Birdsong in Qinglong Valley
Birdsong in Qinglong Valley by Yinyun. Qinglong Valley is at the northwest foot of Tianzi Mountain, adjacent to Huanglong Valley. The road from Dayong City to Sangzhi County, after passing Sinanyu where the Tianzi Mountain Town government is located, climbs along Huanglong Valley toward the ridge platform of Tianzi Mountain. Not far from the town, on the right side of the road, a row of sandstone peaks rising level by level separates Qinglong Valley from Huanglong Valley. A simple stone-step path winds and rises with difficulty along the side closer to Qinglong Valley. Following this stone…
Birdsong in Qinglong Valley
Silver Cloud
Qinglong Valley lies on the northwestern slope of Tianzi Mountain, adjacent to Huanglong Valley. The road from Dayong City to Sangzhi County, after passing Sinanyu where the Tianzi Mountain Township government is located, climbs along Huanglong Valley toward the ridge platform of Tianzi Mountain. Not far from the town, on the right side of the road, a row of sandstone peaks rising step by step separates Qinglong Valley from Huanglong Valley. A simple stone-step path winds and climbs laboriously up the side facing Qinglong Valley. Following this stone-slab stairway, one can also climb up to the ridge platform of Tianzi Mountain, though few people take this route.
Jing Youquan of the Wulingyuan District Government repeatedly urged me to go to Qinglong Valley. I also very much wanted to set foot across the whole of Tianzi Mountain, and with the enthusiastic guidance of Chen Lin, Huang Dawei, and Peng Lizhen of Tianzi Mountain, I went. The stone-step path along the way was very steep, sometimes almost vertically stacked. Trees on both sides blocked the sky, obscuring the view. I thought to myself: this is a remote place far from the center of the sandstone peak forest landscape; I fear there is nothing particularly worthy of praise here.
Walking and stopping, stopping and sitting, suddenly I heard birdsong coming from high ahead. At first it was faint and indistinct, seeming both present and absent. Listening intently, I felt it was steady and powerful, with distant echoes. Following the sound, each step grew more vigorous. Going up, the higher we went, the more joyful and louder the birdsong became, making one's heart leap and flutter. When we climbed onto a huge sandstone cliff extending forward, wave after wave of birdsong rushed toward us—"chirp chirp chatter chatter," "chatter chatter chirp chirp," "return, return," "home dwelling, home dwelling"—the birdsong boiling over, almost roaring. Reaching the top of this cliff, the whole of Qinglong Valley lay spread out beneath our feet.
Qinglong Valley was indeed lush and green. Wherever the eye touched, not a stone was visible, not a speck of soil—every valley and ravine was covered by layer upon layer of leafy green, and the greenness drifted and spread onto the surrounding cliff faces. The sunlight in Qinglong Valley was also extraordinarily magical: some poured down in brilliant, bright swaths onto the green, while some slanted in thin threads and wisps through the gaps of the sandstone peak forest—peaks like towers, pillars, halberds, and axes—onto the green. Because the angles of sunlight differed, and because the tree species differed, the green of the valleys and the surrounding sandstone cliffs was interwoven in deep and shallow tones, mingled in dense and light shades, with wet emerald and fresh jade echoing each other, and bright lushness set off against shaded vastness. The mist and mountain haze shrouding Qinglong Valley, so thin as to seem almost nonexistent, filled the entire valley with an atmosphere of mystery, making it seem especially illusory, especially unreal, especially infinitely remote.
Wave after wave of birdsong rose up from this lush green of Qinglong Valley, rushing straight up. No birds could be seen—only drops and specks of sunlight falling on leaf surfaces, swaying slightly, like diamonds and pearl shells glittering, as if every leaf lit by sunlight were a bird. After watching for a long time, suddenly a bird would fly out, then two or three, and in an instant a great flock of birds would float up from the green—sometimes in clumps and patches, sometimes in horizontal rows, sometimes in vertical rows, sometimes in arcs, sometimes in no formation at all. They rushed upward swiftly for a while, circled gracefully for a while, chasing and singing joyfully, and then, one by one, tiny colorful specks flickering, they sank back into the vast expanses of green.
That was a very small bird with a gray-green and magnetic-blue head and back, its breast glowing with a very dazzling orange, its beak red and lustrous as jade. Needless to say, that was the red-billed leiothrix, a bird regarded as loving and devoted, staying together in life and death. Throughout the summer, red-billed leiothrixes live on the ridge platform and peak tops of Tianzi Mountain. They flock together, love to fly, love to hop, love to sing—truly joyful little spirits of nature. By this time, it was already late October, and autumn had long since quietly descended upon the Tianzi Mountain ridge. On the ridge, the shrub Chinese sumac, especially conspicuous in this season, was displaying great clusters of red leaves. Winter was coming; mist and clouds would wreathe Tianzi Mountain, cold would envelop Tianzi Mountain, and the flocks of red-billed leiothrixes would migrate down by the hundreds and thousands to Qinglong Valley. Here they would peck at ripe kiwifruit and small insects, hanging their deep cup-shaped nests in the bushes. Though the red-billed leiothrix is not a migratory bird that travels thousands of kilometers, it can be considered a migratory bird moving vertically between elevations in the great sandstone peak forest. They yearn for warmth, and they would spend the long winter in Qinglong Valley.
On this huge cliff we found a rock house. In Xiangxi, any recess in a rock wall where one can shelter from wind, rain, and sun is called a rock house. The rock wall inside the rock house was dry, without even moss—only shell fossils, spiral shell fossils, and pebbles embedded in the rock face. The rock wall above the rock house was covered with moss, with pine trees growing slantwise, shielding us from the sunlight; the rock wall at our feet also extended outward with many trees, their roots spread with layer upon layer of reddish-brown pine needles accumulated in some unknown year or generation. Those pine needles also covered the rock we sat on—thick, warm, soft, and spongy. We each chose tree roots and rocks, sat down some distance apart, and no one said a word.
There was only the sound of birds.
Listen quietly, listen carefully, listen with your whole soul completely immersed in it—you can hear the calls and responses of life, you can hear the rhythm and cadence of nature. When the birdsong is carefully distinguished, it is of all kinds: some loud, some soft, some resounding, some faint, some deep, some profound, some sharp, some high-pitched—but all somewhat urgent and eager. Birdsong rushed in from all directions. Sometimes a single bird's voice would suddenly rise above all the others, climbing higher and higher, then abruptly plummet from the heights and stop short. Sometimes a flock of birds on one side would call, and just as they paused, a flock on the other side would suddenly burst into song. They would call for a while, rest for a while, rest for a while and call again. Amid this unrestrained joy, some birds called in drawn-out, unhurried tones: "gui—gui, gui—gui," "di—da—di," "ju—ju, ju—ju." From the somewhat impatient calls of the small birds, there emerged a leisurely aloofness, self-confidence, and disdain for joining the flock—certainly a bit lonely and solitary. Those were the voices of medium-sized birds: thrushes, light-vented bulbuls, paradise flycatchers, and azure-winged magpies. Sometimes a thrush on one cliff would call, and far away on the opposite cliff another would answer. They sang in call and response, matching each other, their voices quite clear. There was also a bird whose voice was hoarse like a lamb bleating for its mother—timid and endearing.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, all the birds of Qinglong Valley—red-billed leiothrixes, tits, thrushes, light-vented bulbuls, paradise flycatchers, azure-winged magpies—would all fall silent at once in an instant. Just for a few seconds, and then one could hear the faint murmuring and gurgling of flowing water from beneath the leaves throughout the valleys of Qinglong Valley. That sound was unfathomable, infinitely mysterious, as if overflowing from the exit of another world; in the gaps of the flowing water's sound, crickets and katydids sang long, drawn-out notes one after another. The birdsong stopped for only a few seconds, and in an instant all the birds, as if by agreement, started calling again,
boiling and surging, almost roaring, as if endless and never ceasing.
We left that cliff where we had listened to birdsong, and the rock house on the cliff, and continued upward along the stone-step path. When we reached the mid-slope of Huanglong Peak, we looked back at Qinglong Valley. Qinglong Valley was already very low, very low, and the birdsong throughout its valleys was also very far, very far away. Between the sandstone peaks on both sides of the climbing stone-step path, ancient trees reached to the sky—zhennan, Torreya grandis, Chinese yew, black oak, and camphor—each with a straight trunk and luxuriant branches and leaves. We chose a rock to sit on and rest. Trees were interwoven all around at various heights and distances. Some trees grew below, their tips exactly level with my toes; some grew above, their thick roots gripping the rock layers parallel with the top of my head. Decaying leaves, rotting wood, moss, and the fragrance of ripe fruit merged into the distinctive scent of a primitive secondary forest, sweeping over us and refreshing the mind. Flocks of birds kept passing by—some flying down from the Tianzi Mountain ridge platform to Qinglong Valley, some flying up from Qinglong Valley. The flocks beat their wings very loudly—papa pa, pupu pu. The forest was very quiet; even the sound of a feather falling could be heard distinctly. A thrush flew over from the woods and searched about on a rock near us. The rock was covered with reddish-brown pine needles, and on the pine needles were yellow-brown nuts. The thrush rolled its beautiful fish-tail-framed eyes and glanced toward me once, then again, as if we were old acquaintances. A flock of light-vented bulbuls flew over and had not yet steadied themselves on the branches above our heads when they warily discovered people sitting below and immediately flew off in alarm with a flutter. Sometimes a loud, bright tapping would suddenly ring out—tok tok tok tok—that was a woodpecker striking a tree trunk nearby. Tianzi Mountain has the gray-capped pygmy woodpecker and the black-naped woodpecker. The tapping of woodpeckers often in an instant spreads through a thousand peaks and ten thousand ravines, through the entire forest. In the woods not far from us flew the most beautiful bird in the forest, the paradise flycatcher. The male paradise flycatcher is simply the most elegant and noble aristocrat among birds. Its head and crest shine with a magnetic-blue radiance, its whole body gives off a chestnut-red luster, and its two purple tail feathers are four to five times longer than its body, like two streamers. In flight, the paradise flycatcher spreads its wings and tail, bright and colorful. They hardly ever come to the ground, only flying from one tree to another, flying with great ease and leisure, swaying their distinctive long tails with an indescribable lightness and grace. The female wears brownish, hemp-chestnut feathers, not at all conspicuous, but paradise flycatchers always fly in pairs, wing to wing. Bird chronicles say that when a paradise flycatcher grows old, its entire plumage turns white, and its long tail feathers are also white. I have still never seen the scene of a white paradise flycatcher flying through the forest.
Fortunately, I saw the red-bellied tragopan, a very striking bird. Its whole body has a very beautiful red-chestnut color; the bare parts of its face and chin and the fleshy horns above its eyes are dark blue; the wattle under its throat is cobalt blue, dotted with light blue spots. During the breeding season from April to June each year, the male's cobalt-blue throat wattle dotted with light blue spots swells up, bulging like a pocket. Some say it uses such a pocket to hold clear water, enough for a week's use, so it is called the water-carrying bird or water-carrying chicken. In fact, throughout the great sandstone peak forest of Wulingyuan there are gurgling streams everywhere that never dry up, and with luxuriant branches and berries everywhere, no bird would worry about water.
The spectacular scenery of the Wulingyuan great sandstone peak forest, including Tianzi Mountain, Zhangjiajie, and Suoxiyu, has attracted more and more people. But it is too vast, too deep. Beside Qinglong Valley and Kelong Valley, few traces of people are still found. What I love is precisely this absence of human traces. Precisely because it is rarely visited, Qinglong Valley has become a paradise for birds, as if all the birds of the great peak forest had flown here to celebrate a grand festival of birds. I think that coming to Qinglong Valley, one should come lightly and leave lightly. Not just come once, but want to come again and again. The more times one comes, the more birds one will know, and the more birdsong one will understand.