Birdwatching

choi

Banyan | Twitchers Without Borders; Even as their nations peck at each other, birdwatchers co-operate. Economist, Sept 26, 2020.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2 ... watchers-co-operate
https://indifact.com/2020/09/24/ ... rs-co-operate-asia/

Note:
(a) About the title.
(i) twitcher (n):
"1: a person or thing that twitches  <Turns out I'm a big twitcher, too [while sleeping in bed], and this may explain why the dog has stopped sleeping in our bed.
2: British  informal   a birdwatcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds
https://www.lexico.com/definition/twitcher
(ii) Lexico.com, the online Oxford dictionary, lists "cooperate (also co-operate)."

(b)
(i) East Asian Australasian Flyway. Birdlife International, undated
https://www.birdlife.org/sites/d ... lasia_Factsheet.pdf

BirdLife International is an NGO (1922- ; based in Cambridge, England).
(ii)
(A) Australasia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasia
(map)
(B) Australasia
https://www.lexico.com/definition/australasia
(pronunciation)

(c) "In Hong Kong, where Banyan [columnist for the column Banyan 榕树] resides, wetlands and mudflats at Mai Po are of global importance -- a crucial pitstop along the flyway. Fion Cheung of the WWF, which works to protect Mai Po, says it is filling up with early arrivals: Eurasian curlews, with long curved bills, and dumpy broad-billed sandpipers [called 闊嘴鷸 in Hong Kong]."  
(i) Mai Po Marshes  米埔濕地
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mai_Po_Marshes   
(is a nature reserve located in San Tin [新田 neighborhood] near Yuen Long [元朗區] in Hong Kong)
(ii) Fion Cheung of the WWF
(A) WWF stands for World Wide Fund for Nature (1951- ; based in Switzerland).
(B) WWF Hong Kong  世界自然基金會 香港分會
(C) Fion CHEUNG Ka Wing   張嘉穎 (title: 助理經理; female)

What does fion mean? Well * * *

French-English dictionary:
* fion (noun masculine): "slang  arse"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fion

The English noun "arse" (derived from Old English noun masculine ærs or ears butt, not to be confused with Old English noun neuter ēare ear) is defined as "buttocks" or "a stupid person" in "South Africa, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand," according to en.wiktionary.com. In North America, it is spelled "ass," that Lexico.com says is "mid 19th century variant of arse."

Perhaps the following pair of words are intended.
Irish-English dictionary: * fionn (adjective masculine)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fionn
means fair (skin or hair) or white. Fionn may be male or female given name but Fionna is female.
(iii) curlew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curlew
(a genus of nine species; The type species is the Eurasian curlew (Numenius arquata) )

(d) "Illegal hunters put up mist nets along China's coast."
(i) mist net
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist_net
("Mist nets have shelves created by horizontally strung lines that create a loose, baggy pocket. When a bird or bat hits the net, it falls into this pocket, where it becomes tangled")
(ii) For the meaning of the preceding quotation, see
Paolo Agnelli, Adriano Martinoli, Samilo Russo, Dino Scaravelli & Piero Genovesi (eds), Guidelines for Bat Monitoring: Methods for the Study and Conservation of bats in Italy. Ministero Dell'Ambiente e Della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare Direzione per la Protezione della Natura & Istituto Nazionale per la Fauna Selvatica, 2006, at page 115
file:///C:/Users/WPL/Downloads/moam.info_guidelines-for-bat-monitoring_5cab89d6097c47263e8b456c.pdf
("Figure 4.2 - How to erect a mistnet: a - net set across a stream; b - net set up along a stream bank; c - close-up of a mistnet pocket (drawings by R Chirichella)" )

(e) "In one senseless project [completed in 2010. See (i) right below] in South Korea, 400 square kilometres of tidal estuary have been enclosed at Saemangeum. Among many species affected, the spoon-billed sandpiper [勺嘴鷸 in HOng Kong] now faces extinction. When two 'spoonies' turned up at Mai Po this year, says Ms Cheung, birdwatchers outnumbered them many times over."
(i) Saemangeum  新萬金  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saemangeum
("The estuary was originally called "Mangeum" (萬金). This name was probably formed from combining the first character of 'Mangyeong' and that of 'Gimje' ")
(ii) Gimje (Si)   金堤(市)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimje
(map)
Has a neighborhood called Mangyeong Eup 萬頃邑. Yo may enter this in Google map to locate it.
(iii) spoon-billed sandpiper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon-billed_sandpiper

(f) "In 1937 an ornithologist shot 21 specimens, stuffing them in a museum drawer in Beijing. Never seen after that, the Chinese crested tern was presumed extinct. But in 2000 Taiwanese ornithologists rediscovered a few birds on disputed islets [馬祖列島] just off the Chinese coast. * * * Allen Lyu [副秘書長 呂翊維] of the CWBF"
(i) "Chinese Wild Bird Federation (CWBF) [中華民國野鳥學會 (中華鳥會 for short)].
(ii) Chinese crested tern 黑嘴端鳳頭燕鷗 in both Taiwan and China (which uses simplified Chinese, of course).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_crested_tern
(photo)

(g) "Four years ago New Zealand and China signed a treaty to protect the habitat of the bar-tailed godwit, which, Maori tradition holds, carries the spirits of their forebears back and forth from their ancestral homeland [which we now know is Taiwan]."
(i) bar-tailed godwit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-tailed_godwit
(section 1 Name: ("Its English name [bar-tailed] is taken from the black-and-white barred tail and upper tail coverts in this species. * * * Māori [word for the bird is] kūaka")
(ii) One will appreciate "bar-tailed" if he looks at this bird in flight
(A) Don Stap, Flight Of The Kuaka: A Godwit Makes The Longest Nonstop Flight Ever Recorded. All About Birds, Oct 15, 2009
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/ne ... ight-ever-recorded/
("I am in * * * New Zealand's North Island. * * * New Zealand is the principal wintering site for the baueri race of the Bar-tailed Godwit, a subspecies [referring to the race; cross-reference in the Wiki page for this bird for maps at the bottom] that breeds in Alaska. The bird’s annual journey to these southern latitudes caught the attention of South Sea islanders long ago. About 950 AD. a group of Polynesians left their homeland, heading out across the South Pacific in seagoing canoes for a land they believed existed somewhere to the south. Their only guide was the flight path of an elegant bird they knew as the kuaka—the Bar-tailed Godwit—which they had observed flying south each year at the same time. Because the kuaka was not a seabird, they reasoned it must go to some land as yet undiscovered.  hey were right. The explorers eventually saw a cloud on the horizon that stretched for miles, hanging, they correctly guessed, above a large land mass. So goes a Maori legend describing how their ancestors discovered New Zealand. They were the first humans to set foot on the island they called Aotearoa—'land of the long, white cloud' ")

View the photo at the right upper corner of the Web page.
(B) Satellite Tracking 2008; Join us as we follow the amazing journeys of the Bar-tailed Godwit. Global Flyway Network, undated ("GFN Satellite Tag Report 2008")
globalflywaynetwork.com.au/our-work/satellite-tracking

. whose second photo is a bird about to take flight, with its tail spreading out.
(C) Bar-Tailed Godwit  Limosa lapponica
www.birdfieldguide.co.uk/Bar-Tailed_Godwit.html
(photo caption: "Thanks to https;//www.flikr.com/photos/60749713@N04/(Modified)   Note the plain wings with no wing bars and the barred tail, important points of identification")
(D) Eric Wagner, The Bar-tailed Godwit: A Marathoner Who Makes It Look Easy. National Audubon Society, Aug 14, 2015
https://www.audubon.org/news/the-bar-tailed-godwit
(a sketch, as opposed to a photo)
(iii) In (g)(i) above, the Wiki quotation mentions "coverts."
(A) covert (n; etymology): "ornithology  a feather covering the base of a main flight or tail feather of a bird."
https://www.lexico.com/definition/covert
(B) covert feather
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_feather
("is one of a set of feathers, called coverts * * * which, as the name implies, cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail" / section 2 Tail: "The 'tail' of a peacock is made of very elongated uppertail coverts")

Last thing first: "The 'tail' of a peacock is made of very elongated uppertail coverts."  If you search images.google.com with (peacock tail rear) -- no quotation marks, where the rear stands for rear view -- you will immediately understand -- and see the real tail underneath the uppertail covers.

Here is WING coverts, in top illustration of
Josh Birdsall, Bird Wings. Pinterest, April 2020
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/478296422900849304/

flight feather
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_feather
(section 1 Remiges: section 1.2 Primaries: connected to manus [Latin for hand], section 1.2 Secondaries: connected to ulna (Latin for the bigger of the two bones in the forearm of a human, and bird, too)