Tainan Bird Watching

The coastal areas of suburban Tainan provide excellent bird-watching opportunities. Traveling northward along the New West Coast Highway, in the neighborhood of Anping you can see such birds as seagulls, magpies, and egrets. Along the route from Tainan to Luerhmen you can see more than 40 bird species, including pintail, herons, and egrets, roosting and feeding; among the most impressive sights in this area is the "egret forest", with its thousands of birds. Among the salt fields, from September to the following May, thousands of sharp-billed Sandpipers and other migratory birds come to winter here. This is one of the most important stopping points for birds migrating between Asia and Australia.

From October 4 to the following April the area around the mouth of the Tsengwen River is a haven for the famous -- and extremely rare -- black-faced spoonbill as well as birds of the recurvirostridae and egret families. There is also a large mangrove forest at the mouth of the old salt canal that contains three of Taiwan's four types of mangrove trees.