Most of his time in the conservation area, he said, was spent locating the birds.
"I really understand now why they call it the mythical bird. Most often, people trying to find this rare bird will not succeed. The bird is too elusive. They can only hope they will some day come across them," Liang said.
After first catching one tern on film in 2000, Liang returned in 2001, hoping to find more, but found none. Only last summer did he spot the tern again. This time, there were three couples. A closer examination of their nests was difficult and Liang could only guess that the pairs had successfully bred three young birds.
Liang recalled the surprise when he found the tern. "I was glancing through a pile of footage when I noticed that one bird was slightly different from the rest. So I looked up some information material and found that it might have been the `mythical bird.' But I also knew it was thought to be extinct. Only after I consulted Academia Sinica was I sure that I had found an almost extinct species. At first I couldn't believe it, but it was so great to be the first to come across something so rare. I was so happy, and I'm still so happy now," Liang said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence."
Even so, Liang was also first the first in Taiwan to discover wild bird species previously thought to exist only abroad, such as the tristram bunting and oriental plover.
"Finding these birds was important because it shows that Taiwan's wild bird resources are actually larger [than expected] or are becoming large. But finding Chinese crested terns was more significant because you can't find them elsewhere," Liang said.
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He said he expected that more people will discover wild birds unknown to the country. "I'm sure that new discoveries of wild birds will happen more often because the bird-watching population is continuously on the increase."
Bird-watching has been a burgeoning form of tourism in Matsu since the establishment of the conservation area. In the past four years since the National Matsu Scenic Area Administration(
"Transportation hassles in touring out-lying islands naturally prohibited some people. Although we would like the tourism in Matsu to make progress, too many tourists can be a burden on ecology. We do not want that," Chang said.
"Our goals are conservation. While eco-tourism may help public knowledge of rare species, rushing in too many people in a short time ... is not the way to do things. We still find tourists littering or feeding the fish. Although tourists are fenced off from the birds, their noisy chattering can be heard from afar."
The top priority at present is new research on the bird, which the county government is working on. "We hope that when the Chinese crested tern comes here next summer, we'll have a special team to study them so that people can know the bird better," Chang said.
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