Photo: Shanghai middle school students bird watching on campus Courtesy of the school (the same below)
Last week was the 40th Shanghai Bird Love Week, and a group of high school students brought a special gift to their beloved winged elves. Through nearly 6 years of continuous recording and updating, the students of the Shanghai Middle School Bird Watching Club have compiled a "Guide to Campus Bird Watching", which records 94 species of birds found on campus.
Photo: The first edition of the Bird Watching Guide in 2017, covered with common kingfishers, was documented with 44 species of birds
This hundreds of pages of bird watching manual from text writing, picture shooting, sorting and typesetting to proofreading and revision are completed by students independently, not only has an introduction to bird species, but also statistically analyzes the frequency of each bird in different months in the form of frequency maps, and is equipped with the main bird watching locations, bird watching time, bird watching skills and other popular science knowledge on the campus.
"If you see a group of people on campus every morning and after school carrying long guns and short cannons and holding binoculars, that's them." The instructor of the Bird Watching Club, Zeng Qiongyu, graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a doctorate in biology, is a post-90s generation, and his classmates are also teachers and friends. She confessed that she was brought into the world of bird watching by the students, not only surprised by the school's biodiversity, but also touched by the enthusiasm and persistence of everyone.
Repeatedly won the laurel of bird watching
Pictured: Students go bird watching in a botanical garden
The green coverage rate is 42%, there are ponds, lawns, trees and other environments, adjacent to the Shanghai Botanical Garden... The green campus and unique geographical location provide students with good bird watching conditions.
Whether it is the ordinary kingfisher, Dai Sheng, white wagtail, gray magpie, yellow-browed willow warbler, brown-backed Burrow and other campus regulars, or the red falcon and gray-faced eagle that occasionally skim over the campus, as well as the rare species in Shanghai such as the Kamchatka willow warbler, the spotted woodpecker, the dark gray crane, the purple shou belt and the chestnut bunting, they cannot escape the fire eyes of campus birdwatchers. On Global Big Day, Shangzhong Bird Watching Society ranked first in China for observing 101 species of birds in a single day, and in the Shanghai Citizens Bird Watching Competition, Shangzhong Bird Watching Society also won the first prize.
Pictured: Copper blue wren found at Gecko Point
Pictured: A small group of black-tailed wax-billed finches standing on a carp sculpture in Zhongxing Lake drinking water
They shared their findings with teachers and students through the WeChat public account (SHSbirding). Gray magpies with blue-gray wings are numerous and loud, often in groups of three or five, and stop loudly on the windowsill of the classroom to chat, which is particularly easy to attract attention. After the popular science of the students of the bird watching club, the gray magpie has won the title of "school bird" in shangzhong and has also become the unique campus memory of the students. In the 2021 New Year of the Ox, the Bird Watching Society sent blessings with a "cow-backed heron" on the WeChat public account.
Pictured: On eBird, Shanghai Middle School has become a hot spot for bird watching
The current head of the Bird Watching Club, Cheng Siyuan and Shi Xuan, both 12th grade students in the International Department of The Upper Middle School, have been admitted to the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and emory University in the United States. Their bird watching report cards are equally impressive – the two men recorded 578 and 320 bird species, respectively. They led the campus bird watching club to upload bird watching records in the database "eBird" created by cornell university ornithology laboratory, turning "Shanghai Middle School" into a hot spot for bird watching in Shanghai. Someone accidentally found the figure of a bird of prey in the sky, and the next day, Cheng Siyuan got up early in the morning to go to the school to wait, and sure enough, in his words, the dense birds of prey "rushed" in the air like a river. By identifying the number of winged fingers and the ratio of head to body, he identified that it was a large army of gray-faced eagles.
Pictured: Cheng Siyuan answered to help netizens identify various creatures nearly 10,000 times
Read people and nature
In the eyes of the students, the discovery of each bird is a story of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.
Pictured: Kamchatka willow warbler found at Gecko Point
The patches of cedar forests are an iconic sight in Shangzhong, but in the eyes of birdwatchers, this is not the best place for bird watching due to the relatively single plant species. A small forest on the west side of the school's auditorium is infested with geckos all year round, which is known as "gecko horn", but it has become a sacred place for bird watching on campus. Because there are tall trees that can attract a variety of willow warblers, wax-billed finches and burrows, as well as low shrubs that attract birds that are accustomed to foraging on the ground, such as different species of plovers and plovers. Dense shrubs can also help birds resist stray cat attacks. Every year during the migration season, birds such as the Far Eastern tree warbler choose to use the "Gecko Horn" as a temporary stopover. In October last year, a member of the club found a red-throated grebe, which is very rare in Shanghai, and spent a short time with his classmates for 2 days, and it left the campus and flew south.
Pictured: The dredging of Nianci Lake attracts grey wagtails to take a walk
Pictured: The unclosed faucet dripped a small pond on the lawn, becoming a paradise for the red-tailed singing plover
"A small human move will affect the survival state of birds." This is the most exclamation of the students in the process of bird watching. They noticed that whenever the Shanghai Botanical Garden held a flower show and the flow of people surged, many birds would choose to come to the Upper Middle School Campus across the road to find a quiet place, and many new bird species were discovered at that time. During the long flight of the birds, they need to drink water and clean their feathers. However, there are not many bodies of water in the city. The red-tailed singing plover is a particularly shy bird, and the first time students found it was on a wide lawn. It turned out that a faucet for watering the lawn was not turned off, creating a small pond. However, the book-sized pond is a good place for birds to drink water and bathe. There are two lakes on the upper middle school campus, Nianci Lake and Zhongxing Lake. When The Lake was dredged, it revealed a mud pond for just a few days, unexpectedly, it immediately attracted rare guests such as herons and sandpipers to dig for food at the bottom of the lake; by zhongxing Lake, a beautiful ordinary kingfisher lived all year round, with a bright blue wing on the cover of the campus bird watching guide. One year, the bottom of the lake was dredged and the kingfisher disappeared for a long time. Just when everyone was worried that they would never see it again, they did not expect that when the lake was refilled, the kingfisher still returned to its familiar home.
Conduct "bird collision" research
Pictured: Teachers and students found injured spear-spotted locust warblers on campus
With the increase of urban green space in Shanghai, more and more birds are willing to come to Shanghai as guests, and they often bring surprises to bird lovers. Woodpeckers used to be found in Southeast Asia, but since May 2019, students have found that they often come to the campus to hang out. Students also suggested that when designing the city's parkland, don't forget the needs of birds, for example, they need some trees that can attract insects, such as locust trees, willow trees and other native tree species; the level of vegetation should also be rich, large areas of lawn are beautiful, but they need a patchwork of habitats, such as bushes and reeds, which is a good place for many birds to hide; some birds like to build nests on the embankment, but, for safety reasons, many embankments are now hardened and covered with cement. It also forced the birds to find another place to live.
In the bustling city, the threat to birds is still everywhere. "Bird Bump" is one of them. Last year, a classmate found an injured spear-spotted locust warbler in the parking lot, and did not know how to be good, so he asked the students of the bird watching club for help. The students of the bird watching club judged that 80% of them were knocked unconscious by the glass of the teaching building. So they found the carton, put on rubber gloves, put the birds in the carton, and put water on the side. In the afternoon, the spear-spotted locust warbler regained its strength and re-flapped its wings and flew into the blue sky.
"In recent years, we have also saved the pale-footed willow warbler, the northern gray wren and the gray magpie, and we specially wrote an article on the public account to tell the students how to help an injured bird." Shi Xuan said. They also sent a reminder on the public account, "Tips: Don't chase the birds in order to see them clearly!" Some of them are on their way and are exhausted, so your interruptions can be life-threatening. Seeing the frequent occurrence of "bird collisions" around them and in the news, recently, members of the Bird Watching Club joined a citizen science research project jointly initiated by Duke Kunshan University and the Shanghai Museum of Natural History, selecting the school's Longmen Building, Xianmiantang and Zhentao Building as observation points to carry out urban "bird collision" research.
Cultivate the hobby of "unplugging"
Pictured: After a storm at the end of August, the crested eagle stands on a telephone pole outside the Auditorium
Under the leadership of his parents, Shi Xuan has been watching birds with the teachers of the Shanghai Wild Bird Society since elementary school, and when he watched it, he naturally became addicted and ran all over the country. Shi Xuan said that after watching the birds for a long time, he felt that the birds in different regions also reflected the local cultural atmosphere. He loves black and white magpies with subtle oriental beauty, while the birds in South America are brightly colored and as passionate as the people there.
Pictured: A heron flew hurriedly over the school football field
Cheng Siyuan grew up in Beijing, loves to play with mud, has an inexplicable closeness to nature, and saw the black-headed turtle near the Temple of Heaven for the first time, which made him feel particularly magical, and gradually developed a strong interest in these small creatures that are easily overlooked. In addition to this, he is also an insect master, and for a while, walking around the campus, he would carry an observation bottle with him. The ants that are exactly the same in the eyes of ordinary people are very different in his eyes. On iNaturalist, a global communication platform for nature enthusiasts, Cheng Siyuan has helped netizens identify various creatures, including birds, nearly 10,000 times.
After getting the Cambridge acceptance letter, one of the most important things Cheng Siyuan did was to pay attention to the Cambridge Bird Watching Society on social networks, he was very excited, and he could find a fellow in a foreign country. The birds sing a thousand times, each with different sounds, can they identify their species by sound? With the help of his father, Cheng Siyuan began to write small programs. Now, the sound of more than a dozen common birds such as the bald-headed grebe, the yellow-waisted willow warbler, and the yellow-browed willow warbler can already be recognized by the system. Zeng Qiongyu introduced that in addition to Cheng Siyuan, other members also carried out scientific exploration on different topics, such as investigating the relationship between bird habitat and transit time in Shanghai.
Interestingly, although both Cheng Siyuan and Shi Xuan wanted to pursue research in the field of biology or biochemistry, the experience of bird watching was not the main focus in writing university application papers. For them, a hobby is a hobby. Leading everyone to write the "Campus Bird Watching Guide" is to hope that more people can look up like them and find that there is beauty around them, not out of utilitarianism.
"What other activity can combine art, science, and sports?" They have to learn to photograph; they have to walk, run, and sometimes even crawl on the ground for long periods of time to track birds; they have to learn to observe and constantly accept challenges. Zeng Qiongyu said.
Cheng Siyuan and Shi Xuan told reporters that the friends of the bird watching community have one more thing in common, that is, they have little interest in video games, after all, the world around them is already exciting enough.
【Related Links】
According to the relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Science and Technology Art Education Center, since 2001, Shanghai has carried out a series of practical activities of ecological civilization education among teenagers, guiding teenagers to start from practice, starting from the things around them, and establishing the concept of biodiversity and ecological civilization by carrying out practical activities such as plant, insect and bird identification in schools, communities or green spaces, and truly consciously maintaining the ecological environment and practicing ecological civilization.
A house swallow can prey on tens of thousands of small insects in a summer; A long-eared owl can prey on a large number of rats in a summer, effectively protecting people's food; vultures, birds and crows have the habit of eating carrion, which plays a great role in the elemental reduction and energy flow of the ecological environment; in addition, birds are also indispensable in spreading plant seeds... Birds are the window to understand the ecological civilization, teenagers can identify birds, write bird nature notes, bird photography, campus bird surveys and other activities to let teenagers go deep into the birds and the nature of survival, observe their characteristics, activities and habits.
"Birds are the spirits of nature, is the most basic science education resources around us, you can use birds to score the environment, when you see more and more birds, it means that the surrounding ecological environment is getting better and better." The person in charge said.
Lu Zihua, chief reporter of Xinmin Evening News