Crouching for hours and armed with an array of cameras, dedicated birdwatchers seek to capture the fleeting beauty of a small bird. Birdwatching is soaring in popularity among young people in China, who frequent parks and wetlands, wielding telephoto lenses, patiently awaiting their moment to get that perfect shot.

Popular lifestyle and e-commerce platform RedNote's Birdwatching Trend Report, released on April 27, revealed the extent of this phenomenon. Searches for "birdwatching" on the platform surged by 19 times year on year in May. Content creation is also booming, with birdwatching-related posts in the past year amounting to 1.2 times the total from the previous decade. Notably, the average age of these content creators has shifted dramatically. While users around the age of 35 dominated just two years ago, those around 25 now lead the charge.

Birdwatching emerged relatively late in China compared to other countries, with 1996 widely considered its beginning in China. In that year, Beijing-based environmental NGOs Friends of Nature and Green Earth Volunteers began to promote and organize birdwatching initiatives.

A survey published by the China Birdwatching Association last May revealed the rapid growth of this activity. The number of birdwatchers in China surged from 140,000 in 2018 to 340,000 in 2023.

Avian enthusiasm

Liu Shanyong, a student at the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics in Jiangxi Province, is a birdwatching enthusiast who finds solace and wonder in the natural world. He believes birdwatching offers young people an immersive escape, allowing them to discover inner peace amid the melodies of birdsong and the gentle glow of the morning light.

What makes birdwatching so appealing, Liu explained to Xinhua News Agency, is its accessibility and inherent joy. While telephoto lenses are coveted, they're not essential for entry. Birdwatchers can begin by observing their feathered friends with a simple camera, binoculars or even the naked eye. Liu himself started with a basic, secondhand camera his family had gifted him.

But the true pleasure of birdwatching, Liu emphasized, extends beyond "getting the shot." It's rooted in the thrill of exploration and discovery. "Quickly searching for and finding targets in unpredictable environments brings me a sense of challenge and accomplishment," he said. He recounted one "magical" experience: One day, while casually mentioning the elusive silver pheasant to a friend, he encountered the rare bird in the forest. "Although I didn't get a photo, that feeling—that what you long for, you will eventually encounter—was truly extraordinary," he added.

Connecting with nature and finding inner peace are also motivations drawing young people to birdwatching.

"Birdwatching allows people to become one with nature and find peace within it. It makes me feel the beauty of life and the power of nature," Jiang Zhen, a young birdwatcher from Lanzhou, Gansu Province, told Xinhua.

Beyond a personal hobby, birdwatching is becoming a novel avenue for expanding social connections. Liu has found that sharing bird photos on social media has sparked his friends' interest. "A student studying in Moscow, Russia, often sends me photos of local birds, and a younger student occasionally takes photos of birds on campus with her phone and then sends them to me."

Tang Teng, Vice President of the Jiangxi Birdwatching Association, told Xinhua that birdwatching offers a relaxed social environment for young people with shared passions. Increasingly, enthusiasts are sharing their experiences and observations of intriguing bird behavior on social media, leading to the formation of numerous online communities.

The growing cohort of young birdwatchers also bodes well for conservation efforts. "The increase in young birdwatchers means that more people are paying attention to the survival of birds and environmental issues, which will bring more human and intellectual support to bird conservation efforts," Ban Dingying, President of the Yingjiang County Birdwatching Association in Yunnan Province, told Xinhua. He believes these young people can volunteer for bird monitoring and habitat protection, influence their peers, raise public awareness and foster a broader culture of caring for birds and safeguarding the environment.

A new tourism engine

China has some of the most spectacular birdlife to be found in the world. According to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, the country is home to over 1,500 bird species, or 13 percent of the global total. Among these, more than 800 are migratory, with four of the world's nine major migratory bird routes passing through China.

The China Bird Report 2023, published by the China Birdwatching Association, highlights Shanghai, Beijing, as well as Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, as the nation's most popular birdwatching destinations. These regions lie along major migratory bird routes, and feature a diverse range of wild bird populations. Benefiting from robust economies, they have a growing community eager to invest in birdwatching experiences.

This surge in birdwatching interest is prompting locations rich in avian life to promote tourism and generate income through organized activities. Tang pointed out that the primary beneficiaries are industries serving birdwatchers at these destinations, such as the food and beverage and accommodation sectors. Furthermore, these destinations are developing more and diverse tourism products, including birdwatching study tours, as well as distinctive bird-themed creative products. For example, Yancheng City in Jiangsu Province has created ecological tourism products like birdwatching competitions and photography training camps, thereby enriching the local supply of tourism offerings.

Yancheng serves as a vital stopover for the spoon-billed sandpiper, which migrates to the city's Tiaozini Wetland from Russia every August before departing for its Southeast Asian wintering grounds in late October.

Ban emphasized that birdwatching promotes the integration of tourism with education and agriculture. Birdwatching study tours cultivate participants' scientific observation skills, while immersive experiences in nature and rural life drive the development of unique agricultural tourism offerings.

Furthermore, "birdwatching fever" is enhancing the ecological and green image of local tourism. For instance, the Poyang Lake International Birdwatching Season in Jiangxi has successfully been held three times, attracting over 2 million visitors in 2023 alone and generating more than 500 million yuan ($69 million) in tourism revenue. This event has become a signature ecological tourism brand for Jiangxi, bolstering the local tourism reputation.

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

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