rescuing birds

The trouble with this article is that whether I open it in Firefox or Explorer, I still can’t see what the second bird rescued was. I guess this computer’s Chinese vocabulary just isn’t big enough. No, wait… although it refuses to display Chinese characters on the desktop, this computer generally doesn’t give me any trouble displaying Chinese in either browser…. So what could the problem be?

Anyway, the first bird was a 雕枭, or a…. what? Can’t find it in the dictionary or nciku, nor in Baidu Baike. Oh, wait, the BDBK entry for 枭 has a picture of one. So it must be some kind of owl. But that is a strange and most uninformative entry, so I have no idea what kind of owl. And although both my dictionary and nciku agree that 雕 means vulture, BDBK seems to think it means greater spotted eagle. This post calls it an ‘eagle owl’. Ah! Wikipedia to the rescue! And perhaps we could get even more specific. Ah, finally, confirmation that that more specific wikipedia article is about the same owl- although this gives it a different English name: Northern Eagle Owl. Latin names match, though, so that’s good enough for me.

As for the second bird rescued, all I’ve got appearing on my screen is 小䴙䴘. A little googling turns up this for that missing first character and this for the second, but I still can’t find any characters. So it’s a little qixi or qixie, apparently. How the hell I’m supposed to find out what kind of bird that may be, I don’t know. Oh wait! The article says it’s also called 水葫芦! Water hyacinth? Is this a bird or a flower we’re rescuing here? John found it: It’s a grebe. Thanks John.

Anyway, so out in Yanqing two wild birds, one an eagle owl, the other a something, were rescued. 京报网’s correspondents Wang Yuling and Feng Shuzhen report:

11月19日上午11时，几个中年人将一只雕枭送到了延庆林业局生态站。当时，他们正好路过延庆南菜园加油站，忽然头顶上有个“黑影”飞过，定睛一看，一 只大鸟跌跌撞撞掉到了地上。有人认出来是雕枭，马上打了一辆出租车来到了林业局。无独有偶，下午3时左右，又有一个市民在东湖公园遛弯时，碰到了一只小 鸟，怯生生地趴在地上一动不动，捡回来直接送到了林业局。

At 11 am on the 19 November a few middle aged people took an eagle owl to the Yanqing Forestery Bureau eco-station. At the time they had just been passing Yanqing Nancaiyuan Petrol Station when suddenly a “black shadow” flew over their heads. As they looked, a large bird staggered and fell to the ground. One of them recognised it as an eagle owl and immediately hired a taxi and went to the forestry bureau. This was not the only incident. At about 3 in the afternoon, another citizen, while strolling in Donghu Park, came across a small bird lying timidly on the ground motionless, and picked it up and took it to the Forestery Bureau.
一天里，雕枭和小䴙䴘双双获救。雕枭属于大型猛禽，是国家二级保护动物。小䴙䴘又名水葫芦，因体形短圆，在水上浮沉宛如葫芦而得名。

In one day an eagle owl and a grebe both rescued. The eagle owl is a large bird of prey and a class 2 state protected animal. The grebe is also called a water gourd  [?!?!?] because with its short, round body, it floats on the water just like a gourd.
笔者在生态站见到了被救助的雕枭和小䴙䴘，它们被放置在两个箱子里，将送往北京市野生动物救护中心接受救治。雕枭站起来个头有70厘米左右，体重达5公 斤，羽毛黄棕色。工作人员小心翼翼地将其从箱子里拿出来时，雕枭不停地扑腾着翅膀。小䴙䴘，圆圆笨笨的身体上长着黑褐色的羽毛，温顺地站着。

Your correspondent say the rescued eagle owl and grebe at the eco-station. They had been put in two boxes and were to be sent to the Beijing Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre for treatment. The eagle owl stands around 70 centimetres tall, weighs up to 5 kilograms, and has cinnamon-coloured feathers. When workers carefully and reverently took it out of the box, the eagle owl constantly thumped its wings. The grebe had dark brown feathers on its round and cumbersome body and was standing docilely.

“目前看，这两只鸟的精神状态和进食都还不错，雕枭可能是在飞行中撞了树或其他东西，小䴙䴘可能是觅食困难，又累又饿，体力不支，到救助中心休整恢复几天就能放飞了。”生态站副站长岳志勤说。

“At this point, these two birds mental outlook and feeding re fine. Perhaps the eagle owl collided with a tree or another object when he was flying, and maybe the grebe had trouble foraging, was tired and hungry, was out of strength. After a few days rest and reorganisation at the Rescue and Rehabilitation, it’ll be able to be released,” said the assistant head of the eco-station Yue Zhiqin.

今年，生态站成了动物“应急站”，从年初到现在，站里已经救助野生动物33只，其中有国家二级保护动物雕鸮、大鵟、燕隼、红角鸮等，北京市二级保护动物及 其他保护动物夜鹭、寒鸦、普通秋沙鸭、斑鸠、獾子等。村民发现受伤的动物，有的直接送过来，有的给生态站打电话，保护意识非常强。有时候一天会有两三起救 助，而在前几年一年也就十几起。

This year the eco-station became an animal “emergency station” and from the start of the year till now, 33 wild animals have been assisted at the station, including such class 2 state protected animals as the eagle owl [eh? how is that different from 雕枭? BDBK doesn’t seem to list 雕枭 as an alternative name], the upland buzzard, the Eurasian hobby, and the Eurasian Scops owl and such Beijing Municipal class 2 protected animals and other protected animals as the Black-crowned night heron, the Eurasian jackdaw, the common merganser, the turtle dove, and the Eurasian badger. When villagers discover injured animals, some take them directly to the eco-station, others phone the eco-station. Their conservation consciousness is very strong. Sometimes their will be two or three rescues in a day, but in the previous few years there’d be only a dozen rescues each year.