Five European travel agents that specialize in bird-watching trips recently arrived in Taiwan to scout for potential tours for their customers, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday.
Wayne Liu (劉喜臨), director of the bureau’s international affairs division, said the group arrived on Sunday and is scheduled to leave on Tuesday. They are product managers and senior guides of travel agencies in the UK and the Netherlands that specialize in organizing bird-watching tours, Liu said.
“In the past, we have had many bird watchers from the UK visit,” Liu said. “This time, we also invited some from the Netherlands, which is an underdeveloped market for us.”
During the trip, Liu said the bureau had taken them to visit places where they could see some of the world’s rarest birds, such as the critically endangered Chinese crested tern (黑嘴端鳳頭燕鷗) in Matsu, also known as the “mystical bird.”
They arrived at Matsu’s Sanlien Islet (三連嶼) and were excited to spot six Chinese crested terns resting on the shoreline among a huge flock of other birds, Liu said.
The group also went to the Huisun Forest Area in Taichung County and glimpsed a Mikado Pheasant, Liu said.
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
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