A flock of 21 black-winged long-legged sandpipers, a precious bird species in the world, visited the estuary of the Dagu River in the Jiaozhou Bay in Qingdao, Shandong province, for the first time. As the bird has two red legs, it is also called “red-legged girl” locally.
The bird only lives in the wetland in the western part of Xinjiang, the eastern part of Qinghai and northwest part of Inner Mongolia and flies to southeastern seaboard in winter. They have never been spotted in the last three decades in China’s northern seacoast.
Scientists attributed this visit to the improvement and restoration of the wetland environment in the Jiaozhou Bay.
(www.cenews.com.cn September 29, 2002)
