An elderly man in Thot Not District of Can Tho City has reserved his entire estate of two hectares of farming land for over 200,000 storks to nest in the past 30 years, making it one of the biggest storks’ gardens in the Mekong Delta.
He is Nguyen Ngoc Thuyen, 70, living in Thuan An Ward and the owner of Bang Lang Storks’ Garden.
Most of the birds in the garden are storks, a very tall long-legged wading bird with a long heavy bill and typically white and black plumage, often nesting in tall trees.
He is nicknamed ‘Vua Cò’ (the King of Storks) although his ‘royal palace’ is just a simple house located in a corner of the garden.
A ‘karma’ to protect the storks’ garden
The Bang Lang Storks’ Garden is located around 50km from the center of Can Tho City.
Although the garden has no fruit trees, except some kinds of bamboos and species of trees for wood, the birds still choose to nest and stay overnight in the trees in his garden, refusing neighboring places also with dense trees.
It is because Bang Lang garden is the only safe location well protected by the elderly man, who bans hunters from killing the animals on his estate.
He said he had to build a watch tower, around six or seven meters in height, to watch his garden and the animals in both day and night.
A new visitor may feel ear-splitting noise on setting foot inside the garden because of the ‘chorus’ of hundreds of thousands of birds permanently singing.
In late evenings and early mornings, visitors can watch all branches of trees in the garden closely perched on by the birds. Birds mainly sit on top of the trees while their nests are built under a leaf canopy.
All year round, the garden has birds hatching their eggs in these nests, while in other nests, youngsters are chirping for food.
Thuyen admitted that it was his ‘karma’ to bind his life to ‘this herd of storks’ three decades ago. He said he has never thought before that one day he would keep storks.
But it changed completely in 1984.
While holding a small fish in the mouth of a young stork that fell down to the ground, the owner recalled he bought the 22,000 square meter piece of land in 1978 for rice cultivation.
In 1983, a herd of hundreds of white storks came to perch on big trees of his land. Fearing the birds would tread on his rice farm, he asked hunters to trap and shoot them.
The birds flew away right after that but returned six months later in a larger herd, standing all over his farm.
He called for the help of hunters again. The storks flew away but returned in a bigger herd.
“I changed my mind this time, realizing that the birds always choose safe places to live,” he said. “I didn’t call hunters but planted signals ‘Storks Kept. Please Don’t Hunt’ around my farm.”
“From that point, I began watching both my farm and the birds after furtive hunters sneaked their way into the farm to shoot the birds for meat,” he added.
It was in 1984, when he began switching from rice cultivation to planting fruit trees to have branches for the birds to nest.
However, the birds tread on fruits and flowers and destroyed them all.
He had to replace fruit trees for big trees for wood, mainly to have more space for birds to nest.
In 1990, a heavy flood entered the area, sweeping away most of the trees in the garden but the storks kept on staying there, more and more till now.
After a strong wind or a heavy rain, birds fall from their nest to the ground and the elderly man has to pick them up, take them home to take care of them, give them food and warmth till they can fly.
Nguyen Thi Le Ha, the older daughter of Thuyen, recalled that her father suffered from many sneers from neighbors because he saves his entire land for birds while his children went out to work as hired laborers.
The more they sneered at him, the more he locked himself in his garden to take care of the birds, she said.
“Neighbors told me to pick eggs and bird youngsters for sales to redeem the lost income of the rice farm. But I refused it because it is cruel,” Thuyen said. “I accepted my fate to save my land for them, not to do anything to scare them at all.”
The storks have become familiar with the presence of Thuyen and do not fly away on seeing him enter the garden.
But the birds loudly shout and fly away upon seeing any stranger in the garden.
Many years ago, Can Tho City Travel Company cooperated with Thuyen to guide tourists for sightseeing and paid him VND10,000 (half a U.S. dollar) for each traveler.
But the cooperation has terminated and now, Thuyen manages to operate the travel service by himself though the income from the service is still low.
“Though getting a mere VND200,000 ($10) a day, I will keep on watching the birds because I love them,” Thuyen confirmed.
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Đăng ký: VietNam News
