Hong Kong Shelters Avian Haven

Camouflaged in reeds and sedges, environmental workers quietly gaze upon a rare sight: dozens of black-faced spoonbills napping in the morning after feeding on fish and shrimp at dawn.

When the large white birds with black faces and feet wake up, they wade in shallow water or tideland, swinging their long, flat, spoon-shaped bills left and right as they look for another catch in one of the few remaining areas of Hong Kong untouched by development.

“The birds are so cute, and the sight is so spectacular and shocking, as if we were back in the primitive world--like ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” said Brian Ching, a local photographer who got to go along and watch the birds in Hong Kong’s Mai Po nature reserve.

Congestion and pollution are major problems in Hong Kong, but experts say the rural environment here remains more benign than neighboring parts of Asia, where many migrating birds encounter even more disruption from overbuilding, foul air and filthy water.

Thus the endangered black-faced spoonbills are increasingly finding Hong Kong a good place to stop in their annual migration south from the Korean Peninsula and parts of mainland China.

“Although the environmental pressure in Hong Kong is high, the birds are like refugees--they have nowhere to go except squeezing themselves into crowded places here,” said Ng Cho-nam, a conservationist and University of Hong Kong professor.

In nearby China, the birds can end up on the dinner table.

Gao Yu-ren, a Chinese researcher at South China Institute of Endangered Animals, cared in January for a black-faced spoonbill seized by police from a bird market in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province.

The immature bird, with a dark reddish-orange bill and black feathers on the outer edge of its wings, was kept in a tiny cage and priced at 200 yuan (U.S. $24.20) for anybody wanting a luxury dinner.

Gao kept the frightened bird for a few days, then released it.

“People here are looking for food from the wild because they say . . . birds raised with artificial feeds are not tasty,” Gao said.

In the Hong Kong nature reserve, officials spotted 252 black-faced spoonbills one day this season, compared with a high count of 164 last year.

The experts aren’t sure whether the surge in Hong Kong sightings --which equals more than a third of the estimated world population of just 700--is due to more birds surviving or the fact that they’re trying to avoid greater problems, man-made or natural, elsewhere.

The Mai Po Inner Deep Bay is considered an important wetland-- but like many waters around Hong Kong, it’s marred by pollution, much of it coming from the nearby Chinese industrial city of Shenzhen, Ng said.

It is also disturbed by frequent intrusions of illegal mainland Chinese fishermen, said Tsim Siu-tai, an official with the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

One black-faced spoonbill died early last year from swallowing a fishhook, the government said.

The birds are seeing their habitat vanish in mainland China--a pattern that has repeated itself across Asia for other migrating birds as humans developed large areas of Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

“The number of migrating birds has been decreasing, largely because of the decrease in swamps,” said Kim Jin-han, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Research in Seoul. “ . . . Much of our swamps has been destroyed by development.”

An interim report by Japan’s Environment Agency, released in March 1999, said birds summering in Japan, such as the Kentish plover and thick-billed shrike, are finding fewer places to live than they were during a 1978 survey.

The black-faced spoonbills spend their summers in breeding grounds on the Korean Peninsula and on Changshan Island in mainland China’s Liaoning Province. When they fly south, about two-thirds of them end up in Taiwan’s Tsengwen estuary, which is far from secure against human intrusion.

Liu Liang-li, a researcher for Taiwan’s Black-faced Spoonbill Conservation Assn., said the planned Pinnan Industrial Complex will pose a threat to the neighboring 692-acre prime roosting site on the island’s west coast.

Bird-watchers, too, pose problems. Every year, some 200,000 people visit the estuary, where there are no barriers to protect the birds from the cheering crowds.

“They are so scared and shy-- they have to fly frequently between the crowds on one side and the numerous fishermen on the other side,” Liu said. “We feel so embarrassed. They are supposed to be our guests.”