I was sitting in the Bird's Nest Stadium here at the Olympic Games in Beijing as the track and field programme was about to start yesterday, watching as the morning shift of red-rumped swallows skimmed the infield on the hunt for insects, when I was overcome by a terrible pang of regret.

The warp-speed industrialisation of China is one of the wonders of the world. But just think what might have happened if they had all had a little chat about it first. Instead of rushing headlong into the modern world, agog to repeat every mistake made by countries that had already industrialised - what if they had said no?

What if they had said: “All the modern countries are now entering a period of dreadful regret at what they have destroyed. All modern countries are involved in hugely expensive programmes of restoration ecology to get some kind of balance back into people's lives.

“We don't have to do that. We can be smarter. We can make a new template for the way that industrial development takes place. We can learn from all that has gone wrong elsewhere and show ourselves to be the wisest nation on Earth.”

But alas, they chose not to take that route and now they have an ecological crisis all of their own. Well, perhaps they will come up with a warp-speed conservation and restoration policy. But it all seems a most terrible pity.

From wing to wok

Which brings me to the yellow-breasted bunting. Now I must, of course, try to avoid national stereotypes. Many people have been joking to me: “I don't suppose you've seen many birds, bet they've all been eaten, ha ha.”

But there is truth in the supposition. The yellow-breasted bunting is in trouble because it regularly makes the short journey from wing to wok. These are pretty little birds, and their status has just been officially upped from threatened to vulnerable, entirely because they are a much sought-after food.

The buntings are migratory - they occasionally turn up in Britain - and like to travel and roost in big flocks. This makes them available to Chinese mist-net trappers, who can nab a whole lot at once.

This was once a reasonably sustainable trade, but with increasing prosperity, there is more money in it for professional bird-trappers. True, their trade is illegal, but the will to enforce this law is absent. All over China you can find heartbreaking little markets that are supposed not to exist, but flourish.

Many wild birds get eaten. This is a country with many mouths and a long tradition of making food items go a long way. The Chinese relish for bits and species of animals that we turn our noses up at in Britain is based on practicality.

Which is more than I can say for the other aspects of the wild bird trade.

Owls get a hard time of it in China because it's considered a good idea to eat their eyes. It improves your own eyesight no end, apparently. And if you eat the brains, that's good for headaches. All such a waste.

But let's be cheerful. There is now an organisation called Green Eye in China, in which volunteers go to the markets and report illegal trading to the police. It may not be much, but it's the beginning of something, just as the establishment of 27 birdwatching societies in China is also a beginning. It begins with a sense of loss - that's how the RSPB was founded in this country in the 19th century. Young Chinese are changing the way their country thinks.

A thrilling hobby

You will be excited to learn that my Beijing bird list is is now up to nine. This is better than I expected, since my Olympic duties for this newspaper rather cut across any ambitions of lurking in the bamboo forests. I have seen collared doves in a small park behind the media village, and a few large-billed crows flying over the Forbidden City, giving some appropriately atmospheric caws. The prettiest sighting was a hoopoe, also in the park, a preposterous cinnamon-coloured bird with a whopping great crest that flies like a demented butterfly. They also occasionally turn up in Britain, a preposterous exoticism.

But the prize bird was seen yesterday morning and also a few evenings ago - a falcon, whizzing over the Bird's Nest Stadium, rather too fast for easy identification, but I got the binoculars on it for a moment this time. It was a hobby, yet another bird that you can find in Britain, but always a rather thrilling one.

Hobbies are not the sort of falcons that confine their diet to other birds, or they might be struggling a bit here. They also hunt large insects on the wing, and have a particular fondness for dragonflies. Now the Olympic complex here is not exactly jumping with biodiversity, and the dominant form of visible nonhuman life is dragonflies. The sight of the hobby made me quite absurdly cheerful. I lowered the bins and brought my mind back to the 100m.

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