Indian birdwatchers are flocking together in droves

Birdwatching was once considered a pastime of the elite, but over the past few years people from almost all walks of life have been spending time in green watery zones to catch the chirp of the winged creatures.

Updated on: Feb 15, 2015, 24:25:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Birdwatching was once considered a pastime of the elite, but over the past few years people from almost all walks of life have been spending time in green watery zones to catch the chirp of the winged creatures.

Networks of enthusiasts have swelled at a brisk pace in India and one of these groups added another feather to its cap this month – one million bird sightings, a fivefold increase from an annual exercise a year ago.

Not that the number of birds has gone up, but the number of birders certainly has –from about 1,000 on the Bird Count India network in 2014, to 3,000 this year.
The network has a burgeoning database of birds in India, as the government does not conduct a bird census even for the endangered species.

Suhel Quader, a scientist at the Bengaluru-based Nature Conservation Foundation who started the initiative two years ago, said people have disposable incomes and they are willing to spend it on equipment – cameras and binoculars – to observe nature from close quarters.

While the advent of digital photography has made clicking pictures easier and more affordable, the internet has provided a platform to share them with the world.
“Hundreds of people put pictures of birds on their Facebook pages and we have tried to bring them together for having a national database of birds,” Quader said.
Increasing awareness about wildlife among the youth is another reason for such a jump in bird sightings with about a third of the contributors below the age of 40, he added.

“If the birds go missing from an area, it is the first warning for people. Lots of birds in a place indicate that surface water quality is good and air is better,” said Fayaz Khudsar, a wildlife biologist at Delhi’s Yamuna Bio-Diversity Park.

The initiative has helped chronicle birds like Indian Pitta that was viewed in Delhi for the first time in 60 years and migratory birds like Whooper Swan being spotted in Himachal Pradesh’s Pong Dam lake after 13 years. The Indian Pond Heron is now the fifth most commonly spotted bird in India, appearing in 35% of the lists.

This would not have been possible without people like former Customs commissioner Vinod Goyal, who got interested in wildlife photography about a decade ago during his posting in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh city.

“People buy jewellery from their savings. I bought a camera and other equipment to pursue my hobby,” he said.

Then there are enthusiasts like Balram Bhargav, a busy cardiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and Delhi police sub-inspector Rajeev Kumar.

“Wildlife photography is like opium. It takes you in,” said Raghav Bagel, a software professional at Tata Consultancy Services, who carries his camera all the time to catch birds on the move.

In 2014, 800 unique bird species were recorded in India, the highest for any country. This year, Quader’s team estimates that the number of species would almost double, turning global spotlight on India as a hot birdwatching destination.

Total bird sightings: 1.04 million
Kerala: 20%
Karnataka: 18%
Tamil Nadu: 11%
Maharashtra: 8%
Goa: 7%
Delhi: 5%
Himachal Pradesh: 4%

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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