The World of Birds in Qinghai

Xing Zengyao

A city can be called a place of movements since it boasts streams of roaring automobiles and milling crowds. A place boasts a sense of magnificence and charm if it has birds taking wings and soaring in the sky and birds luxuriating in a lake.

The Bird Island on the Qinghai Lake is a world which fascinates me with its romance and movement. The Qinghai Lake is situated three hundred kilometers out of Xining, the capital seat of Chinas western Qinghai Province. The island, situated in the southwestern corner of the lake, is actually composed of two small islands. Cormorants and some other migratory birds arrive at the 0.8-km2 island to lay eggs and hatch baby birds from April through July every year. In the peak period of the season, the island can be home to as many as 100,000 winged creatures.

Come to the island at the right season and you can see the island is full of bird nests. Eggs are everywhere. Birds dance in the sky, hop on the ground and swim in the lake. They are a chorus singing loudly and melodiously against the backdrop of the blue sky. In bright sunshine, their feathers are rainbows.

On the northern tip of the island is a fence stretching around, protecting the island from the tip that touches the shore of the lake. It is said that the fence serves as a barrier against those who steal eggs from the bird habitats. The island has become a peninsula as the water level has kept dropping in recent years. The fence is a necessity. Otherwise birds would be endangered if eggs are stolen. We need birds flying in the sky and sharing woods with us. We dont want to find birds only in ancient poetry.□