Astonishingly, the country has no unifying national avian symbol, a situation that 'Urban Birder' David Lindo has taken upon himself to resolve.
"Back in the day, the RSPB was it," recalls Martin Garner, a birder.
Robert Swinhoe, China's finest early birder, was the British consul in Amoy (modern-day Xiamen) and the first British representative on Formosa (Taiwan).
The motivations of someone concerned about local water quality are exigent and the skill set acquired discrete, whereas a birder may be motivated mostly by pleasure and have thus acquired a broad skill set nearly equivalent to that of a professional scientist.
Then there were the stilt-walking Jabiru birds, the theatrical darters, the egrets and vast, stately sea eagles … I could seriously become a birder here.
But, inevitably, these are the guys who wind up in a movie, talking absurdly about being "the best birder in the world".
But I have to admit that at bottom I'm an indifferent birder, despite having written a book called "The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of the Nature".
"Whatever species you can't find in the forest," the top birder in Shanghai quipped, "you can go to the local market and see in a cage".
For Mynott, much of the appeal of birds stems from the inexhaustible variety of our response to them: he celebrates the fact that, contra Keats, the nightingale's song might not have the same meanings for the modern birder as it has for Ruth among the alien corn.
At the end of the day I am a bird-watcher, not a birder.
He and another birder, a photographer and educator named Scott Whittle, started mimicking the cuckoo, trying to get it to respond: "Kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp!" The bird remained silent.
