Zhang Lin- China’s Best Bird Watch Guide.docVIP

Zhang Lin: China?s Best Bird Watch Guide Zhang Lin looks ordinary, though everything about appearance suggests that he is an outdoor sports enthusiast. He is 1.73 meters in height; his face is dark due to year-round exposure to sunlight; he wears jeans which are almost whitewashed through wear and tear. But Zhang Lin is an extraordinary expert on birds in China and his name is now widely known among bird-watchers at home and abroad. As a guide for birdwatchers, he has taken birders from more than 30 countries and regions to watch precious feathered friends around China. At some overseas bird-watch websites, he is a big star. Looking back, Zhang Lin says that he is destined to do something about birds. His first experience with birds occurred when he was six. An injured baby parakeet managed to find its way into his home. He bandaged the bird and nursed it back to health before setting it free. This contact with an injured parakeet established a bond between Zhang Lin and his flying friends. As a child, he and his father frequently took bird-watching journeys into suburbs. In 1999 Zhang Lin started his four-year study at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Purple Mountain in the east of Nanjing became his birdwatching Mecca at weekends. He was totally fascinated with a species of birds that he had never seen before. He didn?t know the name of the bird until he put his hands on “A Field Guide to the Birds of China”, a 586guidebook by John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps published in 2000. It was “red-billed blue magpie (Urocissa erythrorhyncha). The book opened a door to a world of birds. In this book, he found the names of the birds that he had seen before. He was elated and had a sense of accomplishment. From then on, he managed to learn more about birds and birdwatching. So he bought cameras and squeezed time to watch birds in the mountain. His album of birds was later distributed among students and became very popular on the campus. Upon g