Huxiang Natural Calendar丨The most beautiful bird in China?
Wednesday April 21, 2021 Valley Rain 2nd
I have searched for "tigers" many times in Shahe.
This tiger is not a tiger, but a blue-throated hummingbird, one of the most beautiful birds in China.
The name bee tiger is so cool, it catches bees, dragonflies, butterflies and other insects for a living, for insects such as bees, it is a terrible existence like a tiger.
The first to find the blue-throated bee tiger in Changsha Shahe was the middle-aged Pan Xuebing in literature and art. It was 2009, and there were still very few people shooting birds in Hunan, Wangcheng District or Wangcheng County, and there were highway toll stations in Shahe.
We like to look for birds on the banks of the Xiang River. Following the direction of Pan Xuebing's guidance, above a loofah vegetable field, two brightly colored birds stood on the wire.
The blue-throated hummingbird is a summer migratory bird and its nest should also be nearby. We were mostly at work and didn't have a lot of time to look for them. Song Chatian, who was traveling with him, patted his chest: "This task is entrusted to me!"
Since then, the old Song has been wandering in the landscape of the Shahe River.
On the back hill of the Hunan Grain Wholesale Center Market, blue-throated bee tigers peck out burrows with their slender beaks on the sand, laying eggs, hatching and brooding.
The bird was particularly strange, but whenever anyone wandered in front of the cave, it landed far on the branches of the tree and refused to go home. Fearing that it would affect its childbearing, we did not dare to come close.
Deng Weihong bought a camouflage tent, set it up 20 meters away from the cave, and went inside to wait.
It was sweltering heat, and we were sweating profusely in the shade of distant trees, drinking drinks and snacking lunches.
There was no movement in the tent. Old Song was worried about Deng Weihong's heat stroke and went to visit. Deng Weihong drilled out with a look of excitement: "Photographed! Got a shot!" At that time, Deng Weihong was still a little Deng, young and strong, with thick skin and thick flesh, and was not invaded by poison.
The following summer, I came here again, but I didn't see the bee tiger come home for a long time. Look closely with a telescope and moss grow outside the mouth of the cave.
There was still a bee tiger flying in the sky, and following it, I finally found its new home a few hundred meters away. It seems that bee tigers like to live in new houses.
Later, bulldozers turned it into a wide avenue, Anshun Road. But for the bee tiger, it is difficult to be smooth. The bee tiger became a demolition household and moved to a place more than 2 kilometers northeast.
For many years, in order not to disturb this beautiful little bird, as a journalist, I never reported it in the media.
In 2015, after someone photographed a blue-throated bee tiger in Hengdong County, after much publicity, Hengdong began to charge forward photographers. Under the guidance of the "high people", the villagers of Shahe also learned the bird business.
In recent years, the team of bird watching and bird shooting has grown unprecedentedly, and more and more people have come to Shahe to shoot bee tigers.
Shahe searched for tigers, and found surprises and happiness, as well as apologies and worries.
Appreciate the beauty, please far away.
【Small business card】
Blue-throated bee tiger (scientific name: merops viridis), medium-sized bird, body length 26-28 cm. The head to the top of the back is chestnut red or chocolate, the eyeliner is black, the waist and tail are blue, the wings are blue, the waist and long tail are light blue, and the central tail feathers are elongated into a needle shape, which is obviously protruding from the outside. The chin throat is blue, the rest of the lower body and wings are green. The mouth is slender and pointed, black, and slightly curved downwards. Characterized by blue throat, it is of great ornamental value and is known as "the most beautiful bird in China".
It prefers open fields and woodlands in low-lying areas near the sea, and flocks of birds gather in sandy areas during the breeding season. The nominate subspecies (m.v. viridis) is an uncommon bird that breeds in summer in Hubei and south of the Yangtze River in China. On Hainan Island for resident birds. It is not a very common summer migratory bird in Hunan, but there are field observation records of this species in many places in northern Hunan, central Hunan Province, Eastern Xiangdong, Western Hunan and Southern Hunan Province.
At the beginning of February this year, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced the newly adjusted "List of Wild Animals under National Key Protection", and the blue-throated bee tiger was adjusted to a national second-level key protected wild animal.
Photo/Zhang Jingming Design/Chen Chunyuan Think Tank/Zhang Zhiqiang Coordinator/Zhou Yuegui
[Editor-in-charge: Peng Yahui]
[Source: Hunan Daily· New Hunan Client]