Birds, Birds, and more Birds: Birdwatching in Taiwan

Lately Charlie and I have been travelling around Hsinchu City district and all of Taiwan to find birds. This has been something I didn't imagine myself becoming interested in, but now I really love spotting them and looking through the binoculars at some cool new bird.

The first thing is that Charlie has always loved animals, so this discovery of birdwatching was not new, but the competitiveness of it has increased drastically. We started with a birding documentary, then downloaded the Cornell Labs Bird Apps, yes, plural, there are two apps for birdwatching. One to help you identify them and one to record them and get on leaderboard lists.

This happened right as Charlie's family came to visit us. Instead of visiting Taiwanese tourist hotspots, we went to more parks, greenery, and forests. Which is a different kind of tourism that I also love.

It was really a fun time, and I will post a blog about my trip to Kenting later...

First, I don't care that much about birds that much, well, let me revise, I didn't care about birds that much. But now I can identify birds while Im walking to school and outside. It seems I can't turn my eyes off once they have been opened to birdwatching. I originally thought I would just help Charlie spot them on our bird walks, but now everything is birds. The bird above on the stairs is an Oriental Magpie, a huge black, blue, and white bird that I spotted on my way to class.

One thing I really enjoy about this new hobby is that it gets Charlie and me exploring new areas. We went to the marsh along the coast. There is a beautiful 17-kilometer stretch of bike path that we walked on, in part, to spot spoonbills, herons, sandpipers, and egrets. We even found wildlife photographers along the route taking photos with HUGE lenses; they actually helped us identify one of the birds we saw in the distance, and the crappy binoculars I got us to start out with just weren't good enough. We have now invested in better birdwatching binoculars, since someone gets grumpy when he can see the bird but not well enough to identify it... hahaha

 The Green Grass Lake was the best place to find new birds! We walked along the path around the lake, which was full of other people. I love that all these outdoor areas in Taiwan have bathrooms, water bottle fillers, and are very well paved. IT makes it so accessible and friendly to be out for longer.

On the path around the lake, there were thick forests where we saw many Grey Treepies (below) very clearly and a Taiwan Blue Magpie that may be the most beautiful bird I've seen with my eyes. We also spotted some small birds that are much harder to see in thick brush.

Overall, this is probably the best and most fun hobby I've adopted in the past year. The dopamine from finding a new bird and finally seeing one that you have been hearing the call for for days is so satisfying. It's a new thing, in this digital age, people search for instant gratification, and it dulls our happiness. I think Birdwatching is an amazing way to rebalance our gratification scale. It takes work, and you have to keep going to the same places; you have to sit quietly. and still might not see the one bird you have gone to the place to see. But once you do, oh wow, it feels nice.

Chinese Language Corner

Hiking ->. 遠足Yuǎnzú

Birdwatching ->. 賞鳥 Shǎng niǎo