The chirps of the myriad colourful birds seen in Uttarakhand have become a little louder, and our happiness in knowing so has made our heart beat a little faster. It’s a good news for all the bird lovers as the recently held Great Backyard Bird Count, the largest synchronized bird count event across the world has recognized Uttarakhand as a birding heaven.
The event was held between 12-15 February where active participation of the bird enthusiasts from India was seen. About 1100 bird lovers submitted around 7,800 bird checklists.
Raman Kumar, director, Nature’s Science Initiative said, “India was at number one spot in terms of the number of species reported with 785 bird species. The country ranked third (behind US and Canada) in the number of checklists submitted. Within India, Uttarakhand led the way and recorded 402 bird species – the highest from any state.”
The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was started in the US in 1988. It started as a citizen-science project to collect data on birds when its popularity hit the masses it became global in 2013. GBBC runs for 4 days every February encouraging people to go birding anywhere even in their backyard or parks and record their observations on the eBird website.
Photo: Santosh Rawat
“WII recorded maximum 147 bird species from its campus itself out of 100 odd campuses across the country. It is mainly because WII has an ideal mosaic habitat which includes grassland, woodland, marshy, swampy, wetland, lakh, vegetation which encourages good diversity of birds,” said Gopi GV, Scientist with Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
With the introduction of such global bird events, it has become easier to identify and study the complex distribution and behaviour of birds. Also, we can brush up our knowledge about the wide variety of birds that are not only found in India but all around the globe. Such events help in unleashing the citizen scientists within the bird lovers who are inquisitive researchers as well. Also, the data collected on birds can be used to know about the climate change influence on birds, their movements from year to year, their patterns and migration.
News Src: The Economic Times