When the nation’s foremost bird of prey expert, Tsai Yi-jung (蔡乙榮), retires next month, there will be a big void to fill, because there is no one who has the skills to match the man known as the “Bird Man of Kenting.”
Tsai, 53, plans to leave his job of 29 years as the official bird counter at the Kenting National Park Administration Office, leaving many in Taiwan’s ornithology circles saying that he will be sorely missed.
He started the job in 1988, on field study, counting birds of prey as they pass over Kenting along their annual migration routes.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
Tsai has accumulated more than 1 million sightings of gray-faced buzzard hawks and Chinese goshawks, the two major migrating raptors seen over the nation.
For this, Tsai had been called the “One Million Bird Counting Man” by his colleagues.
For the past 29 years, on each typhoon-free day of the annual autumn migrating season from the beginning of September to the end of October, Tsai set up shop before dawn at a lookout pavilion on a hill at Sheding Park (社頂公園), inside Kenting National Park.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
“I got up earlier than the birds,” he said. “So I could do my job of counting raptors.”
Many times he counted the hunters from dawn to dusk, a stretch of more than 10 hours.
Tsai said that age has taken its toll.
“In the past few years, I have slowed down at bird-counting. My concentration and reaction times are not what they used to be. My body is slowing down and I have to be honest about that, so it is time to retire,” he said.
After leaving his post, Tsai said, he plans to be active in environmental protection and nature conservation efforts in the area.
For the technical skills in bird-counting, Tsai explained by taking the example of the Chinese goshawk.
“First you must know they migrate from north to south, and when counting by eye, be certain to set on a base tally number. For example, it can be two, or five, or 10 birds for each tally mark. However, the bigger the base number, the bigger the range of error will be,” he said.
“Then one must choose a baseline in the sky, it can be a cloud or a building. Using the baseline, the eyes must count the number of raptors that pass it. When a large number flies past, before your eyes leave the baseline, double-check the count, to reduce the possible errors,” he added.
Even though Tsai is slightly nearsighted, he seems to have the “eyes of an eagle,” with his peerless raptor-counting skills for counting the birds of prey.
Tsai has earned another nickname, and is known as the “Hawk-Counting Radar.”
Early in his career, some ornithology students doubted his counting by eyesight.
Tsai said that the students told him: “The migrating hawks and falcons are flying so fast, and come in such large numbers in massive flocks. Tallying by eye would not be very accurate and the numbers are unreliable.”
To allay their concerns, park officials and students studied reams of radar data recordings to check against Tsai’s numbers. After eliminating the birds which were out of range and those outside of the human field of vision, the results showed that Tsai’s eyesight counts were extraordinarily accurate, deviating at most by just 10 percent from the radar data.
His colleagues said that during migrating season the birds are coming and going in large numbers, so Tsai’s skills and concentration are needed, because even one small lapse might miss several hundred birds flying by.
Tsai said the weather is also a key factor.
“On clear, sunny days, raptors fly at an altitude of about 1,000 to 2,000 meters. When the weather is bad, they fly low — at 400 to 500 meters. It is always a big challenge for eyesight and concentration on fast-moving objects,” he said.
Over the years, Tsai has participated in conservation efforts for raptors and shrikes. He lectured at schools and nongovernmental organization meetings to promote bird conservation.
Many local conservationists maintain that Tsai’s efforts led directly to the absence of raptor-hunting over the past decade in the area.
However, Tsai suggested that changing attitudes among society and better living conditions sparked the change, along with public education and people’s increased understanding of environmental issues.
While colleagues and locals expressed concern that when Tsai retires the hawk-counting radar eyes of the “Bird Man of Kenting” will become a lost art, Tsai is not worried.
The renowned bird counter said that the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan has been conducting field studies in recent years and that he is willing to donate time to teach and pass on his skills to others who are willing to learn.
“As long as these hawks and falcons are flying over Taiwan, there will be new generations of bird-counters with the persistence to do the job, just like I did for so many years. In the future, 50 years or 100 years from now, I am sure there will be bird counters watching these hawks and falcons soaring in the sky over Kenting,” Tsai said.
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