He may be
little, but he’s flapped up a frenzy. A red and brown feathered European robin
has been spotted at the Beijing Zoo, and
it’s bound to be one of the capital’s biggest celebrity sightings of the year.
Think
it’s nothing to get your feathers ruffled over? The crowd pictured below would
disagree. They gathered to snap photos of the last European robin sighted in
Beijing, in 2014. The bird now causing a stir at the Beijing Zoo is only
the third known European robin to land in Beijing.
The last
European robin sighting in Beijing, in 2014, attracted huge crowds
Terry
Townshend, a British expat who has made a name for himself in Beijing as a bird
watcher, environmentalist and wildlife blogger, took
to his Twitter account @BirdingBeijing last night (Jan 9) with the
news. Along with posting images of the robin and its many admiring
onlookers at the Beijing Zoo, he also passed on a hypothesis as to why
the bird was in town: “The Chinese are calling the Robin ‘a Brexit
refugee!’”
When it
comes to that joke, Townshend went on to tell the Beijinger: "The
Robin is thought of as a British bird, which is why some people are calling it
a 'Brexit refugee.' But of course it’s range extends across Europe and into
Central Asia, so it’s most likely the bird at the zoo is from the eastern part
of the range, and unlikely to have come from the UK."
For
Townshend, who grew up birdwatching back in the UK, the buzz around this bird's
Beijing arrival is both surreal and gratifying. He says: "It’s only the
third time a Robin has turned up in Beijing, and of course it’s a beautiful
bird, that’s why people are getting excited."
"A
bird that most people take for granted in its home range can cause much
excitement when it appears somewhere unusual," he adds.
And this
isn't the only bird to have made headlines in Beijing media as of late. This
past spring the death of a cuckoo affectionately referred to as "Flappy
McFlapperson" by throngs on social media, was covered by numerous news
outlets in China.
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