E-Paper
African crow spotted for first time in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur
A crow, native to Africa, has been spotted for the first time in India — at a cattle carcass dump in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur
Here’s something for the birdwatchers in India to crow about.
A crow, native to Africa, has been spotted for the first time in India — at a cattle carcass dump in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur.
The sole Pied Crow (corvus albus), smaller than the crows native to India and with white chest and belly, was spotted and photographed in August last year by Pranjal J Saikia, deputy chief geologist with Oil India Limited, and Vinod Puri Goswami, an avid bird watcher.
“On August 13, 2017, we observed an adult Pied Crow together with few common house crows at a cattle carcass dump, about 20 kms from Jodhpur. Identifying the bird was easy, as we did not know of any other similar looking species,” said Saikia.
The bird, he said, looked healthy and was attempting to socialise with the other crows. “However, the ravens and crows at the spot seemed to be avoiding it.”
Saikia said they found the Pied Crow at the same location on August 14.
Enthused, they returned to the spot several times over the next few days, but by then the bird had flown away.
“We visited the spot numerous times in the past seven years but had never come across a Pied Crow. The spotting of the bird assumes significance as the species is not reported from South Asia or, in fact, anywhere in the Oriental Region,” he added.
Puri said that the Pied Crow is found in almost the whole of sub-Saharan Africa southwards from Mauritania and Mali, central Chad and on the Red Sea coast of Sudan till Cape of Good Hope, apart from the islands of Bioko, Glorioso and Madagascar.
Goswami said the nearest this bird was recorded to India was at the island of Socotra, off the coast of Yemen in 2003–2004. Socotra is more than 2500 km from Jodhpur, across the northern Arabian Sea and farther away from it by the land route.
The sighting at the Jodhpur has triggered the obvious question: how did the bird reach India in general and Rajasthan in particular.
“It would really be exceptional for a wild vagrant to have reached India after crossing the Arabian Sea or via land,” said Saikia.
The birders say that strong monsoon winds have the potential to blow weak individuals to the northern Indian coast. “However, such windblown birds, when recovered, are either dead or dying. Also, it is usually inexperienced and immature birds that get caught in the storms, and get disoriented before being blown away. But the individual sighted in Jodhpur was adult and healthy,” Saikia said, adding some instances have been recorded when Pied Crows have crossed oceans with the assistance of ships.
The possibility of a bird being transported across the Arabian Sea and landing in Gujarat, or Pakistan, and then wandering a bit in search of feeding areas, until it reached Jodhpur, cannot be discounted, bird watchers said.
The experts also discounted the theory of the particular bird being a captive or having escaped from a zoo. They said, there were no recent records of any Indian zoo having a Pied Crow,
The first sighting of the Pied Crow was recently published in the Indian Birds journal too.
