Yehliu Geopark

Rock FormationsNew Taipei,Taiwan

A Taiwanese sandstone cape covered in stone mushrooms, hard concretions balanced on necks the sea is still thinning, one of them the Queen's Head.

September·Edge of season

Sep–Nov

Autumn brings the migrants back and breaks the heat, highs easing from the high 20s to the low 20s. But this is the wettest, windiest stretch, with 380–400 mm a month as the northeast monsoon sets in and typhoons linger into October.

Year-round The mushroom stones, candle rocks and honeycomb reef stand on this cape year-round, and low tide opens the outer platform on any day of the year. What changes is the spring bird passage and the two ticketed weeks of night opening in summer.

Yehliu Geopark is a cape of sandstone on the north coast of Taiwan, in New Taipei, covered in stone mushrooms, hard concretions balanced on necks that the sea is still thinning, and the most photographed rock in the country is the Queen's Head, a block whose crown, chin and neck line up into a profile from one marked spot, where a rope funnels the crowd into single file for a turn. The cape is a layer of sandstone tilted into the sea, and the mushrooms are nodules of harder rock cemented by calcium that the waves and the salt have left standing as the softer stone around them wore down, so that the park sorts them by what the sea has done to the stem, no neck, thick neck, thin neck, broken neck; the Queen's neck gets thinner every year and will break, so the park has already named a successor among the younger rocks, and the candle rocks nearby carry a shallow groove circling their stone flame, cut by the swell turning a harder pebble. Past the rock field the path climbs to the exposed tip of the promontory, where a red line keeps the visitors back from the swell that has taken people off the rocks. A bronze figure with a coil of rope stands near the reef, Lin Tien-chen, a Yehliu man who went into the sea here in March 1964 to save a student and did not come back. From March to May the wooded neck of the cape fills with birds that have just crossed the open sea, Siberian rubythroats, Arctic warblers and paradise flycatchers dropping exhausted into the scrub, the best migrant trap on the main island with more than 300 species logged, and almost nobody in the rock-field crowd notices them. The park is an hour from Taipei on the coast road, with the fishing harbour and the seafood restaurants of Yehliu village at the gate. Yehliu is a cape the sea is carving into figures, and the queen is losing her neck.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Be at the gate when it opens at 8am on a weekday — the Taipei tour buses arrive mid-morning, and the reef has no shade at all once the sun is high.
The first hour after dawn is when the migrants feed — birds that crossed open sea overnight come down hungry, and by mid-morning they are deep in cover and quiet.
Wear shoes that grip — the honeycombed sandstone is uneven underfoot, and it turns slick wherever spray or a tide pool has wet it.
Typhoon season, roughly June to October, can close the park at short notice — check the park's notice on the morning you go, not the night before.
The night opening is about two weeks, late June into early July — entry is capped and dated, so the lit-after-dark version of the park exists for a narrow slot only.

Things to do

1
Take your turn at the Queen's Head
A rope funnels everyone into single file at the most photographed rock in Taiwan, and the marked spot is the one place where the crown, the chin and the thinning neck line up into a profile. Rangers keep hands off the stone, and the queue moves briskly, so know the frame you want before you reach the front.
2
Read the mushroom stones by their necks
The park sorts its mushroom rocks by what the sea has done to the stem: no neck, thick neck, thin neck, broken neck. The four forms stand mixed across the rock field, so a wide young cap and a snapped stump can sit a few paces apart. The honeycomb and the wave-cut platform only begin in the far third zone, and low tide is what opens them up.
3
Walk out to the open tip and stand behind the red line
Past the rock field the path climbs to the exposed end of the promontory. There are no railings here, only a red line painted on the rock between you and the dark boulders the waves break over. On a windy day the spray carries all the way up to the path. This is the sea that is thinning every mushroom neck in the park, seen at close range.
4
Look for spring migrants in the cape's scrub
From March to May the wooded neck of the cape fills with birds that have just crossed open sea, and almost nobody in the rock-field crowd notices them. Walk past the last mushroom stones into the low green tangle and keep your eyes down: these travellers work the undergrowth, not the canopy. The photographers with long lenses are here for the same reason, hoping a rare species turns up among the regulars.

Watch

Nearby

120 km