After eight months of research, Taiwanese raptor experts recently completed tracing the migration pattern of the endangered gray-faced buzzard, an Asian bird of prey, the Forestry Bureau said on Thursday.
A research study sponsored by the bureau shows that gray-faced buzzards, or Butastur indicus, stop over in Taiwan every October on their way south to winter in southern areas of the Philippines.
The raptors then fly north in the spring, making another stop in Taiwan before continuing their migration to the China-Russia border near China's Heilongjiang Province or North Korea to breed, the findings show.
PHOTO: CNA
Between 15,000 and 35,000 gray-faced buzzards visit Taiwan during these spectacular migrations, but prior to the latest study, knowledge of where the birds came from and where they went was scant.
Keen to find out more about the birds' migration patterns, the research team, including researchers from Academia Sinica and the non-profit Raptor Research Group of Taiwan, fitted satellite trackers on several adult buzzards to find out more about their habits.
The findings solved part of an old puzzle surrounding the birds, said Lin Wen-hung (林文宏), the secretary-general of the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan.
“The migration pattern that we have discovered, however, does not mean that all gray-faced buzzards use the same route for their annual migrations,” Lin said.
The gray-faced buzzard is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) and is also protected by inclusion as a Rare and Valuable Species under Taiwan's Wildlife Conservation Act, the Forestry Bureau said.
Generally, the southern migration areas of gray-faced buzzards are limited to Southeast Asia. In summer, they breed in eastern areas of Asia, including northern China, the Korean peninsula, an area southeast of the River Ussuri in Russia and Japan. When autumn comes, they migrate south to southeastern China, Indochina, the Philippines, Borneo, the Celebes and New Guinea, although the migration routes are still not clear.
Japanese researchers were the first to carry out a satellite positioning plan for tracing the buzzards. They marked and released several of the raptors from the Japanese island of Ishigaki, hoping that they would fly south — the birds headed north instead.
Last October, the Taiwanese team fitted satellite trackers to five adult gray-faced buzzards caught in Kenting National Park and the Mt Bagua National Scenic Area in Changhua County.
The five birds were dubbed Cape Nos. 1 to 5 and then released. The researchers lost contact with Cape No. 3 and No. 4 somewhere over the ocean as the birds were flying north and their transmitters remained silent, the bureau said.
The other three — Cape No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5 — continued transmitting signals, showing the precise locations of their travel routes and unveiling their hitherto mysterious migration routes.
Cape No. 1 was found to have traveled more than 9,000km in a broad circle covering the southern Philippines at the southernmost location and Heilongjiang Province at the northernmost tip, with Taiwan as a midway stop and a mountainous area in China's northeastern Jilin Province as its breeding ground early last month, bureau officials said.
The bird took refuge on a tiny island off China's Guangdong Province in March under the strong northeast monsoon, where it recovered its strength before heading further north around the end of May.
Cape No. 2 and No. 5 also flew more than 9,000km in a migration circle, breeding in a rural area of North Korea.
The recent finding — the first migration data on gray-faced buzzards — has set up a good scientific foundation for further migration research, the officials said.
“Further and more detailed research will help us find out more about the birds,” Lin said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater