This week, a re-run of a show from December 2015 featuring former co-host Jeremy Goldkorn and Terry Townshend. I’m on the road, back in a couple of weeks with more new interviews!
Amazing research now suggests that Beijing swifts, the tiny creatures most residents pass by without noticing, are some of the most well-traveled birds on the planet, averaging an astonishing 124,000 miles of flight in their life, barely landing for years on end and migrating as far as the southern tip of Africa. This week on Sinica, hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn invited Terry Townshend, founder of the environmental education organization Eco-Action and author of Birding Beijing, for an inside look at how the scientific community discovered these amazing facts, and then more generally for a discussion of how the changing urban landscape in Beijing is affecting the natural environment for these amazing creatures.
Recommendations and Links:
Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel
Out of Africa: The Swifts of Beijing