had web pages designed to look like spiral notebook sheets, it helpedme on several trips. It might still be of some use, but I received zeroresponses from the e-mails I sent to seven Birding Pals in Taiwan. I paid $10to join, and got nada. I think it used to be free of charge. Oh, well.



 I spent roughly 16 days in Taiwan. Getting therefrom Buffalo was one of the most punishing air journeys I’ve made. Nexttime I cross the Pacific, I’ll stop off on the WCoast or Hawaii for a day or two. Upon arrival at Taoyuan International, I feltlike I'd gone a few rounds with Two-Ton Tony Galento.



 Taiwan’s not cheap, but seems a tad less dearthan the US. Car rental and fuel costs were comparable. Cheap food is easy tofind. Good, cheap lodging was usually available. I ended up splurging on a few self-styled5-star hotels. In some areas, it was hard to navigate to cheap hotels, forvarious logistical reasons. Most of the 5-stars were bad bargains. Wealthabounds in Taiwan; hotel parking garages were full of luxury sedans, plus one dirtylittle Ford Focus with my fingerprints on it.



 Perfectly nice hotels can be usually be had forunder $70 a night; I could easily have found less costly.



 Fastest, cheapest way to feed oneself is at7-11. They’re almost everywhere; the CPC gas stations that I patronized normallyhave a 7-11 next door. I could get a whole day's food for under $20, and mostof it was quite good, especially the little triangular wraps (seaweed aroundrice around various fillings). They also have sushi, cheese sandwiches, hardboiledeggs, and hot dogs—even liquor and electronics, neither of which I bought!



 Some friends had told me of their travails navigatingto birding sites; they'd travelled as a couple, one driving, one navigating. Things have changed. Google Maps works great in 99% of Taiwan; eBird hotspots always have a "directions" button. None of theabove is possible if one does not equip oneself with a generousdata plan. My plan, however, was miserly with texts and calls, so Iused up my texts and calls in a week. That was okay, though, since I had datafor e-mail.



 I winged it for the whole trip. The only prearranged lodging was at a hotel near the airport, where I had to restup after arrival. It was tricky at first, but I got pretty good at findinglodging, with practice. The downside of aggregator sites, such asBooking Dot Com, is that they often try to sell you a hotel that is"near" a desired location, when it is actually far off. I toldmy wife when I got home that it would be like booking a hotel in Oso, for aplanned birding trip to Lyman, to put it in W WA terms. The aggregator wouldfind me a hotel that was "only 11 km" from the place I wanted tobird, conveniently ignoring a 3000-meter peak that stood between the hotel andthe site!


 Driving in Taiwan was pretty easy. I would saythat the drivers there are the best I’ve encountered, having driven in 23 countries.They’re polite, cooperative, careful. It’s been a while since I’ve driven ine.g. Austria or Sweden, but would say that Taiwanese drivers are as safe orsafer, certainly far safer and wiser than American motorists. I saw none of theroad rage, selfishness, or insane manouevers that I face every time I drive ortry to be a pedestrian here.
Considering their roads, the Taiwanese have to be good drivers. I joked with one fellow tourist that if large numbersof Arabs or Latin Americans were to arrive in Taiwan and suddenly startdriving, there would be a hundred fatalities a day. Many roads are astoundinglynarrow--well paved and well maintained, but one might think that they were trying to save on asphalt or something. There is often a concrete water channel right next to the fog-line,offering instant ruin to any undercarriage. Shoulder--what shoulder? Convexmirrors at many intersections and curves are a life-saver. No--just afender-saver. People drive sedately enough so that, even if there is a wreck,it is probably not going to be fatal.
Motorbikes have special lanes, andthey even have a special spot at the front of the line, so they can pass thecars and line up at traffic lights. After it turns green, they zoom off, andthen the cars and trucks get to pass them—only to be passed again at the nextlight. There are many, many lights, even at seemingly minor crossroads, and thelights are long. There is no right turn on red. It all works out splendidly,because virtually nobody tries to bend the rules or play stupid, macho games.
Up in the mountains, especially on a weekend, ittakes a long time to travel just a few kilometers.
I never felt the specterof death that has stalked me on the roads in places such as Arabia, the Dominican Republic,or Argentina.



 All of that said, even in a little Ford, it canbe extremely difficult to escape from the narrow little roads that traverserice paddies, or the alleyways of cities and towns. Even with the car’s backupcamera, I sometimes had to back up six inches, get out, check the cliff orbrick wall or ditch, get back in, and so forth. With nobody to take a turn atthe wheel to give me a respite, I was usually quite worn out by the end ofevery day.

I can’t think of a people as kindly, helpful,and polite as the Taiwanese. It was an honor to be there.



Birding, oh yeah, that's why I went to Taiwan!Because of some bad planning on my part, I somehow managed to spend over twoweeks, and never even approach their best mountain/forest birding area, whichis Dasyueshan. I kept putting it off, and by the time I was ready, the weatherturned rainy, and I could not figure out lodging. 

Other than a near gale on the 2nd day of thetrip, which thwarted birding at the N tip of the island, and the rain that setin when I was planning to go to Dasyueshan, the weather was lovely.



I ended up driving a quirky route, clockwisearound “Formosa.” I skipped most of the east coast. About the only goodmountain birding I had was in and near Alishan Nat’l Rec Area. I blew a wholeweekend at the vaunted Hehuanshan, but I saw fewer than five species in thatlovely area, sending hours stuck in tourist traffic. Go on a Tuesday.



 I managed 162 species in all, and 35 lifers. Goalwas 30 lifers, so it was a productive trip in that sense. Omitting Dasyueshan probably cost me close to ten lifers, but no regrets. 



 Rarest bird of the trip was a LesserWhite-fronted Goose that flew in with a staked-out Greylag. Another cool"Euro" bird was a flyover Great Bittern, a species I’d heard once, but hadnever seen, and had not expected to see in Taiwan.

Biggest ID challenge was the Emberiza buntings.When I look at my thousands of photos, I might be able to make some sense of some buntings and other birds. Maybe.


 Shorebirding was superb. One reason I missed somany forest birds was that I could barely tear myself away from shorebirding, myall-time favorite—and something lacking here in Western NY, compared to WWashington, and of course Skagit County. I did once again dip on Swinhoe’s Snipeand Nordmann's Greenshank. A Spoon-billed Sandpiper showed up somewhere in Taiwan while I was there, but I did not give chase.


Here are the shorebirds I saw; excuse the codes.BBPL, PAGP, Siberian Sand Plover, Little Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover,Pheasant-tailed Jacana, BW Stilt, Pied Avocet, Far-Eastern Curlew, WHIM,Bar-tailed Godwit, Common Greenshank, Marsh Sandpiper, Common and SpottedRedshank, Common Sandpiper, WOSA, GRSA, COSN, Greater Painted Snipe, DUNL, SAND,Long-toed Stint, and Red-necked Stint.

I did little owling and found no owls, but saw aSavannah Nightjar while lost on a rice paddy road.

Mammals were scarce: Formosan Rock Macaques, treesquirrels of some sort, and one bat.



 Okay, I will wrap this up by thanking all of theTweeters who wrote with Taiwan ideas. If the above message is hard to follow orboring, I will play my excuse card...I came down with Covid-19 shortly aftergetting home, and am still blundering about in a state of febrile idiocy.



 

Yours truly,

 

Gary Bletsch

 

 

 

 



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