A different bird race

"The side program demonstrated the uniqueness of our event," said Zhong Jia, one of the founders of the center and also of the country's first group of bird-watchers. Many of the country's bird-watching events in the past 10 years, especially bird races, have been the brainchild of the 72-year-old retired newspaper editor and former environmental reporters.

Bird races are events where participants "race" to identify bird species within a specific area and timeframe. The participant or team that identifies the most species is declared the winner.

"This event was actually a bird race, but the local organizers asked us to put our emphasis on education," she said. "So it was also a public education campaign."

At the launch of the event in Gangca, Chen Dehui, deputy director of the Qinghai Lake Scenic Area Protection and Management Administration, said that Qinghai Lake is a typical representative of the plateau lake wetland ecosystem.

It is an important body of water as the ecological security barrier of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and a crucial habitat for rare and endemic species in the cold and arid plateau region.