Well, we made it. We’ve been in China for a week now, and it simultaneously feels like we just got here and we’ve been here forever. So far, the field season has been a whirlwind of food, buses, taxis, hotels, and, of course, barn swallows. We began our work in Haikou, the main city on the island of Hainan, off China’s far southern coast. Our primary collaborator in China, Dr. Wei Liang, is a professor at Hainan Normal University, and has helped us organize the logistics for this trip. He and his students study interactions between cuckoos and swallows, and they offered to take us to their study sites on Hainan to capture birds. Hainan’s tropical climate means that barn swallows breed early there, so it worked out perfectly for Hainan to be the first stop on our trip.
Caroline and I arrived in Haikou in the evening, and were greeted at the airport by Liu Yu and a wave of tropical humidity. We hauled our gear into a taxi and headed for downtown Haikou, where Dr. Liang had booked us a hotel room near his university. The island city of Haikou turned out to be a metropolis of nearly 4 million people, with modern highrises, neon lights, and ocean front resorts.
After settling in our comfortable hotel- a nice change from previous field experience- Dr. Liang took us for an excellent meal at the street stalls near his university. In China in general, and the tropical cities in particular, small restaurants line the streets and food stalls, tables and chairs crowd sidewalks and street corners, allowing diners to eat outside and try snacks from multiple stalls. Dr. Liang ordered us an amazing array of local dishes: grilled fish on skewers, lamb kebabs, garlic oysters, fried cuttlefish, coconut soup, fresh coconut water (straight from the coconuts)- the meal was an excellent cure for jet lag.
After settling in our comfortable hotel- a nice change from previous field experience- Dr. Liang took us for an excellent meal at the street stalls near his university. In China in general, and the tropical cities in particular, small restaurants line the streets and food stalls, tables and chairs crowd sidewalks and street corners, allowing diners to eat outside and try snacks from multiple stalls. Dr. Liang ordered us an amazing array of local dishes: grilled fish on skewers, lamb kebabs, garlic oysters, fried cuttlefish, coconut soup, fresh coconut water (straight from the coconuts)- the meal was an excellent cure for jet lag.
The next morning, we climbed into a van Dr. Liang rented for us and set off to look for barn swallows. He had previously done research in a park in the interior of the island, and knew of a village nearby where swallows nested and the villagers would allow us to catch them. Barn swallows are a sign of good luck in China, so getting permission to catch swallows nesting in people’s houses is not always easy.
The village was five-hour drive away, so we got a nice tour of the Hainan countryside en route. Our first impressions in Haikou were confirmed as we drove- everything in China is big, and getting bigger. Construction cranes were everywhere, and huge apartment complexes and multi-story houses were mushrooming along the sides of the modern highway. Even as we wound our way up twisty roads and deep into the jungle-y mountains of central Hainan, the road was freshly paved and small villages had running water, and new concrete houses sat amid small fields and flocks of chickens and ducks. We arrived at last in the small village of Qingjie, home to maybe a hundred or so people and surrounded by picturesque jungle and rice paddies. Most importantly, barn swallows were swooping overhead.
The village was five-hour drive away, so we got a nice tour of the Hainan countryside en route. Our first impressions in Haikou were confirmed as we drove- everything in China is big, and getting bigger. Construction cranes were everywhere, and huge apartment complexes and multi-story houses were mushrooming along the sides of the modern highway. Even as we wound our way up twisty roads and deep into the jungle-y mountains of central Hainan, the road was freshly paved and small villages had running water, and new concrete houses sat amid small fields and flocks of chickens and ducks. We arrived at last in the small village of Qingjie, home to maybe a hundred or so people and surrounded by picturesque jungle and rice paddies. Most importantly, barn swallows were swooping overhead.
We found only three active nests in the village- we were told that the old houses were being replaced with new ones, and people didn’t like the messy swallows nesting in their nice new houses (this has been a common refrain in China). The nests we did find were all in the roofs of covered walkways, meaning there were too many exits to catch birds during the day- we had to wait for them to go to sleep and catch them at night.
Our hosts in the village treated us to another delicious meal and some pretty horrifying homemade liquor while we waited for dark. Finally, around 8pm, Caroline, Liu Yu, students Hu and Huang, and I set off to catch the birds. We ultimately managed 4 adults: one escaped through a gap in the net, and one male wasn’t sleeping on his nest. Not a stellar number, but not a bad effort for our first attempt at night banding! Surprisingly, the birds looked quite similar to the ones we found last year in eastern Russia- it will be very exciting to see how genetically similar they are to Russian birds
We left Qingjie the next day, and made our way back to the city, unfortunately not finding any birds on the way. We needed 15 or 20 birds from Hainan, so Hu and Huang next took us to one of their sites closer to Haikou. We stayed in what they referred to as a “just a town,” but seemed to be a city about the size of Denver. There were nests in the old part of town, and Hu also knew of a village nearby with swallows. This urban village was quite different than Qingjie, with new housing blocks, a park, and a police station (and no chickens). We arrived in the evening, and a friendly police officer escorted us as we caught sleeping birds from stairwells and over people’s front doors. We refined our nighttime netting techniques, and caught 11 birds, with no escapees- success! The first couple birds drew big crowds of onlookers, but everyone eventually grew tired of us and left- except for the police officer, who stayed til the end and gave us a lift back to our hotel.
We concluded our netting on Hainan with the old neighborhood in town, where the birds nested in stairwells and were feeding chicks. This made it easy to catch them during the day, and we caught 6 in about two hours while drawing minimal attention to ourselves. This brought our Hainan total to 21, and meant it was time to move on. We took the bus back to Haikou, first stopping for an unfortunate meal at KFC (we think Hu was worried we might be homesick for American food- we weren’t). Then it was farewell to island living and on to the neon extravaganza that is the mainland city of Nanning…
-Liz
-Liz