Monday we woke up early to go bird watching and got to see and hear many indigenous birds of Taiwan. Some included Steer’s Liocichla, White-tailed robin, Brown bullfinch, and the Taiwan Sibia. Steer’s Liocichla and the Taiwan Sibia are endemic to Taiwan which means that they are only found here. Something cool that came out of this bird watching was that we were able to see first-hand how one does research on birds. Two students were collecting Steer’s Liocichla for their research project and we got to see how they collected their data.  

After bird watching we took a tour around Meifeng. Our tour guides pointed out various plants that were used by aboriginal tribes to repel insects, keep from being thirsting, etc. Then we went to the temperate greenhouse where we saw a lot of plants that I am familiar with: sage, rosemary, hydrangea, snapdragons and begonias.

After lunch we had a lecture on table waste composting. The lecturer was from Quebec but moved to Taiwan in 1964. It was very interesting to hear a person with a French accent speak Chinese. From his lecture I learned that a household in Taiwan produces 2.6 kg of table waste every day. This means that roughly 12 million kg of table waste is produced every day throughout the island. He said never compost meat, seafood, or milk products. He owns a 1 ha farm on the north coast of Taiwan and produces his own compost. The compost is used on his crops and he says that there are no insects, no metals, and has saved peoples lives. This lecture was pretty interesting and I might try composting when I get back home.

After lecture we harvested sugar-beets. They challenged us to pick the heaviest beet and the top two would be used to create juice. I didn’t even weigh mine because I knew it couldn’t beat the ones that had already been weighed. We cut the beets, apples and pineapples and blended them all together. After tasting the juice we decided to go through the hedge maze just up the road; it reminded us of Harry Potter!

We had a night moth observation and got to see many different types of moths. We even got to see the bats that were feeding on the moths. After observing the moths we star-gazed and I saw a shooting star! Being so high up in the mountains made me feel like I could reach up and touch the stars.