300 participate in Mumbai’s annual bird race, 274 species spotted

A veteran birdwatcher, D’Souza noted that the number of species spotted had reduced over the years and some species were no longer in sight

MUMBAI: On Sunday, 300 people from all over the state participated in Mumbai’s annual bird race, an event where birdwatchers spend the day looking for different species and record them. The 65 teams spent all of Sunday doing this, and their findings will be collated in a few days, said Sunjoy Monga, naturalist and writer and one of the race’s organisers.

(Dr Salil Choksi)

A team of five headed by Dr Salil Choksi, a paediatrician, patrolled the 15-km stretch of JVLR, looking at the marshes at Lokhandwala Complex, the IIT-B campus in Powai and Bhandup. “We saw 82 species, which was a delight,” said Dr Choksi, who also volunteers with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “Despite the pollution and urban sprawl, this proved it is still possible to see a vast array of species. You don’t have to go to the outskirts of Mumbai for bird-watching.”

The team saw both migratory and local resident birds as expected. Some highlights were the wood sandpiper at the Lokhandwala Complex marshes, Loten’s sunbird and the jungle owlet at the IIT campus, the greater and lesser flamingos at the Bhandup Pumping Station, the black-billed plover at the T S Chanakya wetlands, the black-capped kingfisher at the Karve wetlands in Thane district and the Indian roller in the Viva wetlands.

Radhika D’Souza, a college professor who heads the Nature club at the Royal College of Arts, Science and Commerce at Mira Road, and has been participating in the bird race since 2008, took along 40 of her students. They spotted 79 to 80 species. “We started at around 5:30 am in three different teams,” she said. “I took the freshers along and we went to the Viva wetlands in Virar-Vasai Fort, Thane Creek and finally to IIT Powai for the ending event, and are getting done only now at around 10 pm. It’s been a tiring day but also amazing. It boosts the students to be in the company of so many others who are into birdwatching.”

The participants lodge the birds on the e-bird app, even noting down the birds of whom they hear bird calls. A veteran birdwatcher, D’Souza noted that the number of species spotted had reduced over the years and some species were no longer in sight. “We used to see the Paradise Flycatcher at Vasai Fort and the Hoopoe Bird at Suruchi Beach but we did not see them today,” she said. While the cause of absenteeism could be a variation in timings, pollution and the concretisation of the city also play a role.

The preliminary figures for the number of bird species sighted by all the teams in the race were 274, including Mumbai and Maharashtra regions. In 2023, over 300 species were spotted in pan-Maharashtra and around 250 species in the Mumbai metropolitan region. The figures for the previous years were 250 species in 2022, 189 in 2021, 192 in 2020 and 234 in 2019.