A race strictly for the birds

Final count

After a successful first day, the pace at which teams spotted birds slowed. Forty-eight hours into the race, the number of birds heard or spotted was 194 and by April 24 it just crept over 200.

After the competition ended, the participants and judges had no time to rest. In a ballroom at the hotel, the judges began the final count of the teams' efforts.

They called out members of one team and questioned them about "suspicious species" on their list of claimed sightings. There were no images or audio recordings to support some of their claimed sightings, which were only backed by the team members' descriptions of the birds. After hearing the team's defence of their sightings, the judges decided to rule out some of the records as the descriptions of the birds were inaccurate.

The overall judging went on till midnight.

The final number of bird sightings was 204, including three species under the State's first-grade protection－Carbot's tragopan, Elliot's pheasant and the yellow-breasted bunting－and 30 species under second-grade protection.

The competition added 44 species to the Matoushan reserve's checklist of bird species. A team from Jiangxi won the race, with 136 confirmed sightings. Carbot's tragopan, an endangered pheasant found only in southern and southeastern China, was voted the top bird sighting.

Zhong said the final tally was "surprisingly better" than most of bird races held by the Rosefinch Society in other parts of the country. "It's only lower than that in Yijiang (Yunnan province) and even better than those in Sichuan (province) and Guangxi (Zhuang autonomous region)," Zhong said.

Cheng Songlin, an avian expert from the Jiangxi Mount Wuyi National Nature Reserve and a race judge said, "It proves that a bird race can be an option for a bird survey."

On the way to the Nanchang Airport, Zhong was busy replying to WeChat messages. Another bird race is scheduled for the second week of next month in Jiangsu province and a city in Sichuan planning an event wants Zhong and her colleagues to visit to help with the planning.

"Before another race, I can have a 10-day break in Beijing," Zhong said.