S and N 24 Pgns, Darj have most bird species with declining population trend
Times of India | 23 July 2024According to the SOIB report, baya weaver (baya tanti), pied cuckoo (chatak) and house sparrow numbers are declining in Bengal compared to the national trend over the last eight years.
“While South 24 Parganas has 59 high-priority species, Darjeeling has 50 and North 24 Parganas has 48,” the report said. High-priority species are those whose population shows a trend of decline during the exercise.
However, Ashwin Vishwanathan of Nature Conservation Foundation’s (NCF) bird monitoring team said the baya weaver, pied cuckoo and house sparrow are not on the priority list in Bengal as they still have a large and diverse range across India.
The report also highlighted district-wise high-priority species, like brown-winged kingfisher in South 24 Parganas, rufous-necked hornbill in Alipurduar and Darjeeling and the great parrotbill in Darjeeling. According to the report, North and South Dinajpur and Cooch Behar need more birding as the lowest number of bird lists were uploaded from there.
Talking about the bird atlas, Birdwatchers’ Society (BWS) secretary Sujan Chatterjee said the initiative is likely to span three years and will focus on covering at least 50% of the habitat across the state by then.
The state will be divided into 6-km grids, each segmented into 36 sub-grids of 1 sq-km. These sub-cells will be monitored four times annually, in summer, monsoon, winter and spring, to map the nature of habitats and record bird species found in them, said Chatterjee on the sidelines of the meet, a collaborative effort by Birdwatchers’ Society, eBird and Bird Count India.
According to Praveen J of NCF’s bird monitoring team, each sub-grid will be surveyed with a focus on recording the species, their migratory or passage migratory status, and whether they are juvenile or breeding.
