From gilded cages and nests on high

Some of the club members live very high up in buildings, which made it difficult to zoom in on small birds on the ground. Some have small windows that confine the peripheral view.

Yan himself also went to great lengths to watch birds.

Before the pandemic his habit had been to watch birds at a lake about 1 kilometer away from where he lives.

"I missed that place very much," he says.

He then tried various places near windows and on his balcony to explore the best angle to see the birds.

To his joy, he found the ideal place in his bedroom window, where he mounted a telescope and looked through the gap between the tall buildings and a low house in the distance. It provided a good view of the lake.

"I had lived here for almost four years and never thought of watching birds at the lake from home," he says. Yan says he spent two to three hours a day watching birds from different windows of his apartment.

In these difficult, frustrating times, watching birds turned out to be great diversion therapy for him and the other members.

"What's great about bird watching is that it can calm your mind just when you're at your worst," Yan says.

Yan is a financial investor, which makes one feel tense most of the time, he says, but once he watches birds, all his worries slip to the back of his mind.

"Most of us live fast-paced lives and face great pressures, but once we return to normal living after having indulged in nature and come back, it turns out that things we worry so much about are really not that important at all.

"I guess you could say bird watching has restored my mental peace and made me whole again."