Did You Know? Taiwan Has a “National Day Bird” — and 100,000 of Them Fly Over Kenting Every October

Every October, around Taiwan’s National Day on October 10, the skies over the island’s southern tip fill with hawks. So many arrive on such a reliable schedule that locals gave the grey-faced buzzard (灰面鵟鷹) a nickname: the National Day bird (國慶鳥).

A 100,000-bird commute

Grey-faced buzzards breed in northeast Asia and winter in the Philippines. To get there, a huge share of them funnel down the Hengchun Peninsula, the last stretch of land before open sea. The southbound passage lasts roughly three weeks, and the numbers are staggering. In autumn 2025, Kenting National Park’s counters tallied more than 100,000 grey-faced buzzards. Add the 400,000+ Chinese sparrowhawks that come through a few weeks earlier, and it was the biggest season in more than 30 years of surveys.

The daily rhythm: falling hawks and morning launches

What makes it special is how predictable the birds are. In the afternoon they drop out of the sky in waves to roost in the bamboo, betel nut and coconut groves of the hills around Manzhou. Locals call this 落鷹, “falling hawks.” The best viewing is roughly 1–5 pm from open spots like Lide Bridge. Then early the next morning, about 6:30–8 am, they rise on the warming air over Sheding Nature Park, circle into huge spirals and head out over the sea toward the Philippines.

It’s one of two great migrations on the peninsula. Our Kenting National Park guide covers the other one, the land crabs that close roads at night. If you’re keeping a list, it’s also the second major October bird arrival after the black-faced spoonbills.

From hunted to celebrated

The story wasn’t always this happy. The birds come back north each spring around Qingming, and old records from Changhua called them 南路鷹, “southern road hawks.” That name came with a grim proverb: ten thousand come, nine thousand die. They were hunted for food and, by the late 1960s and 1970s, for their feathers and mounted specimens, which sold to collectors in Japan.

From around 1979, conservationists pushed back, and protection campaigns started in Kenting. Today the grey-faced buzzard is a protected species under Taiwan’s Wildlife Conservation Act, and forest police still run anti-poaching operations during the passage. Manzhou has turned the old hunting grounds into its biggest event of the year, the hawk-watching season.

The takeaway

If you’re in southern Taiwan in October, bring binoculars, find a hill near Manzhou in the afternoon, and look up. These days the people waiting on those hills are there to count the hawks, not catch them.

Love Taiwan’s wild side? It’s in good company, next to the butterfly highways and the island’s other nature stories. Wear a little of it with you: Shop Taiwan Merch.