Pedestrians can protect their heads from magpie attacks by using a hat or an umbrella, or avoid areas frequented by the birds altogether, New Taipei City officials said yesterday.
The comments came days after a video showing a magpie diving at a person walking a dog sparked public interest, with New Taipei City Councilor Lu Chia-kai (呂家愷) calling on the authorities to warn the public about the birds.
The bird shown in the video is a Formosan blue magpie, New Taipei City Animal Protection and Quarantine Office Director Yang Shu-fang (楊淑方) said.
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office
Formosan blue magpies are a class 3 protected species, meaning disturbing or harming their hatchlings and nests is a crime punishable by a two-year prison sentence or an NT$500,000 fine, New Taipei City Agriculture Bureau Director Lee Wen (李玟) said.
Magpies rear their young for five to six weeks and can be aggressive to perceived intruders near their nesting area during this period, Yang said.
People walking near an area claimed by a magpie should not turn their back to the bird and protect themselves, she said.
The office has received three reports of magpie attacks in Sansia (三峽), Shulin (樹林) and Sindian (新店) districts, she said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS