China's coastal province of Shandong has activated a daily surveillance of bird flu for the approximately hundreds of thousands of wild birds that are coming during the migration season, the provincial forestry authority said on Monday.

Four monitoring stations for surveillance were set up in the province's coastal cities of Qingdao, Yantai, and near the mouth of the Yellow River, where over two hundred wild birds, mostly geese, from north China, Mongolia, and Russia will spend their winter, or pass by to the warmer Pacific islands.

The migration season starts from late October every year and lasts to March in the next year.

"Specialists in the four stations were asked to record the information on migrant birds everyday, information concerning bird species, their activities, and their droppings," said Huang Shiquan, an official with wild life protection bureau under Shandong provincial forestry department.

Sick or dead birds, if found, should be administered bird flu tests immediately, he said.

Bird flu broke out in China's northern province of Inner Mongolia and the central province of Anhui this month, killing thousands of chickens, ducks, and geese. The State Forestry Administration, worrying the disease might be spread by infected migrant birds, has ordered localities to set up 118 monitoring stations to form a national surveillance network ahead of the migration season.

More than 6,000 geese were killed this May in Qinghai Lake of northwestern Qinghai province, another major habitation for migratory birds in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2005)