Bengaluru counted its birds on Sunday as part of International Bird Day and also to create a national data base on avi-fauna. Bird enthusiasts flocked to lakes, hills and grasslands to count the number and species of birds.

The concept of creating a national data base on avi-fauna was mooted by the Delhi Bird Watching Society (DBWS) which invited the bird watching community across the county to conduct a bird count in their areas on Sunday and submit the number of species they sighted till evening. The event was named Big Bird Day and about 200 teams and individual bird watchers took part in the counting.

“We had tremendous response from all over the country. The bird watching groups submitted their numbers till evening. We were flooded with 100 plus messages at 6 pm on Sunday from all over the country. We have team sightings of 100-120 birds on an average and we are still waiting for the counts from out-station. The report on the count will be ready in a week,” said writer and birdwatcher from New Delhi, Bikram Grewal.

In Karnataka, bird-watching enthusiasts took an early morning walk to count the birds in different parts of the state. A bird watching team in Kodagu, led by bird expert Dr Narasimhan, counted 120 species of birds in one single day.

Manjunath Prabhakar, a wildlife photographer who took part in the count, said the bird counting was a great opportunity to record research on bird diversity as many species that were not thought to exist in urban areas are being sighted. “We sighted close to 60 bird species atop Nadi Hill during the count and we managed to sight two birds from the Western Ghats,” Mr Prabhakar said.

Harish R Bhat, a bird expert and researcher from the Indian Institute of Science said that he was able to sight 110 bird species in Bijapur. “I happened to be in Bijapur for a lecture and I decided to count the birds here. Due to the presence of the Alamatti backwaters, the presence of birds is large around Bijapur city,” Mr Bhat said.

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> News> Current Affairs / by Amit S. Upadhye, DC / February 25th, 2013