Taiwan kites (Milvus migrans formosanus), an endemic subspecies of the black kite (Milvus migrans), visit the harbor in greater numbers when the September winds begin to blow, honing their flying and foraging skills. Taiwan kites weigh very little, just 1.4 kilograms or so, but have a wingspan of 165 centimeters, which enables them to glide though the sky on the merest hint of breeze.
A record 46 kites gathered above the harbor on October 16, 2014, drawn by photographers tossing food to them. The “captain” of the harbor photographers spends some 300 days per year watching and photographing the kites over the harbor, but still shivers with excitement at the memory. “There were so many, your eyes couldn’t keep up.”
The kites also occasionally help themselves to the mullet that leap out of the harbor water.
He Yongshou, head of promotions for the Wild Bird Society of Keelung, often visits the plaza to watch the kites. “This is one of the best harbors in the world for observing kites up close.” As he speaks, one flits past, diving into the water to grab a bit of raw meat, then rising back into the sky to eat it.
In a city starved for contact with nature, the harbor kites are therapeutic.
But does their presence here mean their numbers are increasing?
Not necessarily. A survey taken in the fall and winter of 2014 found only three stable populations of the kites in all of Taiwan—one each in northern Taiwan, Chiayi, and the Kaohsiung–Pingtung area—totaling just 354 birds.
Since the start of 2015, Lin Huishan of the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan has recorded 426 kites, with the largest populations occurring in the areas around New Taipei City’s Feicui Reservoir (97 birds) and Pingtung County’s Sandimen Township (92 birds).
Black kites and eastern grass owls are both raptors that live in close proximity to humans. Sun Yuan-hsun, a professor with the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, estimates that Taiwan was once home to more than 10,000 Taiwan kites. He notes that Taiwanese children have played “the kite catches a chick” for generations, and that one of Taiwan’s drinking games has a move called “the kite stretches its wings.” Gao Qi, a Keelung native, remembers fishermen blast fishing from the beach at Waimushan during his childhood. “Hundreds of kites would swoop down for a meal the moment a fish broke the surface of the water.” Unfortunately, things have changed dramatically over the last 20-odd years. Even grass owls, which subsist on rodents, have become as rare as hens’ teeth.
Kites are seen frequently in Japan and India, which both have stable populations of the birds. Hong Kong occupies about the same amount of land as Taipei, but has a population of roughly 1,000 kites that sometimes nest in public parks. In Japan, the birds are known for stealing food from the hands of unwary pedestrians. In Taiwan, however, kites are rare enough to have earned a “rare and valuable” designation on the Council of Agriculture’s list of protected species. And for all that Keelung’s kites fly almost within reach, they don’t nest in the harbor area.
“When birds appear here, it’s more likely to be a result of habitat loss elsewhere than of growth in their population,” says Liang Chieh-te, a director of nature documentaries.
Shen Chen-chung, known as “Mr. Kite,” inaugurated his own kite population survey and tracking project in 1992. But for 20 years the project failed to identify any reasons for the species’ decline, beyond the loss of nesting areas.
But the discovery of 3,000 dead birds in 18 hectares of adzuki bean fields in Pingtung in 2013 led to a breakthrough. Shen’s successor on the project, Lin Huishan, investigated, and autopsies confirmed that agricultural chemicals were contributing to the kites’ decline in Taiwan. Specifically, the kites were being poisoned by their consumption of sparrows and red turtle doves with toxic grain in their stomachs.
The discovery added a dramatic twist to Shen’s understanding of the birds. It also explained why there were more kites in urban northern Taiwan than in the agrarian south.
While the Raptor Research Group’s count of 426 kites is the highest number recorded in 23 years, Sun Yuan-hsun cautions that RRG’s survey most likely counted populations that had previously been overlooked.
Kites are no longer part of everyday Taiwanese life, and few Taiwanese have really seen them. As a consequence, protecting them is going require us to think deeply about humanity’s relationship to the birds.
Shen distributed a booklet about kites at Keelung Harbor last year. He didn’t speak to the people to whom he gave copies. Instead, he let the booklet, Have You Really Seen the Taiwan Kite? speak for itself.
Director Liang Chieh-te’s documentary film Fly, Kite, Fly, which will screen in November, tells a Taiwan kite story unfamiliar to the birdwatchers at Keelung Harbor. Some 75 minutes in length, the film was drawn from 2,100 minutes of 16-millimeter footage shot over 23 years.
The film also tells Shen’s story.
Connecting with history
In 1991, Shen, then a 37-year-old biology teacher at what was then the Deh-Yu College of Nursing and Management, spotted a pair of Taiwan kites at Keelung Harbor.
The sight of a kite is unlikely to turn a person’s life around unless they are already prepared for a change. Shen was ready. Two years before encountering the kites, he’d begun cycling the perimeter of Taiwan, running marathons, and climbing mountains alone. Following a series of personal crises, by the end of 1990 he had also given up doing dissections, mounting specimens, and eating meat, and bid farewell to his air conditioner, TV, and refrigerator. “Humanity doesn’t own Nature. I wanted to learn to share the Earth with other living things.” The birds were simply the gateway to this return to Nature.
The next year, he started observing the kites in the Northeast Coast fishing village of Aodi, in every kind of weather. He became the first person in Taiwan to identify their nesting grounds, learned where they spent their nights, and came to understand their various calls. He also named each of the birds he watched.
In 1990, Liang Chieh-te was 25 years old and entering his fourth year as a field research assistant for Dr. Lucia Liu, an Academician with the Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center.
Liang grew up in rural Changhua and has been an avid birdwatcher since childhood. He learned observation and recording techniques when he joined the Taichung Bird Society (now the Wild Bird Association of Taiwan) in middle school, and went on to pick up photography as well. Liang prefers learning by himself in the field to studying in the classroom, and has gradually developed an impressive skillset, including an amazing aptitude for finding hidden nests.
Shen, meanwhile, was observing Taiwan kites from afar using binoculars and other non-intrusive techniques to take notes on many of their behaviors: flocking at dusk, playing stick-grabbing games, mating, building nests, laying eggs, teaching young kites to fly.... But then he witnessed something tragic: one of “his” birds getting its beak caught in a trap a hunter had placed in its nest.
He watched from a distance as the bird fought and struggled until it died. The bird’s mate left and returned 22 times during the ordeal, calling all the while.
When backhoes advanced into the kites’ Waimushan nesting grounds, all the birds he had been observing were injured or killed. “Did God send me here just to document the kites’ demise?” He was heartbroken, but his despair ignited a new fire within him. He quit the teaching post he had held for 12 years, and vowed to spend the next 20 years protecting the kites.
During that same time period, Liang was doing fieldwork for Liu. Friends recall him being awkward, sincere, diligent, and outstanding at his job: scaling tall trees on dark and windy nights to observe, catch and measure Ryukyu scops owls. For all that the owl survey was probably Liang’s most challenging assignment during his eight years as a research assistant, he still wanted to do more. So in his off hours he worked on the Dadu River Estuary Avian Banding Project, for which he personally banded more than 1,000 birds.
His incredible passion for birds sustained him.
Hoping to determine whether there were eggs in damaged nests and whether there were traps in other nests, Shen sought help from the Academia Sinica’s Dr. Liu. Their 1992 meeting led to Liang’s involvement with Shen’s kite project, and to his film work.
Soon after, Shen rocked the birding community with his publication of Notes on Nature. His birding mentor, author Liu Ka-shiang, was skeptical that a relative newcomer to birding could have acquired such fantastic observations of kites, come to know each bird he was observing, and described their behavior and relationships so vividly. He responded to the book’s release by personally visiting Waimushan with Liang in 1993. The visit confirmed that Shen “was another Konrad Lorenz.”
Liang matched Shen’s enthusiasm. Once he began observing and filming the kites, he started spending his days off with the birds, sometimes alone, other times with Shen. During his most active period, Liang would set out for his Waimushan observation post before dawn, finish up a “sunrise shift,” then head to his day job at the Academia Sinica.
Shen focused exclusively on kites, but Liang’s work kept him involved with a variety of birds. He has years of footage of Ryukyu scops owls, pheasant-tailed jacanas, black-faced spoonbills, crested serpent eagles, mountain hawk-eagles, and crested honey buzzards.
In 1995, Liu’s grueling work over the previous three years finally began to bear fruit when he completed shooting a 16-millimeter-film documentary on the life of a Ryukyu scops owl. Two years later, he premiered a documentary on the lives of crested serpent eagles and besras in Yangmingshan National Park at the Taipei Public Library. In 1999, he earned a Golden Horse Award nomination for Fairies on the Pond, a documentary about the birds resident in and around the water chestnut fields of Guantian, Tainan. The nomination was an affirmation of his ongoing transformation into the master of Taiwanese nature documentaries.
Liang has a variety of discoveries to his name, including being the first person to document the oriental plover, collared kingfisher, pine bunting, black-headed bunting, Lapland longspur, and red-footed falcon in Taiwan. But even with such achievements to his credit, Lin Wen-hung, a member of the Chinese Wild Bird Federation, remained convinced that Liang had still more discoveries ahead of him.
A real concern for Nature
Lin’s prediction turned out to be spot on. In 2000, the Lienchiang County Government hired Liang to shoot a documentary on a Matsu bird conservation area. He spent the first year of the project surveying the birds and other species in the area. “I told them you can’t do this sort of thing overnight. I asked for two years because you can’t shoot a good film without understanding the setting.” He began filming in the second year, and in the process discovered eight Chinese crested terns, which had been thought to perhaps be extinct, among more than 2,000 greater crested terns. His publication of the discovery amazed the birding community, both in Taiwan and abroad. Liang calls himself lucky, but his “luck” is the result of hard work and dedication.
Shen, meanwhile, continued to observe kites. He and Liang received funding from the Wild Bird Society to make observations in Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan, Nepal, and India. Shen went on to publish what amounted to a biography of a kite in three volumes over the period 1993–2004.
Liang has added an incomparable filmic dimension to Shen’s kite observations, often going to great lengths to do so. He had to lug his equipment all the way across a valley to capture footage of kites playing. If he didn’t get the shot on day one, he’d go back again on day two. And if he didn’t get what he was looking for on this expedition, he’d wait for the next. “Every shot was paid for in time and patience.”
Liang ended up spending a total of 23 years shooting his documentary on kites, Fly, Kite, Fly, largely at his own expense. It is his first nature film to win theatrical release.
To Liang, Fly, Kite, Fly isn’t just a film about kites; it also tells a human and environmental story. As Liu Ka-shiang has stated, it’s the story of a person determinedly engaging in a deep dialogue with kites, like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzees. When in Waimushan, Shen is a wingless kite and kite psychologist. How could he not be part of the kites’ story? Liang eventually persuaded Shen to appear on camera, and to allow him to film in his home.
The Raptor Center Lab at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, whose staff helped promote a crowdfunding campaign to support the film’s production, says the goal was to enable more people to see Liang’s film, so they might understand the Taiwan kite’s plight and support its preservation. It hopes viewers will make the leap from the birds’ problems to Taiwan’s own issues with food safety. In the lab’s view, Taiwan must address the latter for the kites to have a chance of surviving, and for us all to have a secure future.
This time, the people of Taiwan will truly see our kites.
Kite watchers have a certain instantly recognizable look and a tremendous enthusiasm for Nature. First from left is Liang Chieh-te; second from left, Shen Chen-chung.
Shen Chen-chung uses a broken-winged kite named Baby to introduce Taiwan kites to the public.
In this 1999 photo, Liang Chieh-te shoots a nature documentary on Kinmen using 16-millimeter film.
Lin Huishan proved that agricultural chemicals were behind the Taiwan kites’ declining numbers.
The Taiwan kite’s spotted back and patterned breast easily distinguish it from other raptors.
Is the array of manmade objects in this Taiwan kite’s nest comical, or just saddening?
Seeing a kite, you can’t help but think about protecting Taiwan’s ecosystem.
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