The 2018 Black-faced Spoonbill Conservation Season started on Sunday at the Endemic Species Research Institute’s Black-faced Spoonbill Ecology Exhibition Hall in Tainan’s Cigu District. This year’s event attracted many families keen to do a spot of bird watching. The telescope-wielding birdwatchers were treated to a wealth of sightings: over 1,000 spoonbills have arrived already this year in the conservation area.
East Asia and Southeast Asia are the main wintering sites for black-faced spoonbills, half of which choose Taiwan in which to winter.
The first black-faced spoonbill this year arrived on Sept. 8 in the main habitat in Zengwen River estuary in Tainan’s Cigu District — the earliest arrival since records in Cigu began. Since last Saturday, the number of the spoonbills has exceeded 1,000.
Photo courtesy of Li Chin-yu, Bird Photography Club
照片:拍鳥俱樂部李進裕提供
The well-planned black-faced spoonbill reserve and the many wetlands in Tainan make the area a good habitat for the internationally protected birds to winter, with numbers of arrivals increasing significantly each year. According to the Tainan Ecological Conservation Society, the number of black-faced spoonbills wintering in Taiwan has grown from 206 in 1993 to 2,060 in 2016, repesenting a ten-fold increase in 25 years. A total of 1,528 of the 2016 figure came to Tainan, the main winter habitat of the spoonbills in Taiwan.
Over the past year, almost 30 black-faced spoonbills have remained in Taiwan, instead of returning north. Six of these spoonbills have been living in Cigu’s Tingshan area and the wetland of Syuejia District, Tainan. Cigu’s Tingshan wetland is an ecologically rich site, excellent for environmental education. To that end, two bird watching pavilions have been set up in the Tingshan Wetland.
With the arrival of fall, we not only see more black-faced spoonbills migrating to Taiwan: black-bellied terns arrive to winter in Tainan’s Beimen lagoon, too. In addition, winter migratory birds such as sandpipers, herons, wild ducks and gulls fly south to Taiwan, marking the beginning of the bird watching season in the coastal areas of Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan, turning these areas into a bird watching paradise and popular sites for ecotourism.
Photo courtesy of the Forest Bureau
照片:林務局提供
(Translated by Lin Lee-kai, Taipei Times)
二○一八年黑面琵鷺保育季上週日在台南市七股區特生中心黑面琵鷺展示館開幕,今年的活動吸引不少親子前往賞鳥,透過望遠鏡找到黑琵時驚呼聲四起,目前台南棲地的黑面琵鷺已突破千隻。
黑面琵鷺在東亞及東南亞等地度冬,在台灣度冬的數量占全世界總數的一半。
今年第一隻黑面琵鷺飛抵七股曾文溪口的主棲地是在九月八日,刷新黑面琵鷺飛抵七股最早紀錄,到上週六已經突破一千隻。
台南地區因為有規劃良好的黑面琵鷺保護區以及多處濕地,讓來台度冬的國際級保育鳥類黑面琵鷺有良好的棲地,每年數量顯著成長。台南市生態保育學會指出,據統計,抵台度冬的黑面琵鷺,從一九九三年的兩百零六隻到二○一六年的兩千零六十隻,二十五年來大幅成長十倍,台南地區佔一千五百二十八隻,可說是黑面琵鷺度冬的主要棲息地。
去年至今有將近三十隻黑面琵鷺留在台灣沒有北返,其中六隻一直在七股頂山棲息處及學甲濕地棲息,顯示七股頂山濕地生態豐富,是環境教育優良場址。為推廣七股頂山濕地,當地已有兩座賞鳥亭方便大家賞鳥。
入秋後,不只是黑琵,黑腹燕鷗也飛抵台南北門潟湖度冬,加上鷸鴴、鷺、雁鴨及鷗科等冬候鳥南飛,讓雲嘉南濱海地區進入賞鳥季,鳥況十分熱鬧,處處是賞鳥樂園,生態觀光熱門。
(自由時報)
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