SIBERIAN RUBYTHROAT (Luscinia calliope) is a migrant through Beijing and mid- to late-September is the peak time. This morning there were three – two adult males and a female – in just one small patch of scrub at Miyun Reservoir. One of the males was uncharacteristically showy and I took the opportunity to film him. Towards the end of the video he is even singing (although the microphone facility on my iPhone isn’t quite up to the standard of the video).
Definitely a species I dreamt of finding on my original home patch of Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk…
last week my colleague found 1 place in heibei with more than 200 captured ruby throat and other species….it’s crazy
Hi Drew. That is so sad! Where in Hebei? Tangshan?
Yep those areas have hundreds years hunting history, this time was in Luannan which belongs to Tangshan. people put mist net in the rice field… check out Lei Ming’s Weichat, he posted several photos of nets and dead birds from there
I hope Lei Ming reported the locations to the forestry department and the media.. Desperately sad to see the lives of so many birds ended in this way.
problem is this is a million-rmb-per day business between the hunting place in Hebei and some other province and the market in Tianjin. Who dare makes the sound might get big trouble…. I heard they still trying to find a best way to figure this out, but the birds will suffering another terrible migration 🙁
Getting local media to cover the issue would be a good start… It is illegal to trap wild birds without a permit, so covering the story in the media should be acceptable to the authorities. If the precise location of the nets could be found, and that information passed to the forestry department, it would be hard for them not to act if the media was watching.