Black-faced spoonbill 'rides' typhoon to Taiwan for winter migration

Taipei, Nov. 11 (CNA) A black-faced spoonbill that was rehabilitated in Taiwan in January returned to the country last month by "hitching a ride" on Typhoon Krathon, which propelled it across the Taiwan Strait at speeds reaching 85 kilometers per hour, conservationists said.

In an interview on Sunday, Tainan Wild Bird Society Executive Director Kuo Tung-hui (郭東輝) told CNA that the bird, dubbed "N83," was found in January suffering from botulism-induced paralysis in a fish pond in Tainan's Annan District.

After being treated by Tzu Chi Animal Hospital and experts from the Tainan Bird Society, N83 was fitted with a tracking device and released with several other rehabilitated spoonbills on Jan. 26, Kuo said.

N83 was then monitored via satellite by the Bird Ecology Lab at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, which since 2001 has worked with a local renewable energy company to study how spoonbill migration is affected by wind farms.

GPS data from the lab showed that N83 flew to the coast of China on March 21, before continuing north and arriving in the spoonbills' breeding habitat in Korea on April 10.

It flew south again as winter approached, arriving on the southeast coast of China on Sept. 29.

In a recent Facebook post, the Bird Ecology Lab documented how N83 had returned to Taiwan on Oct. 3 by "hitching a ride" on winds from Typhoon Krathon.

Krathon, a rare October typhoon, initially moved west through the Bashi Channel separating Taiwan and the Philippines, before turning around to approach Kaohsiung from the southwest.

N83, which was crossing the Taiwan Strait at the time, was propelled along by the typhoon's winds to speeds reaching 85 kph as it made its way toward Kaohsiung, the bird lab said.

Since N83 returned to Taiwan, local birders have reported sightings of it in Chiayi in early October and at the Qigu Dingshan Wetlands in Tainan on Oct. 30.

It has even been given a nickname, Tái Pí (颱琵), based on an amalgamation of the Chinese words for "typhoon" and "spoonbill."

According to the Taiwan Wild Bird Society, every year over half the global population of around 7,000 black-faced spoonbills winters in Taiwan, mainly in wetland habitats in the country's southwest.