Last week, I was away in Taiwan with my dad. We went for nine days (seven full days) as an attempt to see all 31 endemic bird species. We left for the ferry on Thursday evening and flew from Vancouver at 15 minutes past midnight to Taipei, Taiwan. It was a 12.5-hour flight, and we arrived early morning. Once we landed, got out of the airport, and got our rental car, we immediately hopped in and started birding. It was a warm, humid day as we travelled from park to park. The following day we got our first endemic, Taiwan Liocichla. As the days were going by, we saw some amazing scenery, stayed at some weird hotels, and ate and saw some peculiar food. I remember one of the menus advertising snails, large intestines, and pig snouts. A few times you must cook your food. You have a bowl of boiling water on a flame, and a bowl of raw mystery meat, lots of different kinds of mushrooms and veggies. We threw them in and hoped for the best. On one of our days, we had a long drive to chase an endemic, Styan’s Bulbul. In order to get it, we had to drive to the east coast along a dangerous, narrow, wet, one-lane road on the side of a mountain. There were avalanches everywhere, holes in the road, places where half the road was down the cliff. Lots of tunnels as well. While we were waiting for the next road opening in a part, we had an hour to waste where we saw the bulbul on a telephone pull. When we walked back to the car, there was a monkey (Formosan Rock Macaque) who was climbing up the car towards my open window I forgot to close. If they get in the car, they will ruin and take everything. We tried to scare it off and it climbed on top of the car and stood its ground, showing its teeth the finally climbing down. We saw lots of monkeys and street dogs as far as the mammals go. A few squirrels and a serow as well. Unfortunately, on the last couple days, the park where we had planned to get the last tricky endemics was closed due to a Typhoon coming so we were unable to get all the endemics. The last endemic we got a few hours before heading to the airport was a Black-necklaced Scimitar Babbler. A skulker but we managed to see it thanks to a group of photographers in a huddle desperate to get a glimpse at this hard bird. This made the final count of endemics, 26/31. The flight home left at midnight and landed in Vancouver at 6:30pm. We got the 9pm ferry and got home at 11:45pm.