Each spring and autumn, large numbers of raptors migrate over Beijing. For most of us, they are barely more than  dark specks crossing the sky. But for some people, a chance encounter turns those specks into something to wait for, watch, and follow for years.

In this talk, Zhang Peng, chair of the Friends of Nature Wild Bird Society and head of the Beijing Raptor Migration Monitoring Project, draws on his own birdwatching experience to tell the story of how a single raptor gradually became part of his life. It begins with a first sighting, moves through years of waiting for each migration season,  and leads to long-term monitoring and collective record-keeping. Along the way, it changed how he sees the sky, the terrain, the seasons, and the city itself.

What changes when a bird is more than  a name in a field guide? Can sustained observation alter the way we understand a species, a place, even ourselves? And when one person’s  observations join a long-term, shared record,  how might a private experience gradually become public knowledge about a city, a migration route, and a stretch of sky?

During “Carsten Höller: Two,” UCCA and Friends of Nature Wild Bird Society are presenting  a four-part program on bird-window collisions in cities, birdsong, raptor migration, and birdwatching and the sky. Together, the events invite us to look at  the birds we share our urban environments with.