Tamil Nadu’s Salem district emerged as the top participant from the country in the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2023, a four-day bird watching event that took place from February 17 to 20 this year.
The results from the GBBC showed over 10,000 checklists uploaded from Salem. A ‘checklist’ refers to an entry in the eBird portal, where all birders are required to register their sightings. It mentions the date, time, species, and the number of birds of a particular species spotted. In four days, from February 17 to 20, over 4,000 birders across India listed 1,072 species, which amounts to 79 per cent of all the species recorded in the country.
S.V. Ganeshwar, founder-director, Salem Ornithological Foundation (SOF), one of the top contributors to the GBBC with over 370 checklists, attributed the high number of checklists from Salem to the enthusiastic participation of government school students in the district, including the Panchayat Union Middle School, Krishnampudur.
SOF’s work with students of the Krishnampudur panchayat school has helped them move from hunting the birds to conserving them, he said. “It is not unusual for children in rural areas to hunt birds using a catapult and to raid nests during the holidays. After our engagement with the students, they are now making nest boxes and placing them at their school,” he said.
Angeline Mano M., programme coordinator, SOF, visited four wetlands, Nallur lake, Chinna Punalvasal lake, Thenkumarai lake and Manivilundhan old tank during the GBBC. One of Ms. Mano’s special sightings was the Bluethroat, her “lifebird”, which is known to have been seen after four years in Salem. A ‘lifebird’ is a bird species seen for the first time by a birder.
Like in previous years, the Common Myna remained the most common species in all regions except the west. In the southern region, the most commonly-spotted birds were the House Crow, Common Myna, Black Drongo, White-throated Kingfisher, and Rose-ringed parakeet.
