Colorful ibises walking in the shallow waters of lotus fields to feed. Xu Bao Rong Media reporter Zhou Jie correspondent Ma Haijun photo
In the early summer, everything grows, wheat seedlings spit out ears, fish are fat and shrimp are beautiful, and birds are also the season when food is most abundant. Since May 11, bird watcher Ma Haijun has been able to see the colored ibis, a national first-class protected animal, in a lotus field in Liuxin Town, Tongshan District, every day. The painted ibis was included in the Red List of World Endangered Species and was once declared extinct in China.
At about 9:00 a.m. on May 17, at the edge of a lotus field in Liuxin, the northern suburb of Liuxin, Ma Haijun set up a 60-fold telescope and soon found a painted ibis walking alone in the shallow waters of the lotus field. Tall feet, long pointed beaks, dark red feathers have a metallic luster, and under the high-powered telescope, the painted ibis's every move is clear. I saw it pacing leisurely, its eyes keenly fixed on the surface of the water, and from time to time it pecked into the water and accurately picked up a crayfish. The crayfish fell several times during the struggle, but was still clamped tightly by the long beak of the painted ibis. Suddenly, a waterfowl rushed over, and the painted ibis, frightened, flew away with a lobster.
Just the other day, the painted ibis had been flying with another companion. Ma Haijun speculated from experience that the two painted ibises may be a pair of partners, they have a baby, the couple has a clear division of labor, one incubates eggs at home, and the other goes out to forage. According to his observation, the painted ibises like to eat crayfish and loach the most.
Speaking of the discovery of the painted ibis, Ma Haijun, who has 6 years of bird watching experience, is still very excited. On the evening of May 10, he saw a photo of birds posted by a primary school teacher in the Xuzhou Bird Watching Enthusiast Exchange Group, two of which resembled painted ibises. I heard that the photo was taken in Liuxin's lotus field, and Ma Haijun rushed over the next morning. After three or four hours of walking back and forth between more than a dozen lotus fields, I finally found the figure of the colored ibis, and I was very surprised after confirming my identity. Bird watchers have heard about it, and a bird watcher in Beijing has also come to take pictures.
"The ecological environment of this lotus field is very good, and I have seen more than 20 kinds of birds in the past few days." Ma Haijun pointed to the birds that foraged in the shallow water, "Egrets, pond herons, cattleback herons, water pheasants, pheasants, small and various sandpipers." "Many birds are paired up and dragged with their mouths, and some of them make nests directly in the grass piled up by the lotus leaf stems in the water. And the principle of his bird watching is not to make any disturbances with the birds.
According to photos and videos taken by Ma Haijun, Zhou Hong, head of the Wildlife Protection Section of the Xuzhou Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Planning, confirmed that the two birds were colored ibises. She said the painted ibis is a nationally protected animal and has been included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2012. The already small number of painted ibises in China, combined with the disappearance of swamps and shrinking rivers and lakes, the habitat on which they depend, has led to a decline in their numbers, and the Red Book of Endangered Animals in China has declared that the painted ibises are extinct in China. In recent years, due to the improvement of the national ecological environment, traces of colored ibises have been found one after another. Their appearance in Xuzhou shows that the ecological environment of Xuzhou is getting better and better, and people and nature are becoming more and more harmonious.