Should one day, Taiwan becomes Republic of Taiwan, what would be our choice for the national bird? Well, this is a relatively easy issue; because more than 500,000 international bird-watching friends (Many of them are Taiwanese bird watchers.) had already voted and had chosen Formosan Blue Magpie, or 台灣藍鵲 (Urocissa Caerulea) as theTaiwanese national bird.
Taiwanese calls Formosan Blue Magpie 台灣藍鵲 as the mountain lady of long tail 長尾山娘, also a beautiful name for the bird. They are called long-tail mountain lady because while their body length is about 64-65 cm, their tails are as long as 40 cm. The whole body is blue in color except they have red mouths, red toes, yellow eyes, black heads and necks. These birds work together and they are not afraid of defending their nests against the invaders, something Taiwanese can learn about from the birds.
I learned about this bird from my NCHU Experimental Forestry trip on May 28, 29. (See my 5/29/09 stories.). In fact, I even shot pictures on these beautiful birds. (pictures of poor quality; not shown here.) Professor Hsu and Hsieh's family taught me about this bird. While I like the birds very much, I value the friendship I had fostered from the trip even more. Photo shows the blue bird and Prof. Hsu's family.
Also, if you want to be a citizen of Republic of Taiwan as badly as I am, please come to the following website and download the petition for our nationhood. http://jessie-tw.blogspot.com/
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