A rare brown booby, a member of the Sulidae family, has been spotted in a coastal area of the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea, the first sighting of the species in 148 years, the Kaohsiung-based Marine National Park Headquarters said.
The species was first recorded in 1867 by British explorer Cuthbert Collingwood, who said it had a great advantage in areas around the Dongsha Islands, the headquarters said.
However, the brown booby population began declining in the 19th century due to human activities and related developments, and the species had not been seen in 148 years.
Photo: Taipei Times
The sighting by members of the Kaohsiung Wild Bird Society is exciting for ornithologists and the Dongsha Atoll National Park, which was established in 2007, the headquarters said.
The 1.74km2 Dongsha Island, 380km southwest of Kaohsiung, is a coral atoll that lies in the East Asia migratory path for birds and provides a good place for them to rest and feed with its vegetation, beach, lagoon and wetlands, the headquarters said.
As part of its efforts to learn more about the ecosystems of the three islands, the headquarters commissioned the Kaohsiung Wild Bird Society to conduct a survey of birds appearing on the Pratas Islands.
The society has recorded several new migratory bird species on the island so far this year, including the brown booby, Schrenck’s bittern, the spotted redshank, the wedge-tailed shearwater and the white-throated rock thrush, bringing the total number of species to 284, the headquarters said.
Migratory birds from Chongming Island off Shanghai, northwest and southeast Australia, as well as Taiwan proper, have also been spotted around the islands.
In April, a ruddy turnstone with orange and blue legs was sighted and later found to have migrated from King Island off the southeast coast of Australia in March last year.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift