Reporter 丨He An'an
Birds play an important role in human culture, and people's enthusiasm for birds has never diminished. For example, in the Book of Verses, the first sentence of the opening chapter is "Guan Guan Ju Dove", and in the fairy tales of Wilde and Hans Christian Andersen, there is always the song of the nightingale. Recently, at the "Bird Song Season" reading sharing meeting, Wang Ximin, director of the Science Popularization Department of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, visited Sinan Bookstore and shared stories related to birds and his bird watching experience.
On June 4th, Wang Ximin shared his bird watching experience and stories at the "Bird Song Season" reading and sharing meeting.
Wang Ximin began bird watching around 2000 and belongs to the earliest people in China to contact bird watching. He found that in the process of bird watching, he could not only enjoy the beauty brought by birds, but also discover many problems faced by birds. Wang Ximin said that bird watching is particularly easy to stimulate people's feelings for nature, and he once embarked on a very interesting life path because of bird watching. Wang Ximin was originally a lover of literature and wildlife, and he especially liked bird watching. But in the process of bird watching, Wang Ximin found some problems faced by birds, such as many people catching birds. To this end, Wang Ximin chose to become a policeman, hoping to protect birds, which at the time seemed to him to be an immediate way to protect birds. But how to make the behavior of catching birds and selling birds less? Wang Ximin realized that in order to truly stop bird hunting, it is necessary to understand the environment and atmosphere behind this.
During his trip to the United States to study environmental education, there was a book that touched Wang Ximin a lot. The book is called "The Last Child in the Woods", which is about children who stop playing in the woods for various reasons, especially the pressure of learning. This surprised Wang Ximin and gave him a greater interest in birds and plants. After returning to China, Wang Ximin chose to go to Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden to engage in related work, hoping to tell children about the fun of nature and the fun of bird watching.
At the event site, Wang Ximin started from the local birds in Shanghai, such as the big cuckoo, and the more common four-singed cuckoo. The cries of the great cuckoo are "cuckoo, cuckoo", but the four cuckoo cries, people in different places have different descriptions. Some people say that it is called "single stick is bitter", others say that it is called "cutting wheat and cutting grain", the sound of birds is of course the same, different statements reflect people's different moods.
The UK is the birthplace of bird watching, and two-thirds of the population feeds birds in their gardens, and people have a close connection with birds. Adhering to this deep tradition of naturalistic practice and bird observation, Bird Song Season covers the shape, song and life history of each bird, as well as the changes in urban and rural environments, the origin of bird names and related historical stories. Although the book describes the representative birds of the United Kingdom, there are about 200 species of birds that are also distributed in China, such as the familiar "cuckoo" - the big cuckoo, as well as the house swallow, sparrow, egret and so on.
Birdsong Season: An Chronology of birds in Britain, by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss, translated by Zhu Lei, Wang Qi, and Wang Hui, May 2021 edition
Wang Ximin combined the current situation of bird watching at home and abroad and his own bird watching experience, and introduced some of the birds mentioned in "Bird Song Season". Wang Ximin said that there was an interesting project in Europe called "The Messenger of Spring". The project selected several particularly typical migratory birds in Europe, which migrate from south to north in the spring, passing through various European countries one after another, and birdwatchers uploaded their own observations in different countries through the website, one of which is the great cuckoo. The cuckoo's call is very attractive, but its appearance is very inconspicuous. Because of its unique call, there are also many stories and poems about cuckoos in ancient China, such as cuckoos crying blood.
The bead-necked dove is also a relatively common bird in Shanghai, with a circle of small dots on its neck, like pearls. Wang Ximin introduced that there are actually many birds around us, such as magpies, squids, sparrows, etc., but because of the lack of bird watching culture, many times we do not know. But in Europe and the United States, the image of these birds will appear in almost every place, and many schools will choose the most common local birds as mascots, such as the most common main cardinal in the United States. The Eurasian Plover is fully integrated into the life of the British, and it has its presence in various trademarks and advertisements. Of course, the Eurasian Plover also has a more famous name called "Robin".
The barn owl is rarely distributed in China, and currently only has a very stable breeding population in Xishuangbanna. Wang Ximin mentioned that the reason why he talked about the barn owl was because of an indissoluble relationship with it. When in the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Wang Ximin was walking in the garden one day, and suddenly heard a cry from the sky, the sound was very close to the barn owl and the grass owl, but the grass owl was yellow, and the bird was white, so it was a barn owl, and later Wang Ximin found that there was a pair of barn owl in the botanical garden, and also found that they had a breeding nest. Wang Ximin said that there is a very famous cartoon in the United States called "Owl Kingdom: Guardian Legend", the protagonist of this cartoon is the barn owl, all the owls that appear in the film are owls that exist in North America, such as snow owls and Ulin owls, and the main villain in the film is a snow owl.
The grey crane mentioned in "Bird Song Season" is a relatively widely distributed crane in China. Globally, there are 15 species of cranes, including 9 in China. What are some of the easiest places to see cranes in China? Wang Ximin recommended several places on the spot, such as Poyang Lake in Jiangxi, where you can see several cranes at a time, and Dongting Lake in Hunan, which has white-headed cranes and gray cranes. In addition, the black-necked crane is a highland crane that breeds on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and overwinters on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Here, Wang Ximin encouraged ordinary people to go wild and look at birds and go outdoors to appreciate the beauty of nature.
Illustration on the inside page of Birdsong Season: An Chronology of birds in Britain. On the left are large and green finches, and on the right are black water chickens, bone-top chickens and spoonbills.
At the event site, Wang Ximin also shared the legendary stories of several bird watching enthusiasts. During World War II, the British birdwatcher John Buxton was unfortunately captured by the Germans and put in a concentration camp, where he found three birdwatchers like him and formed a bird watching group to observe the Eurasian red-tailed plover in the concentration camp. After the end of World War II, he returned to England and wrote a very detailed book, "The Eurasian Red-tailed Plover", and the other three later achieved very good success in bird watching and bird protection, and this moving story is also recorded in the book "Birdsong Season". During the prevention and control of the new crown epidemic, a group of bird watching enthusiasts in Wuhan watched birds on their balconies, observed and recorded 50 species of wild birds, and collected and published them. In Wang Ximin's view, these are all stories triggered by birds, "No matter what kind of environment life is in, as long as you love it, you can always do something different." ”
Editor 丨 Shen Chan
Proofreading 丨 Wang Xin