I've had the priviledge of many a late night call recently with Xu Xing, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing who has described more dinosaurs than anyone else alive.

Xu is a leading proponent of the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs and over the past decade has uncovered a number of really unusual fossils, from a pint sized dinosaur with four wings to a feathered ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex. You can read my interview with Xu in New Scientist, and find additional illustrations of what these feathered beasts likely looked like here.

A couple days after our recent run-in with a king cobra, Pan pulled the snake out of the freezer for a full dissection.

I started walking back to my room at the Chongzuo EcoPark the other evening after watching the langurs come down the mountain to roost.

I'd stayed watching them settle into their cliff face caves a bit longer than usual and by the time I began the hike back to the reserve's headquarters, it was already quite dark.

I hadn't bothered to pack a flashlight as I knew the path fairly well and preferred to let the moonlight guide me.
Then, I started thinking about all the warning signs plastered along the park's paths warning hikers about cobras.

There is a saying about the people of southern China that they eat anything with four limbs except tables, anything that flies except airplanes, and anything that swims except ships.
Perhaps, but birding in southern China's Chongzuo EcoPark is nonetheless amazing!

red-whiskered bulbul
Courtesy of Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute

At first glance, the Chongzuo EcoPark, where biologist Pan Wenshi studies white-headed langurs, appears as timeless as a Chinese landscape painting. Rugged karst peaks shoot straight out of rice paddies and sugar cane fields tended by villagers and their water buffalo. It's a scene that seems little changed for thousands of years.

The reality, however, is much more interesting.

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Courtesy of Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute

I wrote a story last fall on Pan Wenshi—China's founding father of conservation biology—and the white headed langur, an endangered monkey he’s spent the past decade trying to save. At the time, Pan told me I really should come back in late winter when the year’s newborns still have their bright yellow fur, so when the chance came for me to make a return visit, I jumped!