Mt. Kuanyin.

Beneath the trees the shadows dance and the drone of the cicadas waxes and wanes. In the treetops, the guttural call of a Muller's barbet sounds again and again, like a monk beating endlessly on a "wooden fish," while a black bulbul chatters raucously. Down on the ground under the trees, two people are acting very strangely. Here, far from the madding crowd, instead of enjoying this rare scene they are busy with a tape-measure, measuring the girth and height of the trees. Are they holding an arboreal beauty contest?

Buzzards' buddies:

Almost everyone from Taipei has been to nearby Mt. Kuanyin, walking up the clear paths to the summit and then eating the vegetarian food served at Lingyun Zen Temple; but Lin Wen-hung of the Wild Bird Society has been up Mt. Kuanyin more times than anyone else, and more than he himself can count. Although he hasn't tasted the fine fare at the temple, he has seen things which others haven't.

In the spring of 1991, on the summit of Mt. Kuanyin, at the edge of a metropolis of six million people and only two kilometers from the mouth of the Tamshui River, he counted many hundreds of birds of prey passing by on their migrations. The next year he actually stayed on the mountain for around 100 days and recorded sightings of close to 10,000 birds, including over 6000 grey-faced buzzards, more than 2000 Chinese sparrowhawks, and many other species. If you tell Taipei residents of this, it sounds like a tale from the Arabian Nights-- who can believe that in the Taipei area, with its palls of choking smog, one could still see such a sight?

Even many experienced old birdwatchers were astonished. Lin Wen-hung says that from looking at maps he judged that birds returning northwards from Kenting only had a few high spots to choose from as places to rest before setting off over the ocean. The only highish areas in Northern Taiwan are the Yangming Mountain range and Mt. Kuan-yin. The Yangming range runs east to west, but the migrating birds' route takes them from south to north. If they went via the Yangming range, then following the ridges would take them on an up-and-down path, and the flocks would inevitably become scattered; but if they go via Mt. Kuanyin, which stands by the sea and has a north-south orientation, they can follow the grain of the mountains, expending less effort and keeping the flocks together for safety.

Between the blue sky and the green earth:

Lin Wen-hung is in charge of raptor research and surveying at the Wild Bird Society. After graduating from the Information Technology Department at National Chiao Tung University, he worked at Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology for 4 1/2 years. "I like computing very much, but I don't like the computer industry, it's too rational, there's not enough emotional content." Working at the Wild Bird Society he has to draw up and design his own research plans and organize survey teams, so there is plenty of space to develop his talents--a space as big as the sky the eagles fly in; the only constraints are the limits of his own creativity. Of course, he loves being outdoors too, and so nowadays the computer is simply a tool which helps him to organize data.

Today for instance, his "workplace" is a 40° slope in the virgin forest, where you have to plant your feet firmly against the trunks of trees just to stay standing up. In an area staked out twenty meters around an acacia richii, he and his assistant are identifying every tree and measuring its distance and direction from the central tree.

It's all because a pair of crested serpent eagles had chosen this tree to build their love-nest, in which they raised two eaglets. Their hard work over, the birds have long since flown, and their abandoned nest, battered by the rain and wind, is now barely recognizable. In order to understand the environment the eagles chose in which to live and reproduce, Lin Wen-hung has brought along an assistant in the shape of a young bird-lover: Fang Yun-ju, a master's degree student at Taiwan University's forestry department. Together they are busily surveying and recording the tree species.

You lead, I'll follow:

Raptor species occupy large territories: typically any mountain might have just one accipiter circling above it. Compared with ordinary small birds, birds of prey have larger bodies, a greater wingspan and are stronger flyers. A single beautiful glide can carry them from one mountain to the next, from the virgin forest to a plantation. They choose the seclusion of steep and rugged terrain; Taiwan's rarest species, the Hodgson's hawk eagle and the Indian black eagle, live only in areas over 1000 meters above sea level. Many bird lovers who would like to see them don't even know where to start looking. Of all bird species, the birds of prey are among the hardest to "watch" ; often one can only catch a glimpse of their silhouette flying high up in the sky.

How did Lin Wen-hung find the crested serpent eagles' nest on this steep mountainside? It was like this: when he sees eagles flying through the sky, for want of a pair of wings of his own Lin Wen-hung follows along on the ground. When he follows them to the foot of a mountain, he watches carefully to see where they dive into the forest. Then he sets off in that direction, intrepidly plunging straight ahead "no matter how tough the going is." If his luck is in, he finds the position of the nest, and then he can go up the mountain at any time and record their activity from a distance. Then when the birds finally abandon the nest, he goes in to make a detailed survey of the nesting site.

Do you want to see some birds of prey? You won't find a better guide than Lin Wen-hung. July is the time when the chances of seeing an eagle are at their lowest, for the breeding season, when all creatures are at their most active, is over, birds are molting, and the migrating raptors which pass this way have not yet arrived. But Lin Wen-hung says, "It's not hard to see a hundred raptors in a day, just half an hour by car from Taipei." And in the migration season, you could even see several hundred.

Eagle Gorge, Raptor Valley:

Lin Wen-hung says that the difference between watching eagles or other birds of prey and watching other birds is that raptors like to seek out their prey or watch over their territories from a high place. For instance, the crested serpent eagle typically appears over broad open areas or above the peak of a mountain facing down a valley, and flocks of eagles most often fly towards such a point too. Around ten o'clock in the morning, when the sun is climbing high and the thermal air currents are strong, the eagle comes out to patrol its mountaintop territory. Birdwatchers can seek out broad valleys and follow the ridgeline against the sky to see if they can discern that special black speck in the sky.

In the Central Mountain Range, the Wild Bird Society has already found a "Black Eagle Gorge" where more than ten rare Indian black eagles are active, and a "Raptor Valley." When Fang Yun-ju had just graduated from university, looking through her field glasses in the mountains near the Northern Cross-Island Highway she saw an Indian black eagle sparring with a Hodgson's hawk eagle, while at the same time another Indian black was chasing two crows. She found watching the birds with the older members of the society so rewarding that she is considering making the Indian black eagle the subject of her master's research project.

"If you want to watch birds of prey, you can save a lot of effort if you pick the right season, a suitable place, and the best time of day, and if you understand something of their habits," says Lin Wen-hung, making it all sound easy.

Lin Wen-hung, who owns nearly a hundred books about birds of prey, says: "I just spend more time out of doors looking for eagles than other people do." Because of this he has more chances of "running into" raptors. He says that in South Africa there is a scientist who has studied black eagles for more than twenty years. The male and female black eagle are completely identical in their external physical features, but through many years of observation, she became able to distinguish the male and female of a pair of black eagles flying together, from their attitude and position. But what impresses Lin Wen-hung most is that in the book which this scientist wrote from her long experience, "the illustrations are all based on data gathered over twenty years." One day, Lin Wen-hung hopes to produce such a solid achievement himself.

The proof of the pudding:

Four years ago, he took on the Kenting Raptor Survey at the request of Kenting National Park. For the last three or four years, with the help of many birdwatchers, he has more or less defined the areas within Taiwan inhabited by six species of resident birds, and has made preliminary estimates of the numbers of a few migratory species such as the grey-faced buzzard and the Chinese sparrowhawk. Although the numbers of birds of prey are declining, "some raptor species are not as rare as people thought," he says. Perhaps the problem is that people spend too much time cooped up in their offices.

In the past a favorite of birdwatchers was the "National Day Bird," the grey-faced buzzard, which would arrive punctually in Kenting around 10 October. But once when Lin Wen-hung arrived in Kenting in spring, when nobody goes to watch eagles, early one morning he saw pair after pair of grey-faced buzzards arriving across the surface of the sea to settle together in a mass. In his experience, even in the suburbs of large cities, every low hill usually has at least one or two raptor nests, and the birds also show up in artificially created forestry plantations. Even outside the breeding season, on Mt. Chungcheng one can see eight or nine crested serpent eagles, known to experienced birdwatchers as "the last heroes of the skies." Some raptor species do not require an especially dense forest, "but you must remember that you won't see a healthy eagle perching on an electricity pylon." You don't find eagles where there are no trees, says Lin.

Once you've found the birds, the next job is harder: to investigate each stage in their natural history, from how they find food and grow to how they breed and die. Each stage would be enough to write a thesis.

Everyone come and "chase" the birds:

Birdwatching has been encouraged in Kenting for over ten years. But before Lin Wen-hung began the Kenting survey, no survey records had been kept of birds of prey in Kenting, so although people knew not to miss the National Day Bird in October, if one asked them how many there were, they could only guess or describe in exaggerated terms. Lin Wen-hung believes that it would be sufficient to take on a student for a summer job, to make a daily estimate of the birds' numbers on the five or six days when the grey-faced buzzard passes through; this is something anyone could do, it does not require any great talent. It could even be done by birdwatchers keeping a few extra records and observations when out watching birds. Over time they could build up data about the environment in a particular location, and this would also give people a better understanding of changes in the surroundings in which they live.

Although the number of birdwatchers is growing by the day, and some people have begun more detailed research of raptors, there is still a need to raise people's understanding of birds, and for more people to take part in research and surveys. Many specialist ornithological magazines overseas are full of articles by amateur ornithologists. Lin Wen-hung "invites" more people to "follow" the birds in the sky, as he does. For to keep up with the kings of flight - the raptors - it will take more than just him and a few others running along the ground.

[Picture Caption]

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On Mt.Kuanyin, Lin Wen-hung of the Wild Bird Society's Raptor Information Center records the tree species in the crested serpent eagle's habitat.

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The nest is empty, silence has returned to the forest, and there are no birds to watch. But for researchers silence is golden, and Lin Wen-hung leads a group of birdwatchers in a detailed survey.