E-Paper
Four teams win birding marathon at Vetal Tekdi
The marathon was organised to coincide with ‘Bird Week’ or ‘Pakshi Saptah’ celebrated across Maharashtra in honour of ornithologists-naturalists Dr Salim Ali and Shri Maruti Chitampalli
Out of the 30 teams that participated in the week-long birding marathon organised from November 5 to 12 at Vetal Tekdi by the Vetal Tekdi Bachav Kruti Samiti (VTBKS), four teams have won.
The marathon was organised to coincide with ‘Bird Week’ or ‘Pakshi Saptah’ celebrated across Maharashtra in honour of ornithologists-naturalists Dr Salim Ali and Shri Maruti Chitampalli who introduced the citizens of India to birds and bird watching and helped sustain their interest in the same. The birding marathon recorded over 120 bird species. The marathon not only sighted species from three different ecological systems including grassland, wetland and migratory bird species but also recorded some rare sightings of different birds.
The participants were awarded in two categories including ‘best checklist’ and ‘best trip report’. Pankaj Inamdar from ‘Team Vetal Bird’; and Shamik Sathe, Aayush Paranjape, Adil Karandikar and Ajinkya Pundalik from ‘Team Feathered Friends’ won the award in the ‘best checklist’ category whereas Adil Ali, Arjit Jere and Krisha S from ‘Team Jynx’ and Raj Pasalkar from ‘Team Saras’ won the award in the ‘best trip report’ category. These teams will be felicitated in the first week of December by forest officials, said Ranjit Rane, an organising team member of VTBKS.
The VTBKS came up with the idea of organising a week-long birding marathon at Vetal Hills to create awareness among the citizens about the biodiversity at Vetal Hills and prepare a structured database of birds at Vetal Tekdi. Nearly 30 teams, each comprising one to three members, participated in the event; and over 60 checklists were prepared by the participants on a separate web-based platform that was being developed for this activity. The team recently revealed the details of this checklist.
Rane said, “Birding is our way to conserve Vetal Hills. The pristine Vetal Tekdi located in the middle of Pune city is a lot more than just a go-to place for walkers. Owing to its unique positioning, the hill has dry deciduous forest, wetland and grassland ecosystems separated by walking distances making it an overlapping habitat for different species. The documentation of over 120 unique bird species during the event stands as a testimony to the tekdi being called a ‘birding hotspot’.”
The hill complex is one of the last existing green bastions of the city which was once abundant in biodiversity but is now being destroyed slowly under the pretext of urbanisation. Today, ill-planned projects such as the Balbharti Paud Phata Road continue to threaten the fragile ecosystem of Vetal Tekdi. While the clamour against these projects has only gotten louder, there is a dire need to create awareness about the rich biodiversity and unique bird life of the hill complex. Rane said that the VTBKS came up with the idea of a week-long birding marathon with this objective in mind.
Among the 120 plus bird species documented are some rare-to-sight birds such as the Eurasian Wryneck, Egyptian Vulture, Gray-necked Bunting, and Taiga Flycatcher. Raptors such as the Shikra, Peregrine Falcon, Montagu’s Harrier, White-eyed Buzzard, and Booted Eagles were also sighted and documented with photographs by the participants, Rane said.
Forest Department likely to use data for PBR record
The checklist prepared by the nature lovers during the birding marathon has helped citizens identify the bird species on Vetal Hills. The data generated through this activity is significant in terms of documenting the biodiversity of Vetal Hills. Therefore, the organising team visited the forest department officials and informed them about the activity as well as the data generation through this birding activity. Considering the importance of this ecological data, the department is likely to include it in its People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR), a dataset in which environmental records are being taken by citizens. This information will help the forest department to take appreciative and necessary actions for the protection of Vetal Hills, Rane said.
