I loved the little moment which the image captures.
Had I been in front of the mother and daughter – and thereby made my presence intrusive – the moment simply would not have happened…at that moment, at least.
Comments closedTag: China
This post’s Tibetan Plateau location is higher and wilder than was true of #8 in this series.
The Chang Tang – also rendered into English as “Changtang” – is a very harsh environment, mostly grasslands at more than 4,000 metres above sea level, punctuated by mountains.
Much of it is protected in one of the world’s largest national parks, but climate change’s impact – here, mostly negative – is proving particularly extreme, rapid.
Goa – or Tibetan Gazelle – live here in still-considerable, but declining numbers.
Comments closed
Dead yaks reputedly provide rather more than half of the food eaten by Gyps himalayensis, but many members of Homo sapiens have also been devoured.
“Live” humans, fear not!
These very large raptors are scavengers, not hunters.
For countless human generations – via so-called “Tibetan Sky Burials”, in which religious rites are meticulously conducted, but the recently-deceased are not buried – Himalayan Griffon Vultures have done high-altitude humans a valuable service.
Comments closed
Meet Mustela altai.
Asia’s Mountain Weasel, or Altai Weasel is an absolute carnivore whose preferred habitat is 3,500 metres+ above sea level.
On October 12, 2019 my beloved and I had an uncommonly close encounter with one, on his or her “moving day”.
This occurred in a very pleasant valley, just off and below the Tibetan Plateau proper, but – at circa 3, 800 metres – still within this species’ allegedly-preferred altitude range.
One Comment
The featured bird is very tiny, very hardy.
“His” valley’s sparsely vegetated floor – the “low ground”, locally – all sits within 200 metres either side of 4000 metres above sea level.
If transplanted to the Tibetan Plateau, New Zealand’s highest peak would fail to reach this valley’s lowest point.
Comments closed
…what does he/it look like?
The featured image offers a Tibetan Plateau answer.
In the White House – depending on one’s particular perspective – the result is “entirely different”, or, in essence, “much the same”…
3 Comments
Meet Ochotona gloveri – Glover’s pika.
This mostly-solitary herbivore is a high altitude specialist, to whom temperatures north of 26 Celsius could prove fatal.
Glover’s pikas live on and near to the Tibetan Plateau, mostly on/in steep rockfaces.
Comments closed
I took the photo on a glorious autumn morning almost exactly one year ago – 10.26 am, 29 October 2019, Labahe, Sichuan, China.
In Scotland, more than half a century earlier, Robin Williamson wrote my favourite autumn song.
Allegedly, October Song was the first song he ever wrote, as a teenager.
One Comment
Asia’s wild asses are different from Africa’s, and larger too.
All but one kind are generally reckoned subspecies of Equus hemionus, the Asiatic wild ass or onager.
Pictured above and below is the khur or Indian wild ass, Equus hemionus khur.
Once widespread, in large numbers, khur now only number several thousand individuals, most of them in the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, western India.
Comments closed
Inarguably, much of it is perplexing.
Arguably, however, it often reveals the actual nature of what is now routinely described – by those not under its yoke – as an “authoritarian” regime.
”Totalitarian” is, I think, a more accurate descriptor.
Comments closed