Chinese villagers give up firecrackers for migratory swans

The Spring Festival is a season of crackles and bangs throughout most of China, but not in a village in Shandong province that serves as a winter home to thousands of Whooper Swans.

Villagers in Yandunjiao have given up their tradition of setting off firecrackers during the Chinese Lunar New Year in order to maintain a sense of calm amongst the Whooper Swans that spend their winter months in the coastal village in the city of Rongcheng, according to villager Qu Rongxue.

The Whooper Swan is a highly vigilant bird that may be scared and flushed by firecrackers, and villagers in Yandunjiao began celebrating "silent" Spring Festivals more than 10 years ago. Instead of firecrackers, the villagers fix red scrolls to their doors, said Qu.

A fishing village nestled on the coast of the Yellow Sea, Yandunjiao has become a nest for thousands of Whooper Swans from Siberia and Mongolia. The swans stay there from November to March every year as the government steps up ecology recovery efforts, which has also led to a rise in local villagers' protection awareness.

Whooper Swans were first found in the bay near Yandunjiao in the early 1990s, according to Qu.

The Swan Lake in Yandunjiao has become a major part of the Rongcheng Nature Reserve for Whooper Swans, which became a provincial-level reserve in 2000 and was promoted to the state level in 2007.

The people in Yandunjiao have done without firecrackers since 2000.

A voluntary protection patrol has been set up in the village to rescue Whooper Swans around the lake, and there is also a special police station for the protection of the swans in the nature reserve.

When it snows, villagers take their own corn and cabbages to the lake to feed the swans, Qu said.

Yandunjiao has become a major tourist destination in Shandong during the winter, attracting tourists and professional photographers from both home and abroad.

Many villagers are currently running inns, and Qu has received more than 200 guests this winter.

With the scientific name of Cygnus cygnus, Whooper Swans are large migratory birds that can be found in a number of locations, including the Arctic, Asia, Europe, Russia and the United Kingdom.

They can be distinguished from Bewick's Swans by their larger size, and from Mute Swans by their yellow bills. They are powerful fliers, able to migrate many hundreds of miles to their wintering sites by flying in large "V" formations.