New Hainan Client, Nanhai Net, Nanguo Metropolis Daily December 12 news (reporter Tan Qi) tall feet, pointed long beak, dark red feathers in the sun appear metallic luster... This colorful ibis, which is strolling leisurely in Danzhou Bay alone, was captured by the camera of Chen Zhengping, the captain of the Danzhou Bay Bird Protection Team. After verification by the Hainan Bird Watching Association Record Center, the colored ibises monitored this time are a new record of birds in Hainan.
Painted ibises (medium). Danzhou Bay Bird Protection Team Chen Zhengping photo
At 9:33 on December 8, Chen Zhengping was carrying out daily patrols in the farmland wetland of Panshan Village, only to see a distinctive bird in the middle of the egret group, which was confirmed by experts to be a national first-class protected animal colored ibis. "People once thought that the painted ibises were extinct in China." Photographing the painted ibis, Chen Zhengping's mood was very excited. According to reports, the colored ibises are birds of the pelican family, which is a close relative of the crested ibis, with a slender body and a long mouth like a machete, named because the color of the feathers changes with the angle of light, mainly feeding on aquatic insects, fish and shrimp, crustaceans, mollusks and so on. In the updated Catalogue of Wild Animals under National Key Protection, released in February this year, the color ibises were adjusted to the national level.
Painted ibises are widely distributed around the world, but they are extremely rare in China, and for a long time no one has recorded them in the wild. Until January 2009, two colored storks made a surprise appearance in Chengdu, and since then, people have successively found traces of colored storks in Hebei, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other provinces. According to incomplete statistics, from 2009 to 2020, there were only 14 monitoring records of colored ibises in the country.
Painted ibis. Danzhou Bay Bird Protection Team Chen Zhengping/Photo
Since September 2019, the bird protection team has monitored a total of 191 species of birds in Danzhou Bay, including 7 species of wild animals under national first-level key protection and 35 species of wild animals under national second-level key protection. Since the beginning of this year, Danzhou Bay has monitored 6 species of birds, including white spoonbills, crested wheat chickens, large sandpipers, purple-winged starlings, colored ibises, and Chinese climbing birds. Lu Gang, director of the Haikou Haolan Wetland Research Institute, believes that the appearance of the colored ibis in Danzhou Bay is of great significance to the study of biodiversity and ecological environment changes in Hainan and the local area.
In recent years, thanks to the continuous improvement of Hainan's ecological environment, a suitable habitat has been created for birds, and more and more migratory birds will "stop" in Hainan during the migration. Hainan is located at the midpoint of the East Asia-Australia migratory bird migration route, and is an important breeding, resting and wintering ground for migratory birds, such as the endangered birds spoon-billed sandpiper and black-faced spoonbill that come to Hainan every year to stay and winter. According to the recent article "Notes on the Bird List of Hainan Island" recently published by Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden, 452 species of wild birds have been recorded on Hainan Island. The rich variety of migratory birds in Hainan has also attracted bird watchers from all over the country to come to shoot, and more and more new records for birds have been refreshed, and the monitoring records of birds in Hainan have been continuously broken.
Source: South China Sea Network