THE UPDATED NUMBER OF SPECIES OF BIRDS IN CHINA

There are some confusions on how many species of birds in China. By reading through and analyzing the necessary literature related to Chinese birds both in China and abroad, we made a new assessment of the species of birds in China. It indicates that, totally 1*!315 species of birds have been recorded in China by the end of 2002, which belongs to 24 orders and 99 families. Comparing with the birds in other countries, China has relatively highly bird diversity, which ranked the eighth in the world and the second in Asia in terms of the species.