Bird preservationist on a mission(4)

Shen You shares pictures of birds he took with a young bird lover in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

Bird watching in the wild can be dangerous. Shen was watching birds on a precipitous mountain in Mengtun in May, when a local farmer fell to his death from the mountain.

Despite hardship and danger, Shen spends more than one-third of the year watching birds in the wild and advocating for their protection. He visits the Zoige Grassland, a paradise for birds, in Aba almost every month.

Zoige has a speed limit of 80 kilometers per hour for drivers. But drivers used to race to speeds of 170 or 180 km per hour in order to run down birds.

Shen kept reporting the drivers until the local government installed 12 cameras to cover the grassland late last year, reducing the number of speeding vehicles.

Shen met his wife Meng Xiaofang, a fervent bird lover in Wuhan, Hubei province, when he was watching birds there in 2002. They married two years later.

Recently, their 5-year-old son Shen Yizhi completed his second visit to Zoige, where he took pictures of birds.

Shen says one has to cultivate a child's love of nature at an early age.