When 30 bird-watchers from Chengdu gathered at the foot of Wawu Mountain in Sichuan's Hongya county on May 19, they were not there to admire the scenery. They were there as field marshals.

With a massive 100,000-yuan ($14,890) total prize pool on offer, the third annual Wawu Mountain Bird Race has probably become the richest birding competition in the country, prompting organizers to implement strict defenses against potential cheating.

To preserve the integrity of the 29-hour event, where teams race to identify and record the highest number of bird species, the Chengdu Bird Watching Society established a strict regulatory regime.

The core of the anti-cheating strategy relied on a blind-draw lottery that paired each of the 30 competing teams with an embedded, impartial volunteer record keeper who doubled as a compliance officer.

"While many bird races, even internationally, are primarily about fun and give winners awards of honors, we're offering substantial cash prizes," said Shen You, founder of the Chengdu Bird Watching Society and one of the event organizers. "The cash awards necessitated the implementation of specific measures to ensure the event remained scrupulously fair."

Watching the watchers

The volunteer field marshals, Shen said, were all seasoned birdwatchers, many of whom were already intimately familiar with the terrain of Wawu Mountain.

"We deliberately designed the system to prevent them from competing with birders from other areas, giving our visitors a greater chance to win," Shen said.

"In addition to keeping records, these volunteers acted as impartial observers, helping to ensure fair play throughout the event."

During the race, the record keepers monitored their assigned teams for any violations and kept a close eye on rival groups. The event regulations strictly prohibited using bird sounds to lure targets, recording and playing back bird songs, employing thermal imaging scopes to locate birds, and collaborating between teams.

The ban on team collusion was directly inspired by a controversy during the previous year's competition, in which two teams covertly worked together to sweep the podium. One team claimed first prize while the other secured second, turning in nearly identical species lists that differed by just a single bird.

"It was undeniably unfair to the other participating teams," Shen said. "So, for this year's competition, we listed this type of coordinated effort as an explicit violation of the rules."

Organizers also introduced an independent event supervisor this year to coordinate with the field record keepers, gathering real-time feedback to address any potential violations on the slopes.

Alongside Shen, the competition's five-judge panel included Professor Li Jianqiang from Beijing Forestry University, Wu Fei from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Professor Amael Borzee from Nanjing Forestry University, and ornithologist Que Pinjia from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

During the competition, the experts tracked bird movements across various elevations of Wawu Mountain, ranging from 1,140 to 2,830 meters.

"We needed to get a general baseline of bird activity for this season," Li said.

On May 20, Borzee took the cableway to reach the 2,830-meter tabletop summit. After walking a 3-kilometer circuit across the mountain's 11-square-kilometer plateau, he descended along a 10-kilometer hiking trail, recording nearly 60 bird species.

"The event is a great opportunity for participants to have fun while doing something they like in an amazing landscape," Borzee said.