Radio-tagged Amur Falcon reaches breeding ground in China from NE India
Chiulon, named after a village in Manipur’s Tamenglong district and four other falcons namely Puching, Phalong-both names of villages in Tamenglong district, Irang and Barak - both names of rivers of the district, were radio tagged to study their flight route.
Two days before the World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) on May 9, a radio-tagged male Amur falcon reached the breeding area in northern China from northeast India, a Wildlife Institute of India (WII) official said on Tuesday.
The bird which made a brief stop in Mizoram following its return in the third week of April after completing its winter sojourn in Africa left for China on April 28.
The World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) is a global campaign to raise awareness about migratory birds and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.
“Chiulon arrived in the land of the Amurs located 600 km northeast of Beijing on Thursday (May 7). The bird is the first among our current batch of tagged birds,” WII scientist R Suresh Kumar, who is currently monitoring the route of the migratory bird, said.
“Chiulon clocked 9,600 km in 15 days since leaving the Somali coast on April 23. Whether he will stop here to breed or continue to move further to the North we will have to wait and see.”
Chiulon, named after a village in Manipur’s Tamenglong district and four other falcons namely Puching, Phalong-both names of villages in Tamenglong district, Irang and Barak - both names of rivers of the district, were radio tagged with satellite transmitters by the forest department in collaboration with WII scientists to study the flight route of these long-distance migratory birds and environmental patterns along the route.
Though all the falcons are sharing their data during this radio tagging programme, Puching and Phalong failed to transmit any data few days after they were tagged.
Irang was in the mountainous tracts of Myanmar’s Mandalay region while Barak was last located over Odisha.
On the other hand Longleng, a female Amur falcon named after Nagaland’s district was radio-tagged in October 2016 in Nagaland was last located 600 km south of Beijing.
“I think she will arrive at the same woodland patch to breed which is another 600 km northeast of Beijing,” Kumar said.
On WMBD, he said, “Migratory birds know no boundary. They connect our planet, connect landscapes and as we know now from our Amur falcons they connect communities. It is one world for all of us.”
In their annual migratory flight to South Africa from northern China, Amur falcons pass through northeast India, particularly Manipur and Nagaland.
