Kolkata: The third edition of Sundarbans Bird Festival will kick off on Wednesday.
The five-day event, that will continue till Jan 26, will cover the entire Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve area, including the tiger reserve and South 24 Parganas forest division, where birders, photographers and conservationists will observe birds, write down their names and places of occurrence.
This time two more days have been added to the itinerary — till last year, it was a three-day event — and more areas will be covered this time.
This year, 24 participants divided in six teams will take part in the exercise. "Each team will have four participants, an expert and a forest dept staff. Importance of the landscape in the Asian Flyway and the trend of bird occurrence will also be discussed during the five-day exercise," said Justine Jones, deputy field director, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve.
According to him while the summary report will be out on Jan 26 and the final report will be published later.
Last year, the participants managed to sight 8,886 birds — a 76% rise from 5,045 in 2023. The number of species sighted, though, was 135 — lower than 145 in 2023. Experts had attributed this to a host of factors like bad weather and fewer sightings of shorebirds at many mudflats.
Among the species sighted last year, 14 were threatened species. While 79 species were recorded in the core area in 2024, 74 were found in the buffer zones. Forty-two species were sighted outside the protected areas.