"The most mysterious bird in the world" appears at Qiandao Lake, caught in fishing nets and lines. A man passing by in a boat rescues it. The wild population is estimated to be only about a thousand.

On April 2, a Zhejiang-based outdoor blogger posted a video on a social platform, saying that he had rescued a “very aggressive but unnamed wild baby bird.” Soon, eagle-eyed netizens identified that the bird was actually the Hainan bittern, hailed as “the world’s most mysterious bird.”

In the video footage shared by netizens, a wading bird with a crown on its head and spots in its feathers was trapped in a shallow area of water. Its slender legs appeared to be tangled with threads, preventing it from flying away. When someone approached, the bird let out a hoarse “quack” sound.

Related video screenshot

On April 3, Wu, the video’s person-in-charge of filming, told a reporter from Red Star News that one evening a few days earlier, he and a friend drove a boat from an island in Qiandaohu back to shore. Without intending to, they discovered this bird they had never seen before flapping around in the shallows. After getting closer, they found that the bird’s legs were tangled in discarded fishing net line.

Because the bird looked very fierce, he and his friend only dared to approach with a stick in hand. After carefully breaking the net line that was wrapped around the bird’s legs, the bird then flew away. “At first it was very fierce. But when we got close to actually rescue it, it became very docile again,” Wu said. At the time, he thought it was just an ordinary water bird. Later, after searching online, he learned that what they rescued that day should be the protected animal Hainan bittern mentioned by netizens.

On April 3, a reporter from Red Star News sent the related photos taken by Wu to Wang Yuangang, the head of the Sichuan Nanchong bird rescue station. After reviewing them, he confirmed that the bird was indeed the Hainan bittern.

Red Star News reporters found that in China’s “List of National Key Protected Wild Animals,” the Hainan bittern is classified as a first-class protected wild animal. Xinhua News Agency reported in 2022 as well that the Hainan bittern is a bird species native to China: it stays as a resident bird in Hainan, and in places such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Anhui, it is a summer visitor bird or a passage migrant bird. In the wild, there are only about 1,000 individuals, and it has been listed as one of the world’s 30 most endangered bird species. Due to its habits of being active by day and resting at night, not preferring to live in groups, and not being fond of calling, it is extremely rarely observed by people. Therefore, it is also known as “the world’s most mysterious bird.”

Red Star News Reporter Wang Chao

Editor Bao Chengli Review Ren Zhijiang