From gilded cages and nests on high

It was as though Yan Jun had been confined to a bird cage, feeling absolutely frustrated as he remained isolated at home when COVID-19 broke out early last year.

The strange thing is that normally a bird cage might be a place of choice for Yan, in his 50s-as long as a few birds were sharing his confinement. For he is chairman of the Wuhan Bird Watching Association, which initiated a program of observing birds in and around major rivers, lakes, forests, farmlands and greenbelts across the city a little more than five years ago.

The purpose was to study the distribution and movement of bird species.

However, the pandemic put a halt to that three-and-a-half year effort.

"The monitoring needs to be conducted for at least 10 years to produce data that can truly reflect the changes of the endemic birds," Yan says.

In addition to observations ceasing, most members not only became terribly bored during the lockdown but also became anxious about this project that had become so dear to them. That was when Yan came up with this genial idea: home confinement did not mean bird watching needed to be off the agenda, because members could treat their homes as something akin to a bird's nest high up in a tree and from there observe and report on any birds they spotted around their homes.

"They had tons of time on their hands and nowhere to go," Yan says.

"I thought it might help them tide over the time at home while picking up some of what we were not doing."