Fifty-eight-year-old Fang Qiaoran, or her preferred social media name Fangcao, has been traveling around China almost non-stop, across different cities and provinces. Two days ago, she said she was in Yunnan Province in southwest China, and the next thing you know, she could be in Gansu Province in northwest China.

For the last four years, Fang has been taking her camera and long lens across the country in seek of birds. The white dots in the map show her footprints in the year 2020, when many people were deterred from venturing out by the pandemic.

Just three days ago, Fang was in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

"Disappointed but also lucky," that's how she described her two-day bird-watching trip there.

Two days, two cities. The tight schedule from Feb 27-28 might have overwhelmed others, but not efficient bird watchers like her. In the end, she was able to see 45 bird species, including some very rare ones in the country.

To understand what the number means, one has to consider that for ordinary people without a trained set of skills in the delicate art of bird watching, the presence of birds would largely go unnoticed. Mostly because these agile flyers are very vigilant in the wild as their survival depends on how good they are at hiding.

Yet for Fang, 45 is far from enough to make her complacent. 

"I was only five minutes late, otherwise, I could have seen some slender-billed gulls," she exclaimed.

"Our timing is not the best. The migratory birds we saw are less compared with other years both in terms of diversity and quantity," she recalled, adding that some migratory birds have already left northward, and the cloudy weather could have also played a role.

Before starting her trip, the shutterbug had a clear goal in mind: ducks and gulls. With five major rivers, Deyang City has become a large wintering ground for these migrators. Four species have caught her special attention: Baer's pochards, slender-billed gull, black-legged kittiwakes, and little gulls.

Day 1 was marked by disappointment as she was able only to capture one Baer's pochard among her four targets.

But she was rewarded by the sight of some tree birds.

Day 2, she met a surprise: A red-necked grebe, an aquatic bird whose population has been declining because of habitat loss. The bird, under second-class state protection, has put on their breeding plumage to welcome the coming spring. That completed Fang's personal records of all five grebe species living in China.

The trip was organized by a birdwatching association based in Fangcao's hometown. 

According to her, similar organizations in different cities of the country, especially in southern China's Shenzhen City where she lives, are attracting more and more people, even primary school students.

"I know people who fall in love with bird watching because of their kids," she said.

For herself, "hobby, knowledge, hope and friendship" is what the retiree has already got from the activity.

This time as usual, she listed all the bird species she observed on the trip and updated her birdwatching journal, before heading to her next station, southern China's Hainan island, looking for grass owls.

Here are more birds she photographed during the Sichuan trip:

More from the Contributor:

Critically endangered birds forage at sunset on S China beach

Bird lover captures bird endemic to southern China's Hainan island

Bird lover captures strange green magpie in Shenzhen City

(All photos taken by Fang Qiaoran)

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