Mumbai: Birds
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Mumbai BirdRace
2020
From: Vijay Singh, Maharashtra: Lowest ever species count at Mumbai BirdRace, February 6, 2020: The Times of India
From: Vijay Singh, Maharashtra: Lowest ever species count at Mumbai BirdRace, February 6, 2020: The Times of India
From: Vijay Singh, Maharashtra: Lowest ever species count at Mumbai BirdRace, February 6, 2020: The Times of India
MUMBAI: At the just concluded Mumbai BirdRace event, the total number of bird species spotted in and around Maharashtra's Mumbai region was disappointingly low, at 192. It is the lowest species count during the last 16 years since the annual BirdRaces began.
Naturalists and bird experts Sunjoy Monga and Ravi Vaidyanathan, who have collated the bird statistics, said that the previous low species count was 215 in 2016.
"For all other years the total count has been over 220 species, and averaging around 240 species. While there can be one-off low bird activity days, the observations this year seem more like an indicator of the sorry state of affairs of the region’s ecological health, with rampant and seemingly endless developmental expansion and habitat disturbance and destruction. The day’s weather too was just perfect, in fact a pleasant wintry temperature, not at all warm as the 2016 BirdRace day had been, said Monga.
The nearly 60 teams of total 300 bird watchers covered every kind of habitat and terrain across the Mumbai metropolitan region, from Alibag region in the south to the Vasai – Virar and slightly beyond northward, and up to the foothills of the Sahyadri hills to the east. Forest, surviving open lands and scrub, a variety of inland and coastal wetland tracts, and plenty of urban and urban-edge surrounds, all were covered by eager birding eyes and ears.
Monga further commented: "The manic pace of human development is destroying bird habitats. For example, at the Seawoods coast, where hundreds of flamingos are regularly seen, the authorities are trying to make an Integrated Golf Course Project with big towers. This will further lessen the bird counts, as is seen at the already destroyed Uran wetlands.
There were also no reports of sighting of Vultures, Quail/Francolin/Junglefowl species.
Red spurfowl was spotted by two teams. Also, there were less than six total reports each of Larks (3 species), Woodpeckers (4 species), Wagtails (3 species).
This year, some of the interesting (uncommon) bird sightings were of Indian Blue Robin (sighted for the third year in a row from Matheran); Black Eagle; Brown-breasted Flycatcher; and Besra among others.
