【明報專訊】◆What are they?

Blue-crowned laughingthrushes (靛冠噪?) are birds named for the patch of blue feathers on the top and back of their head. They make noisy calls that sound like human laughs.

In the wild, their range (分佈範圍) is very small and they are now only found in Jiangxi Province(江西省) in China. The forests they live in are called ''fung shui woods '' (風水林), as traditionally people liked to settle and build villages near the woods, believing that the environment would bring them peace and harmony.

◆Do these birds live together?

Blue-crowned laughingthrushes live a social life. They form groups of up to 40 birds and feed on fruits, seeds and insects. They have a close bonding with their family. They start breeding in around April, then the mother incubate (孵化) all the eggs together so that they will all be hatched at the same time. When the chicks (雛鳥) hatch out in May or June, they are reared and protected by not only their parents but also their older brothers and sisters.

◆Why are these birds declining?

Blue-crowned laughingthrushes are classified as "Critically Endangered" in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Their remaining population in the wild is extremely small — only around 320! One of the major causes for the decline was bird trade. These laughingthrushes were trapped and sold at high prices. Though the export has been banned since the late 1990s, some populations had already been wiped out. They were no longer seen in Yunnan Province. In addition, urban development and logging (伐木) has split and shrunk their range.

◆Conservation of blue-crowned laughingthrushes

With the fund from Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong (OPCFHK), Ocean Park has been collaborating with the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society (HKBWS) on a conservation project of blue-crowned laughingthrushes. The team visited Wuyuan County (婺源縣) in Jiangxi to investigate their breeding behaviour and wintering ground (越冬地), so as to facilitate the development of effective conservation measures. Apart from that, Ocean Park has also joined the Global Species Management Plan to promote the breeding of these birds and prevent them from extinction. Since 2014, around ten blue-crowned laughingthrushes have been born in the Park!

Text & photos: Ocean Park Hong Kong

■Glossary

rear (v) 撫養

wipe out( phr v) 消滅

shrink(v) 減少

facilitate (v) 促進

[Smarties' Power English 第206期]