华尔街时报都报道观鸟了

华尔街时报都报道观鸟了

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122115338586124101.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

Simba 2008-9-14 21:04

贴上来

Birders Flock East

Asia's hundreds of rarely seen bird species attract extreme enthusiasts

By STEVE MOLLMAN

SPECIAL TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

September 12, 2008; Page W1

UBUD, Bali -- "The sunbird is on the nest! Ooh! The sunbird is on the nest!" I heard someone call from up ahead on the trail. At 9 a.m. on a Sunday, I was late for my first bird-watching tour. I'd been jogging for 10 minutes to catch up.

Millions of birders -- including extremists who travel the globe with binoculars and a roster of species to spot -- would have envied me. Asia is home not only to hundreds of rarely seen birds, from the orange-breasted laughingthrush of Vietnam to the newly discovered Togian white-eye of Indonesia, but also to a booming tourism industry. There are now airports where birders want to go, airlines to carry them there and places to stay when they arrive. The hobby has even spawned a small industry of local bird guides.

There are more than 3,000 bird species in Asia, many of them endemic, meaning they occur naturally nowhere else. Consider the many islands of Southeast Asia. "Due to isolation, unique species could have evolved there," says Navjot S. Sodhi, a professor at the National University of Singapore. The upshot? A high rate of endemics, such as the purple-bearded bee-eater, with green wings and a purple chest, which is found only on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Some 30% of the species on Sulawesi are endemic, Prof. Sodhi says.

For birding enthusiasts, "Asia truly is a new frontier," says Rick Wright, managing director of Wings, a Tucson, Ariz., organizer of international birding trips. Many Asian birds "were for decades inaccessible to Western tourists," he says. Now, Asia's improving travel infrastructure is bringing birders and other tourists closer than ever to species that were once seldom spotted. But the quality of birding won't be this good forever, experts warn. As civilization encroaches, the bird population will gradually decline, dying or relocating to more remote places.

Until then, birders are seizing upon easy access and plentiful birds. Birders in Asia tend to be Westerners, although the pastime is catching on among Asians. Bird-watching clubs and societies have cropped up in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Hanoi.

In the U.S., birding is big business. A 2001 survey by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimated that 46 million Americans spent $32 billion a year on bird-watching travel and gear, creating 860,000 U.S. jobs. Taiwan and the Philippines recently began promoting bird-watching to tourists. But birding in Asia still has a way to go before it reaches the mainstream popularity of birding in North America.

With sites to visit from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Japan, birders in Asia can see a staggering variety of species. James Eaton, a 26-year-old enthusiast who helps run the British company Birdtour Asia, says all of his 2008 trips are fully booked. Most travelers pay $2,000 to $5,000 for two to three weeks in places such as Cambodia, the Philippines or Indonesian islands such as Sulawesi, Sumatra and Halmahera.

And then there's India. "Everywhere you go, there's birds," Mr. Eaton says. Even in the center of Delhi, he says, he finds species including eagles and wild green parakeets.

Aasheesh Pittie, a 47-year-old businessman in Hyderabad, India, often takes half- or full-day birding trips with family or friends and twice a year goes out of town for up to two weeks. On an excursion to the district of Kadapa, in southeastern India, he scored what would be a high point for almost any birder -- a Jerdon's courser, a nocturnal bird found nowhere else in the world. Population estimates for this critically endangered species, which was long considered extinct, currently range as low as a few dozen.

For purists, birding requires more than a fine pair of binoculars and a good field guide. The most extreme birders, or "twitchers," are so obsessed that they think nothing of spending thousands of dollars to pursue one or two exotic species for "the list," the running tally of species they have spotted. A top "lister" may go to more than 50 countries over a lifetime of birding, notching 8,000-plus species out of the roughly 10,000 on earth. Most excursions are tests of devotion: With birds usually most active at sunrise, serious birders will be up and settled into their viewing perch before dawn. After that comes as many as 12 hours in the bush, silently scanning for plumage and listening for a particular call.

Henk Hendriks calls that a vacation. The 56-year-old professor from the Netherlands has been bird-watching since walks with his father in his early teens. Today, he spends two to three months a year birding in Africa, the Americas and Asia -- excursions that can easily cost $8,500 each. The payoff: his list is 6,070 species long. "Asia has always been a bit special," he says. The birds there are "colorful, exciting and rare."

In March, during a four-week, $4,600-plus trip to the Philippines, Mr. Hendriks was often bird-watching from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m., with short breaks for meals. On one leg of the trip, local guides organized tents, food and porters for a five-day hike into Luzon's Sierra Madre mountains in search of the endemic whiskered pitta. Birders consider the tiny, hard-to-spot ground-dweller a jewel of the forest floor. "I had great views of it," Mr. Hendriks says. "I know of birders who visited the area three times without seeing it."

For birders, the thrill is the get. On the same trip, after hours at a viewing point on Mount Kitanglad on Mindanao island, Mr. Hendriks had another thrill: a great Philippine eagle, one of largest and least-spotted birds in the world, with a flying squirrel gripped in its talons.

Subaraj Rajathurai is an Asian bird specialist in Singapore with 15 years of experience as a guide. He often knows exactly where in Southeast Asia to find particular species; clients typically come to him with specific birds in mind. Mr. Rajathurai won't say what he charges, but longtime birders say such "super guides" can cost $200 or more a day.

I got my first taste of bird-watching's allure in Bali. My guide, Ni Wayan Sumadi, was a restaurant worker until about 15 years ago, when her cousin's husband asked her to help with his bird tours. Now she is an experienced local guide charging about $33 a person for a half-day tour. The tour I took with her was a pleasant stroll with bird and butterfly sightings along the way.

I accompanied two couples, including a pair of Australians who were serious birders and another couple who'd just recently started. At one point, while trailing behind, I missed a streaked weaver, a tiny brown bird with light stripes and a funky yellow Mohawk that everyone else saw and cooed over. I felt an unexpected pang of regret.

But I had my moment a week later on Borneo, at the Kota Kinabalu Wetland Centre. Committed birders would probably have headed to Mount Kinabalu. But the Centre, not far from the city center, is suitable for birders with mild obsessions. As I went along the boardwalk in the preserve's 60 acres of mangrove forest, a large white bird suddenly swept, breathtakingly, across my field of vision in a graceful arc and disappeared behind some trees. Later, I would figure out it was a great egret. Minutes later, following a harsh croak, a dark purplish-grey bird with a wingspan of nearly five feet lifted itself laboriously out of a stand of ferns about 20 yards ahead of me. It was a large purple heron, a species found in Asia as well as in Africa and Europe. I felt awed by its power, size and elegance and to my surprise, the word "wow" escaped my lips.

希望以后会介绍中国的情况吧。

Simba 2008-9-30 23:02

此刻华尔街某些地区大概也是门可罗雀，真得可以（也有时间）观鸟啦.....

搞金融的朋友来诉苦.....