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Huachiang geese-watching season opens

Geese that have flown south from Siberia fly near the Huachiang Bridge over the Tamsui River in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES

The annual Huachiang geese-watching season in Taipei formally opened yesterday with thousands of bird-watchers gathered under the Huachiang Bridge in Taipei.

With the aid of members of the Wild Bird Society in Taipei City, people used binoculars and tried to identified the different species according to various illustrated guidebooks.

Most the geese that descended yesterday on banks of the Tamsui River, which runs through Taipei City, were small geese, numbered at about 5,000.

A few sponge-billed geese and geese of other species could also be seen.

The geese stop in Taiwan on their migration north in the spring, and will keep flying to Taiwan's marshes until late April -- marking the end of the Huachiang geese-watching season.

Before then, the Wild Bird Society of Taipei City will send members to the river banks under the Huachiang Bridge every weekend to give guidance to those wanting to learn more about the birds.

The society said in a statement that the number of geese living in the geese sanctuary on the Tamsui River banks between Youngfu Bridge and Chunghsing Bridge has leveled off to between 4,700 and 7,000, thanks to the government's conservation policy.

However, the number of migratory geese stopping in Taiwan on their way north or south fell by almost half this year, possibly because of global warming, the statement said.
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