Our TRC Friends are World-Wide!

Wu's Education crew - Kathie, Rita, Wu and Paula.

One of our favorite things is to meet interesting people from all over the world. We will share an update on soon from our Clinical Intern, Dr. Ling-Min Wang.  She came to us from Taiwan.

We'd like to introduce you to Wu Jian-Long, Dr. Wang's husband.  He is now a volunteer with our Education Crew.  The public, TRC staff and volunteers are all benefiting by learning from him.  We are so glad to have him as a part of our team!  

"Before coming to Minnesota, I have worked in Endemic SpeciesResearch Institute in Nantou County, Taiwan. I was an assistant at Ornithology Lab of the Institute. A lot of ornithological research and forest restoration projects have been conducted there. In recent years, some citizen science programs such as Breeding Bird Survey Taiwan (BBS Taiwan), Monitoring Avian

Productivity and Survivorship in Taiwan (MAPS Taiwan), Reptile Road Mortality, and so on, have been popularized by staffs and volunteers of the Institute.

I am not an ornithologist but a keen birder. It was in 1996 that I started birdwatching when I was a senior high school student. Though having birded in several countries in Pacific Asia and New Zealand, the avifauna of the New World, namely the Americas, is unfamiliar to me. When I arrived in Minnesota in March, I had seen almost 700 species of birds. On the second weekend since I arrived, I saw an adult Bald Eagle sitting on a tree at a side of the Mississippi River near the Minneapolis Campus of U of M, which was my 699^th lifer species. Several days later, I put the Great Horned Owl on my life list, the 700^th of mine. Thank Gail Buhl (our TRC Education Program Manager) for taking Ling-Min and I to watch the owl family at her yard.

I do love raptors and hawkwatching. Moreover, I have participated in some residential and migratory raptor surveys in Taiwan. Ling-Min and I are both members of Raptor Research Group of Taiwan. The aims and objectives of RRGT are to research, watch, and conserve wild raptors. There are 31 species of diurnal raptors and 13 species of owls on the checklist of the birds of Taiwan. In every season of migration, hundreds of thousand raptors fly across Taiwan to their breeding territories or wintering grounds. Hope to share you more about raptors and other avifauna in Taiwan."