Knowledge about geography is common and delicious.

The first chinese national geography Feiyu Instant Photography Competition ended on February 20th, 2008. Lai Yuning and Liu's photography work "Artificial Bird's Nest to Attract Locusts" won the silver prize in the photo story group of the first flying feather instant photography competition in chinese national geography. Photographers Lai Yuning and Liu went deep into Yining City, Xinjiang, and tracked and recorded the breeding life and migration process of the locust control expert pink starling in the artificial nest, and wrote a song of praise for the harmonious coexistence of human and birds.

The following is the story told by the author:

In Su 'almaty Village, Bayandai Town, Yining City, Xinjiang, hundreds of thousands of special guests-pink starlings come every May, which makes the originally quiet mountain village suddenly lively. This pink starling is a migratory bird, which belongs to the national second-class protected bird. He lived in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and West Asia in winter and moved to western Xinjiang in May. Pink starlings feed on locusts and have an amazing appetite. It preys on 120- 180 locusts every day, becoming the main force of biological locust control, and is affectionately called "armored soldier" by Yili people.

In 2002, Yining City built an artificial nest of 20,000 square meters of starlings near Su 'almaty village, pulled up barbed wire and set up fences to protect starlings.

The next summer, the pink starlings began to camp here in twos and threes. In the summer of 2005, the number of pink starlings increased sharply, reaching 200 thousand. The arrival of the pink starling delighted Bayandai people. In the southern mountainous area where Su 'almaty village is located, Yining City has more than 200,000 mu of spring and autumn grassland, which has been the hardest hit area by locusts over the years. The pink starling settled here, and the locusts on the grassland soon disappeared and the grassland came back to life.

This year, the locust infestation area in Yili Valley of Xinjiang has reached more than 3 million mu. Counties and cities build nests on grasslands in spring and autumn, creating a habitat for the pink starling, an expert in eliminating locusts. At present, the control area of pink starlings and chickens and ducks has reached 2.05 million mu, and the effect of locust control is obvious.

In the choppy North Atlantic, about 100 km from Halifax in the northern half of North America, there is an island that scares the crew. The word "sable" means "sand" in French, which means "sand island". The name was originally given to it by the French crew.

According to the research of geological historians, the area and location of this island have been changing for thousands of years due to the violent erosion of huge waves. It was originally a sandbar with a length of 120 km and a width of 16 km, which was formed by the accumulation of sandy sediments. In the last 200 years, the island has moved 20 kilometers eastward, and its length has been shortened by nearly half. Now it is 40 kilometers long from east to west and less than 2 kilometers wide. It looks like a long and narrow crescent moon. The whole island is a piece of fine sand, very desolate and terrible. There are no tall trees, only some beach grass and bushes.

The island is located near an important route from Europe to the United States and Canada. There have been many shipwrecks in the waters near this island in history, and shipwrecks have occurred frequently in recent years. As can be seen from the charts drawn by some countries, all kinds of shipwreck symbols are densely distributed around the island, especially at the east and west ends of the island. It is estimated that more than 500 ships were killed, including ancient sailboats and modern ships, with a total of more than 5,000 people killed. Therefore, some crew members call it "the island of death" with fear. Many bizarre myths and legends about "dead island" are widely circulated in the West, which is frightening. The great disaster brought by "dead island" to the crew prompted scientists to explore its mystery. In order to explain the sinking of ships, many scholars put forward various assumptions and conclusions. For example, some people think that because the sea near the "dead island" often sets off powerful waves, it can sink unsuspecting ships; Some people think that the magnetic field of "dead island" is different and changeable from its adjacent sea surface, which will make the navigation compass and other instruments on the ship sailing in the waters near "dead island" fail, thus causing the ship to crash and sink; Many scholars believe that due to the frequent changes in the location and area of the island, there are mostly large areas of quicksand and shoals near the island, and the water depth in many places is only 2 meters to 4 meters. In addition, the weather is bad and storms are common, so ships can easily run aground and sink here. The mystery of dead island still needs further exploration and study in the future.

An island that can spin on its own

1964, an amazing anecdote came from the west Indies: the crew of a seagoing ship suddenly discovered that an uninhabited island in this archipelago would rotate once every 24 hours like the earth's rotation, and it would never stop. This is really an unheard of strange thing!

This revolving island was discovered by accident by a cargo ship named Shen Jie while sailing in the West Indies. At that time, the island was covered with dense plants and swamps everywhere. This island is very small. Captain Kadena ordered the helmsman to sail around the island for half an hour. Then they got off the anchor and toured a circle, and found no rare birds and animals, exotic flowers and plants, or strange water. The captain carved his name, the time of landing on the island and the name of their ship on the trunk of a tree and returned to the original landing site with his entourage.

"Strange, why did the ship leave the berth by itself?" A crew member suddenly found something was wrong and shouted, "It's dozens of meters away from where the ship stopped just now!"

The sailors who returned to the ship were also surprised. They checked the place where the anchor had just broken down, and the anchor was still firmly hooked on the bottom of the sea, showing no sign of being towed away. The captain expressed doubts about this and wondered if it was the island itself moving.

This anecdote aroused great interest, and some people went to visit the island after hearing the news. According to the observation results, it is agreed that the island itself is spinning. As for the reasons for the rotation, opinions vary and cannot be unified. More people think that this small island is actually an iceberg floating on the sea surface, rotating due to the fluctuation of the tide. But what is the truth, no one can assert at that time, so we have to leave it to scientists to study.

Soon, this strange island disappeared from the sea.

Mysterious island

1933 In April, the French research ship Ranasan came to the South China Sea for hydrological investigation. They kept sailing back and forth at sea and conducting underwater surveys. Suddenly, the crew saw an unknown island standing on the last passage, with lush trees and shadows in the water. But half a month later, when they came here to measure again, the island disappeared. For this mysterious island that comes and goes from time to time, everyone is puzzled and can't understand the truth, so they have to indicate in the log book that this is a "collective illusion."

Three years later, one night in May, 1936, a French sailboat named "Alliance" sailed in the South China Sea. This new three-masted sailboat is going to the Philippines to load dried coconuts.

"Straight ahead, there is an island!" The sailor, who was watching on the hanger, suddenly let out a cry, which immediately alarmed all the crew on board.

Captain Sunas immediately came to the bridge and observed with a telescope. He saw an island clearly. He doubted whether the ship was on the right course. It is still 250 nautical miles from the coast. When he passed by here, he had never seen the island. Did it suddenly emerge from the bottom of the sea? However, the dense tree shadows on the island are not like volcanic islands that have just emerged from the sea.

The captain ordered the helmsman to turn right 90 degrees and ordered the sailors to close their sails at once. In this way, Soyuz slowly bypassed this mysterious island.

At this time, the crew all fell on the right railing and stared ahead. The hazy night set off the swaying branches on the island, and everything in front of me was really like a dream.

At this time, the personnel of the navigation department of the ship quickly consulted the nautical chart and made calculations to ensure that the ship's course was accurate and the compass and speedometer were working normally. Look at the nautical notes again. There is no record of an island in this sea area at all. And hundreds of ships pass by here every year, and none of them have ever found this island.

Suddenly, the island in front disappeared, but after a while, it appeared on the other side of the ship! The captain and his companions watched nervously and saw a shadow like a black curtain in front of them now.

Suddenly there was a loud noise and the whole ship shook violently. Then, the ribs of the hull creaked, and the mast twisted with the cable, giving off bursts of cracking. One tree fell to the bow with a bang, and the other fell beside the foremast. Leaves rustle, the deck is covered with mud, and the smell of broken branches, bark and resin is mixed with the smell of sea breeze, which makes people feel as if a forest has sprung up on the sea. The captain instinctively ordered the right rudder, but the bow suddenly tilted upward and the ship did not move. The crew were stunned one by one. Obviously, the ship ran aground.

At last it was dawn, and the crew finally saw two mysterious islands in the sea. Soyuz ran aground on one of the islands, and the other island was about 150 meters long. It was a rock that sank directly to the bottom of the sea.

Fortunately, the damage to the ship was not serious. The captain ordered two sampans to be put into the water, and the ship was pulled up from the stern to take off the shoal. The crew paddled hard on the sampan, and some people went down to the island to push the boat hard. After more than two hours of fighting, Soyuz was finally out of danger.

The Soyuz slowly left the island. The two small islands gradually disappeared from people's sight. This unexpected and sinister encounter made the whole ship tremble with fear. The exhausted crew pondered the mystery silently.

As soon as Soyuz arrived in the Philippines, Captain Sunas reported his personal experience of this adventure to the relevant direction. After hearing about it, the personnel of the local hydrological bureau and other relevant units said that no island had ever been found in this sea area. Other sailors on the ship also listened to the story of the crew of the "Union" with suspicion. Obviously, everyone thinks this is the collective illusion of the crew of the "Alliance".

Captain Sunas didn't want to argue with them, so he decided to look for the two islands when he came back and write down their exact locations. After sailing for two days, he should have seen these two small islands, but he saw nothing. They walked around the vast sea for six hours, but they still found nothing. The two small islands disappeared without a trace. Although Sunus has the desire to solve this mystery, he can't delay for too long and can't change his course, so he has to leave this sea area with great regret.

bottomless hole/pit

What people call a bottomless pit is a very deep bottomless cave. In China's famous mythical novel The Journey to the West, there is a story about the Monkey King's struggle with yellow-haired rat poison in a bottomless pit. There are valleys outside the East China Sea recorded in Shan Hai Jing Ye Dong Jing. Liezi Tang Wen also recorded: "To the east of the Bohai Sea, I don't know that there is a big valley for hundreds of millions of miles, but whoever has a bottomless valley, its name belongs to the city. When you enter the waters of Binjiuye, you will pay attention to the flow of Tianhan without any increase or decrease. " It means that there is a bottomless pit in the east of Bohai Sea, which is called "Guixu". No matter the rain in the sky or the river on the ground, it flows into the void, but it will never be filled.

Journey to the West is a fairy tale, and the bottomless pit is just a fairy tale. The bottomless pit recorded in Shan Hai Jing and Liezi can't be verified. It stands to reason that the earth we live in is round and consists of three parts: the crust, the earth's slowness and the core. There will be no bottomless pit. But then again, whether it's Journey to the West, Classic of Mountains and Seas, or Liezi, it is recorded that there is a bottomless pit on the earth. People can't imagine it out of thin air, can they?

So, is there a bottomless pit on the earth? In fact, there really is such a "bottomless pit" on the earth.

This bottomless pit is located on the seashore of the ancient Greek city of Argos. It leans against the sea. Whenever the sea is at high tide, the turbulent seawater will flow to the mouth of the cave like an avalanche, forming a particularly swift torrent.

It is speculated that more than 30,000 tons of seawater flows into this bottomless pit every day. Surprisingly, so much seawater "sprayed" into the hole, but it was never filled. Therefore, people once doubted whether this bottomless pit would be like a funnel, shaft or sinkhole in limestone area. No matter how much water there is, it can't be filled. However, funnels, shafts and sinkholes in this terrain will have exits, and water will flow out along the exits. However, people searched many places and made various efforts in the bottomless pit of the seashore in the ancient Greek city of Argos, but never found its exit.

1958, the American Geographical Society sent an expedition to the seashore of the ancient Greek city of Argos, trying to uncover the secret of this bottomless pit.

The team members adopted this method: they first put a durable dark dye in seawater, and then observed how the dye flowed into the bottomless pit with seawater. Then, the team members quickly went separately to observe the nearby sea surface and the rivers and lakes on the island to see if there was any seawater dyed with this dye. However, the team members made great efforts to check all the places and found no seawater dyed with dyes.

Strange, what is this? Is the amount of seawater too large and the dilution of colored seawater too light for people to see at all?

The explorers had to go back. However, they have been reluctant. A few years later, they developed a light rose plastic particle. This plastic particle is slightly lighter than seawater, and can float on the water surface without sinking and will not be dissolved by seawater.

On this day, the team members came to the bottomless pit by the sea in the ancient Greek city of Argos. They poured 130 kg of plastic particles into seawater. Before long, these plastic particles flowed into the bottomless pit along the sea water. The team members think, "Now, even if only a plastic particle pops up in other places, we can find the outlet of the bottomless pit and uncover the secret of the bottomless pit."

However, what is the result? The expedition mobilized many people and searched for 1 years in various waters, but no plastic particles were found.

So, where did so much seawater flow into the bottomless pit? Where is the hole of this bottomless pit? Until now, it is still a mystery!