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Birds of prey still streak Beijing’s skies. But their numbers are dwindling. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro has this story about Beijing’s raptors and the people who watch out for them.

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Like most of Beijing, the streets surrounding the grounds of the city’s ancient Temple of Heaven are choked with raging traffic. It’s hard to imagine that nature still has any place in this throbbing metropolis.

But head into the park, and the urban hum fades away first to quiet music and strolling crowds, and then to an even deeper quiet amid red temple buildings and precisely spaced evergreens. This is one of the largest remaining green spaces in Beijing… and one of the few places where you might still catch a glimpse of large birds like owls.

“Sometimes we can find the owls resting over there.”

Bao Weidong comes to a halt beneath a tall pine and peers through the branches with his binoculars. Bao is a zoology professor at Beijing Forestry University. He often comes to the temple grounds in search of long-eared owls – owls with two tufts of pointy feathers atop their heads.

“Several years ago we found nine birds at this tree.” “Nine long-eared owls in that tree?” “Yes, but now it’s empty. Yeah, it’s empty.”

He says the number of owls is declining across Beijing. Back in 2004, Bao counted about 60 owls at three sites in the city. Today, he thinks there might be 25. The biggest problem, Bao says, is the loss of habitat. The city keeps expanding into what was once farmland. And the owls can’t find food.

“If the land is used or cultivated for crops or farmland, there are some small mammals: the rodents. So the food resources disappeared, then the owls disappeared.”

In a sterile white room across town from the Temple of Heaven, a large bird with an intimidating beak and feathers the color of milk chocolate squawks at a couple of humans wearing surgical masks. This is the Beijing Raptor Rescue Center. And the bird is a cinereous vulture…with badly injured feet.

“The city is a very, very dangerous place for these birds.”

Kati Loeffler is the veterinary advisor at the Center. She says Beijing’s location is especially problematic for raptors.

Beijing happens to lie on quite an important migration route for raptors and many other species of birds. The big buildings mostly are causes of injury: birds flying into glass, that kind of thing.”

The Center cares for up to 350 injured raptors a year. There are owls, hawks, buzzards, falcons, merlins, eagles and vultures. Some stay for months… make a full recovery and can be released. Others have to be euthanized.

Loeffler says today’s patient… the big vulture… is in pretty bad shape.

“Oh, baby, I know. I know, sweet pea… The lesions on his toes look very serious. He’s losing all of his nails together with actually the last joint. So we need to figure out what’s going on here. A vulture can’t survive in the wild without its claws.”

Loeffler isn’t sure what’s wrong with this bird. It might be an infectious disease. Another threat raptors face in this city is residents who capture the birds as pets and clip their wings. But many raptor enthusiasts prefer to capture the birds in photographs.

In their small apartment, Beijing residents Liu Meng Rong and Zhang Yong unzip their camera cases and show off the gear they use to photograph wild birds. As the city grows, the distance they’ve gotta go to find raptors keeps growing too.

“Birds of prey usually live where there aren’t many people. You won’t find them in densely populated areas.”

“We try to go to the outskirts of Beijing 3 or 4 days each week to observe wild animals and birds, and to get closer to nature.”

But recently, Liu and Zhang had to do more than just observe. They spotted a sea eagle lying on its side on a frozen lake. They captured the bird, and drove it to the Rescue Center. Liu cradled the bird in her lap during the ride.

“Birds of prey typically have very intense eyes. But this one didn’t. You could see the call for help in its eyes. I was afraid it would struggle because it’s a fierce bird. That would have been dangerous because we were driving on the highway. So I talked to the bird: ‘Please be quiet,’ I said. ‘We’re determined to save you, to take you to the sky and let you fly again.”

Turned out the eagle had been poisoned. Kati Loeffler at the Raptor Center says it was probably an all-too common accident.

“Farmers in these rural areas, they’ll cast out poisoned seed for ducks to kill ducks and sell them. But then what happens is that raptors also eat the poisoned birds and themselves succumb to it.”

The story of this particular bird has a happy ending. After two weeks, the poisoned eagle was released into the hills outside Beijing, and it did fly again. It’s an increasingly rare story for Beijing’s raptors. Loeffler says that as Beijing booms, she sees no effort being made to carve out space for these birds. Back at the Temple of Heaven, the falling number of long-eared owls certainly doesn’t bode well. But as he scans the park for even one feathery resident, zoologist Bao Weidong remains hopeful.

“This environment is very good. Probably the owls will come back again.”

Ari: For The World, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro, Beijing.

• See more photos of the birds
• Beijing Raptor Rescue Center