Beijing, China Forestry Publishing House, 2002, 274 pp. in full color, 24 x 31 cm, hard cover and dust jacket, ISBN 7-5038-3087-5, good condition
irds are the friends of human being, who play a very important role in maintaining the stability of ecosystems and are a sensitive index of the healthful environment. People love birds with their colorful feathers, gentler and lightsome bodies, and dulcet tweets, which produce many idyllic pictures for our world. Chinese pay a tribute to nice recent life and longing the future with “birds talking and flowers sweet-smelling” and “oriole singing and swallow dancing” since ancient times.
China has a vast area, complex geographical landforms, diverse climates, rich vegetations, and many endemic and different species. Her biodiversity is the eighth in the world and the first in Northern Hemisphere. The rich natural geographical conditions form her diverse ecosystems, which provide different survival rooms for wildlife. China is rich in birds diversity and her various natural conditions have gestated many colorful and different birds, which is an excellent regions for birds researches and observations. According to the records, there are 21 orders, 81 families and 1,294 species of birds, including many endemic and rare birds in the world, such as Crested Ibis, Black-necked Crane, Cabot's Tragopan, Rufous-tailed Babbler and Flamecrest. Why we edit this book is for bird researchers, conservationists, educationists and bird lovers in China and abroad to know the status of Chinese birds further.
BIRDS IN CHINA includes 8 parts: Summary, Natatores, Grallatores, Terrestores, Raptators, Scansores, Passeres and index of bird names in Latin, Chinese and English. Chinese main and rare birds, 633 species, are briefly described in morphology, distribution, life habits, and protected status in China. Its 700 colorful pictures show their style and features. It is a very important book to know the birds in China, and is an important reference book to identify and observe birds in the field too.
The moment when the book is published meets that the 23rd International Ornithological Congress will be convened at Beijing. We wish this book could help birds researchers, conservationists, educationists and bird lovers to know the wild birds in China.
All pictures selected in the book are shot from the wild by Chinese birds photographers. Mr. Chen, Jiasheng, the famous photographer from Taiwan, replied us on sickbed and allowed us to use his pictures of endemic species of birds in Taiwan even he wounded in the field, which improve the quality of the book. Mr. Chen Ling from National Nature Science Foundation of China, and the graduate students, Bi Zhonglin and Zhang Xiaohui participate in writing some first draft,Wang Ning, Xu Jiliang and Li Wei, help a lot in edition and collation and heartily acknowledge them.
