失群的白鶴帶給台灣人意外驚喜
金山日誌2016年6月3日
Sam Yeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
去年12月，一隻西伯利亞白鶴在金山農村地區的稻田裡。這種鳥在全球僅剩不足4000隻，而它是唯一一隻出現在台灣的西伯利亞白鶴。
金山日誌2016年6月3日
Sam Yeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
去年12月，一隻西伯利亞白鶴在金山農村地區的稻田裡。這種鳥在全球僅剩不足4000隻，而它是唯一一隻出現在台灣的西伯利亞白鶴。
Rare Visit to Taiwan by Siberian Crane Is a Bird-Watcher’s Dream
JINSHAN, Taiwan — The paparazzi gathered by the dozens, braving cold and rain and sticky heat. Sometimes their lanky quarry would lead them on long chases. Other times the celebrity would cooperate, particularly if crab or snail was on offer, drawing huge crowds to this farming hamlet on the northern coast of Taiwan after each sighting.
The subject of such adoration was not a teenage Mandopop star in hiding but a bird — a Siberian crane, one of fewer than 4,000 in the world and the only one ever seen on this Asian island on the edge of the tropics.
Environmentalists called him the little white crane of Jinshan, after the rural district where he spent most of his time, and his movements were tracked on Facebook and in the local news media. After he briefly ventured south over the mountains and took temporary refuge in the parking lot of a Taipei subway station, satellite trucks lined the country roads to monitor his return.
The local government hired a full-time bodyguard to look out for the crane, who faced threats from feral dogs and powerful typhoons. But the biggest problem was the sightseers.
“They were hard to control,” Chuang Kuo-liang, the bird’s guard, said. “They wanted to get close and touch him.”
EASTERN SIBERIA
RUSSIA
MONGOLIA
CHINA
Beijing
THREE
GORGES DAM
Yangtze
River
East China
Sea
Poyang Lake
Jinshan
Pacific
Ocean
TAIWAN
South China
Sea
500 Miles
I first encountered bird-watching in Taiwan when I lived in Taipei in 2014. Walk through any park in the city or bike the trails lining its rivers, and you will inevitably encounter a gaggle of bird-watchers with tripod-mounted cameras. They stand on muddy banks and circle around trees with nests, patiently waiting for a glimpse of a treasured creature.
“You have to wait, because you don’t know when it will return,” said Kao Twan-kao, a retired civil engineer who was watching the nest of a Taiwan barbet on a rainy afternoon in Taipei’s Daan Forest Park. “Sometime you will only see it once every few hours.”
The Taiwan barbet is known in Chinese as the “five-colored bird” for its green, red, yellow, blue and black plumage. One was waiting in the nest, a hole in a slender tree trunk, while its mate was out searching for food. We were lucky. After a few minutes, the brightly colored bird stuck its head out into the gloomy light of day.
“These birds are so cute,” said one bird-watcher, Chen Jia-hu, as he watched alongside his camera. “So we all want to protect them and protect the environment.”
Mr. Chen pulled out his phone to show me a Facebook feed of stunning images of birds that he had photographed around Taipei’s parks. Some, like the noisy and gregariousTaiwan blue magpie, are endemic to the island, meaning it is the only place they live and breed in the wild. Others like theMalayan night heron, which wobbles its neck while feeding on bugs and earthworms, can be found across much of Asia.
Several migratory birds, including the endangered black-faced spoonbill, spend winters on the island, too.
The Siberian crane was an anomaly. The bird was less than a year old when he arrived in December 2014, with cinnamon-brown feathers on his back and head. Later, as his adoring fans in Taiwan looked on, those colors gave way to pure white with black primary feathers.
Siberian cranes can live up to 80 years, but they are critically endangered. Fewer than 20 remain in western Siberia, migrating to Iran in the winters. A population in central Siberia that used to winter in India disappeared more than a decade ago.
The remaining cranes are in eastern Siberia and spend their winters in southeast China, downriver from the Three Gorges Dam at Poyang Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake, which has experienced periods of extreme drought in recent years. The local environmental bureau has sometimes scattered corn to ensure that the birds have an adequate food supply.
“In the past there was always a balance, but now because of climate change, because of the man-made control of the water, cranes are facing a situation where they depend on humans to feed them to survive,” said Chiu Ming-yuan, the deputy executive director of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation. “And all the world’s Siberian cranes are in that one place. It’s a very dangerous situation.”
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