Links and advice

F.Y.I. I own and manage Taiwan Ecotours. For bird tours see here.


Taiwan - main islands. Jinmen and Matsu not visible.

News!
There will be a 30-hour Birdathon held in the southern Taiwan counties of Yunlin, Chaiyi and Tainan on November 24th and 25th, 2012. A great chance to mop up most (or all) the endemics and many great waders. Foreign teams very welcome. More details here soon, in the meantime see here.

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Taiwan Bird Race. April 13th and 14th.  Over. See winning team's results here. A great event - excellent weather, stunning birds, well orgainized.

One of Taiwan’s best birding destinations, Dasyueshan (aka Anmashan) Forest Recreation Area, will hold a bird race on April 13th and 14th 2012.


Located in central Taiwan, the race will cover an area from 300 to 3000 meters elevation. Excellent tropical, subtropical, temperate, and frigid forest.

A great destination for species such as: Mikado Pheasant, Swinhoe's Pheasant, Yellow Tit, Eurasian Nutcracker, Island Thrush, White-eared Sibia, Taiwan Partridge, Green-backed Tit, Vivid Niltava, Rufous-crowned Laughinghrush, Black-necklaced Scimitar-Babbler, Taiwan Scimitar-Babbler, Collared Finchbill, Taiwan Barbet, Formosan Whistling-Thrush, Rusty Laughingthrush, Taiwan Yuhina, Vinaceous Rosefinch and many more!

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The official 2012 Taiwan Bird Checklist (pdf). English version.
ROC (Taiwan!) Wild Bird Society http://bird.org.tw/ (useful - if you read Chinese...)
Yilan WB Soc http://wildbird.e-land.gov.tw/wildbird/index.htm (also very useful for bird alerts - in Chinese.)
Nature Campus. Great nature discussions etc http://nc.kl.edu.tw/bbs/index.php (in Chinese)
Taipei Wild Bird Society http://www.wbst.org.tw/english/wbst_en.html


Oriental Bird Club. http://www.orientalbirdclub.org/
A birder's view on Huben dam http://antihushandam.blogspot.com/
Invasive species from the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Center. Click on Chinese names for more.


Taiwan Ecotourism Association http://www.ecotour.org.tw/ (in Chinese at the moment)
Wild at Heart Association. http://en.wildatheart.org.tw/
Biodiversity Research Center Academia Sinica http://biodiv.sinica.edu.tw/en2007/
Traffic http://www.traffic.org/
Society of Wilderness http://www.sow.org.tw/eng/index.do?id=1
SWAN http://www.swan.org.tw/eng/index.htm
Birdlife Intl. http://www.birdlife.org/


Birds are a visible indicator of many habitat issues. Please note, at the heart of this blog is a desire to encourage sustainable conservation. While trying to be honest and informative, I do not publish any (not already public) information that could bring inappropriate disturbance.

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Books.

For most, Mark Brazil's Birds of East Asia does the job.


Many excellent bird books available at BooksfromTaiwan.com and local bird societies. Three recommendations to start with:

Birdwatching in Taiwan. A well written practical guide to birdwatching around the country. In English.

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The 3 large volumes of the Chinese-language version of The Avifauna of Taiwan is now available as zipped pdf downloads from the Forestry Bureau at http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=52844&ctNode=200&mp=10

This is the climax of an enormous project by Taiwan’s top ornithologists at  Academia Sinica and the Forestry Bureau to detail Taiwan’s avifauna. These are image scans of the books  - the text is not search-able. Primarily in Chinese, but various elements will be useful to non-Chinese readers.

Each of these 6 links lead to 5 pdf files.
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/08181646671.zip
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/081817104071.zip
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/091015405771.zip
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/081817291471.zip
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/081817362071.zip
http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/public/Attachment/091015391871.zip