Taiwan Today

Gray-faced buzzards, a rare species of migratory bird seen in Taiwan during spring and fall, have been found to travel more than 9,000 kilometers in their migration. A joint study conducted by the Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau, Academia Sinica and the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan recently released this finding after tracking the birds via satellite for eight months. The study provides important new information on the gray-faced buzzard’s migration routes, and has received serious attention from international raptor research institutes. The gray-faced buzzard (Butastur indicus) is commonly known as the “gray-faced eagle” or “south road eagle,” and in Taiwan is known to most people as the “national day bird.” Every spring and fall they pass through Taiwan in numbers ranging from 15,000 to 35,000. Kuan Li-hao, director of the Forestry Bureau’s Conservation Division, said although the gray-faced buzzard is classified as a rare and valuable species under the Wildlife Conservation Act, studies of world migratory birds have not clearly determined its migration routes, so the joint study was conducted to reveal their routes. Five birds, called “Cape No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5,” were fitted with tracking devices. The first three birds were released in Kenting in southern Taiwan in October 2008, and the last two in the central county of Changhua this spring. The tracking study found that Cape No. 1 flew from Kenting to Mindanao in the southernmost Philippines to winter. When it was ready to fly north again this March it was hampered by several days of strong northeast monsoon winds, but it fought its way across the sea and reached a small island off the coast of the mainland’s Guangdong Province, where it rested and regained strength before continuing its journey. In June it reached the Chinese-Russian border in northern Heilongjiang, where it turned south again, finally coming to rest near Changbaishan in Jilin Province. This spring Cape No.2 flew north from the Philippines back over Taiwan and north over the ocean. Cape No. 5 flew across the sea to Fujian in the mainland in mid-April, and in May both birds crossed the Yellow Sea from Shandong Province to the Korean peninsula, finally settling in North Korea. Unfortunately, the study lost track of birds Cape No. 3 and Cape No. 4. Lin Wen-horn, secretary-general of the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan said that the most likely reason is that the birds died in migration, but it is also possible that their tracking devices malfunctioned or fell off. Lin emphasized that the study shows that the large number of gray-faced buzzards that pass through Taiwan every year may come from the Chinese-North Korean border region. Their breeding grounds encompass Japan, Korea, China’s north and northeast and Russia. The small number of birds in this study cannot represent the total gray-faced buzzard population, he added, so he hopes that the public can donate funds for the study of more individual birds. (THN)