Third case in two years: Bird spotted with beak shut by plastic; search op yields no result

The state wildlife department, on Monday, launched a search for a bird—oriental darter—which was seen Sunday in Palwal district’s Mandkola area with its beak wrapped

The state wildlife department, on Monday, launched a search for a bird—oriental darter—which was seen Sunday in Palwal district’s Mandkola area with its beak wrapped shut by a green plastic sheet. Despite an hours-long attempt to find the bird, officials said they were unable to track it on Monday. They did not clarify if the wildlife department would continue its search operation today.

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This is the third such incident since 2018 when a black-necked stork was found with a rubber ring around its beak in Basai. In November 2019 another oriental darter was seen in Sultanpur with an orange piece of plastic effectively sealing its beak shut.

The latest sighting sparked concern among birders and environmentalists, who said that sightings of birds in distress because of plastic pollution were becoming more common in the avian biodiversity hotspots of the National Capital Region (NCR).

Nitin Chandra, a Delhi-based birder and photographer, who spotted and photographed the distressed darter in Mandkola, said, “The bird was part of a group of about four oriental darters. We saw it around 1:30pm at a water body near the Badevir Baba temple in Mandkola. When we checked again around 4pm, the bird was still there, trying to remove the plastic from its beak while its companions had flown off. Darters don’t stay put in one place for this long. It seemed agitated.”

Chandra alerted fellow birder Nikhil Devasar, who on Monday reached out to the state wildlife department.

Wildlife inspector Charan Singh, who set out to the look for the bird Monday afternoon, said, “We spent a couple of hours looking for the bird but had no luck tracking it down. I have seen a picture of the bird and the plastic should come off easily.” Singh did not state if the wildlife department would continue its search operation.

Meanwhile, birders said such incidents have become more frequent in the recent years.

“This is becoming quite common, especially with darters. In the last three to four months itself, I have seen two oriental darters, in my hometown of Dighal, who had some trash hanging off their beaks,” Rakesh Ahlawat, a birder from Dighal, said.

Ahlawat added that darters, with their long necks and slender, probing bills, feed along the surfaces of shallow water bodies. “These are places where trash collects easily. Most birding locations in Haryana, Delhi and UP are being used as dump sites. This poses a threat not just to darters, but also storks and herons who feed in similar environments,” he said.

“These incidents are emblematic of the potential dangers that wild animals and birds face due to plastic. However, there is little we can do in such situations. With the Basai stork incident in 2018, the bird got lucky. We were able to track his movement from Basai to Najafgarh and rescue it. With darters, it’s a lot harder to track them in the first place,” Pankaj Gupta, of the Delhi Bird Foundation, said.

A resident species, the oriental darter (or snakebird) is classified as ‘near threatened’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ‘red list’ of threatened species, but can be commonly seen around large wetland ecosystems in NCR, such as Basai, Okhla, Dhanauri and Najafgarh.