u/Birdie_Birdieee

Shrike babies

Here's what she's been making lately: chicken, duck, a dry pot loaded with lotus root, cauliflower, onion, potato & shrimp, fish, Sichuan spicy sausage, and bitter melon stir-fried with egg. Honestly, nothing beats mom's cooking 😋

Taste is decent, but I can't help wondering if they use pre-made meals? Every location tastes pretty much the same, and the food comes out suspiciously fast lol 🤷‍♂️

We call it 四川林鸮 in Chinese, which sounds like it's exclusive to China. I've seen some sources say it's a full species, others list it as a subspecies of the Ural Owl, and a few even mention it was lumped with the Ural Owl back in 2022. Honestly I'm not 100% sure what the current consensus is, but I figure either name works!

Now for the story of how we found it. We headed to western Sichuan during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, aiming to tick this owl off our list at above 3000m elevation. The first night we arrived at the spot, another group was already photographing one perched on a conifer right by the road. But before I could even raise my camera, it flew off. We searched back and forth along that stretch several times with no luck, and since we'd been birding hard all day, we were totally wiped out and decided to call it quits for the night.

The next morning we set out at 6:30am and walked forever along a trail flanked by dense shrubs and conifers. Spotting one purely by sight felt nearly impossible, and the longer we searched, the more hopeless we got. Then one of our group suggested listening for songbird alarm calls, saying he'd noticed in some owl videos he'd watched that small birds always mob and scold them. He also pointed out we'd drifted pretty far from the location shared by the birder who had photographed it earlier, so we changed direction. After crawling under countless bushes, we finally heard a Chestnut Thrush giving rapid, urgent alarm calls. Someone up front spotted the owl but said it had just flown again. That instantly gave us a massive adrenaline boost and we sped up, hiking fast through high altitude terrain and completely forgetting the golden rule about taking it slow up there to avoid altitude sickness. It kept shifting perches and made us chase it all over the place. Only after we finished shooting and started heading down did the exhaustion fully hit us.

Gotta give a huge shoutout to the Chestnut Thrush lol. There were so many of them around that we'd basically stopped noticing them haha, but turns out they were the real MVPs who led us straight to the owl. Love you, Chestnut Thrush.

Took two bites and was like wow this is perfectly chewy, then realized the restaurant just undercooked it 😂

My mouth says "not spicy" but my stomach is literally on fire 😂