Why are migratory birds supplying India a overlook?
It was a late wintertime evening in the early 1980s. Just one of us (T. Ganesh) was in a little patch of grassland in the vicinity of Hyderabad, counting harriers, a hawk-like bird that migrates to India in winter season. There were hundreds of them, all flocking down to spend the night on the grassy meadow.
When we went again to the position some 15 years afterwards, the grasslands had disappeared, replaced by trees planted in neat rows. The harriers ended up nowhere to be viewed. A lot more recently, in Tamil Nadu a massive patch of grassland was shed to a tree plantation generate, robbing the harriers as soon as once more of their night time roosting grounds. As we travelled throughout India searching for harriers, we discovered the identical story repeated everywhere—as grasslands have been diverted to other forms of use, harriers and other grassland dependent species stopped viewing. No question, harrier counts carried out by several birdwatchers and researchers across India indicated a continual drop in their numbers in the very last 30 yrs. It is the very same with many other species of migratory birds, which are fast losing their migratory quarters and wintering grounds.
Twice a year, 1000’s of birds migrate between their breeding and non-breeding grounds divided by thousands of kilometres spanning mountains, deserts, and oceans. The prolonged journeys are not devoid of perils, but they nevertheless undertake it. There are illustrations of birds covering astounding distances although migrating. Birds like the Amur falcon, wandering albatross, Arctic terns, and the bar-tailed godwits are expert voyagers, with the latter regarded to undertake sea-crossings of much more than 11,000 km non-quit.
The flyways
Why do birds do this? Research implies quite a few good reasons guiding the dangerous undertaking: the reduction in working day length and temperatures in temperate areas during wintertime lowers food availability, making the birds shift southwards to the hotter tropical locations for meals. Another explanation is to decrease competition with other similar species.
Prolonged-distance migratory birds have evolved to use specific flight paths for their journeys: identified as flyways, these span continents and oceans. A flyway contains not just migratory pathways but also breeding and wintering ranges. Broadly, there are 8 migration flyways throughout the world. They ended up at first categorised on the foundation of the migration of the waterfowl, which journey in huge flocks, but these paths are also used by other birds ranging from little songbirds (passerines) and tiny warblers to significant birds of prey (raptors). Yrs of research that involved capturing the birds and marking them with colored rings have helped discern these flyways. The rings have exceptional numerical and color codes which assist monitor the birds. Although chook ringing has been practised for far more than a century, scientists right now have the alternative of tagging birds with transmitters and GPS loggers, which trace their migratory paths and map crucial stopover places, where by they feed and replenish on their own.
A poster by Rohan Chakravarty for Bombay All-natural Record Culture depicting migration journeys, ringing and recovery initiatives carried out for 25 species of birds. To the remaining is a map of the Indian subcontinent that demonstrates birds ringed and recovered inside of India. To the ideal is a map of the Outdated Globe, showing rings and recoveries outside the house of the subcontinent. The icons that enclose the birds also depict their preferred habitat in ringing and recovery places. The poster was shown at the CMS COP 12 held in Manila in October 2017.
| Photograph Credit:
BNHS/ Rohan Chakravarty
There are three important flyways in Asia, specifically the West Pacific flyway, the East Asian Australasian flyway, and the Central Asian Flyway (CAF). India falls within just the CAF, which is unfold across Eurasia from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and geographically spans 30 nations around the world. This flyway is utilised by at minimum 400 species of birds, which breed in the central Asian region and migrate down south to the Indian subcontinent all through wintertime. The topography and ecosystem variety alongside the flyway contain the high-altitude Himalayan plateau, deserts, lakes and marshes, and steppe/grassland habitats.
Long-time period checking programmes to assess the populations of the migratory birds are continue to in their nascency in India, the principal challenge becoming the large spatial scale with umpteen amount of essential habitats that make it tricky to observe each individual of them continually. Ecologically developed scientific studies have been carried out only not too long ago: ahead of this, two decades of mid-winter waterbird counts across Asia and India ended up the only source of info on migratory birds. Initiatives to check birds are far more typical now. In modern a long time, there have been many person and team hen-viewing programmes, wherever birdwatchers volunteer to systematically depend birds at quickly obtainable areas (in spots close to towns). Fowl Rely India, an informal partnership of organisations and groups functioning alongside one another to boost the collective understanding about hen distribution and inhabitants, has been instrumental in marketing little-scale checking programmes by personal birdwatchers.
Bleak photo
The Condition of India’s Birds report (SoIB), revealed in 2020, was the very first in depth examine on the distribution array, trends in abundance, and conservation standing for most of the chicken species that commonly come about in India. Based on group-sourced and citizen science knowledge, uploaded in the eBird system, the report provides a bleak photo for bird populations: 52 for every cent of the 867 species assessed are on the decrease. This contains prolonged-distance migratory birds and birds related with open ecosystems these as grasslands. For instance, species these as pallid harriers, steppe eagles and tawny eagles, all of which migrate to or within India from the central Asian steppes, are acquiring rarer. Nonetheless, for most birds, the components leading to the drop are at the moment unknown.
A female Montagu’s harrier at Yenkathala grasslands around Hyderabad that has migrated from Kazakhstan.
| Photograph Credit score:
Dr. Nisarga
This underlines the urgent need for nation-wide chicken checking and investigate programmes. The SoIB report pointed out that due to the fact most of the central Asian breeding locations are distant and uninhabited, a great deal of the monitoring have to be carried out in India. India can comply with the case in point of other big nations in carrying out this.
Europe and North The usa have been conducting prolonged-time period investigate on chicken populations for pretty much fifty percent a century, building precious details. Insights from this sort of programmes notify govt policies for the conservation of birds and their habitats. Ringing programmes these kinds of as EURING have operate for many years, mapping the migratory routes of extra than 100 species of birds together the Eurasian-African flyways. These programmes, strengthened by the arrival of satellite telemetry, support delineate the breeding and resting web pages during migration as nicely as the wintering sites of just about every species, even of specific birds. Superior resolution GPS trackers are now generating information at extremely great spatial and temporal scales. Scientific tests utilizing this kind of datasets have even been in a position to determine at which stage of the migratory cycles there is a higher threat of mortality.
Fowl ringing programmes have been going on in India for the past 5 a long time. Although these programmes have presented superb information and facts on substantial-scale migration patterns in the CAF, the proportion of ring recoveries is very low. Until a ringed hen is captured at another web site, we get no facts concerning its actions. Hence for most species, we continue to do not have info on migration routes and breeding ranges.
Collared bar-headed geese originating from central and western Mongolia have been sighted in Hadinaru lake, Mysuru, in 2017.
| Photograph Credit rating:
Sighted and photographed by Vijayalakshmi Rao
Tracking know-how is staying ever more employed to give facts on how birds use the CAF. So, now we know about the significant-altitude crossing carried out by the bar-headed geese throughout the Himalaya, the very long migratory flights of the Amur falcons, the loop migrations throughout and away from the Himalaya by the demoiselle cranes, and, additional importantly, the movement and behaviour of threatened species these kinds of as the fantastic Indian bustard and the lesser florican, which shift within rather lesser ranges in the arid portion of the region. Raptors this sort of as black-eared kites, harriers, and numerous species of vultures are also getting tracked.
Neighborhood communities and citizen experts have built huge contributions to prolonged-time period hen monitoring, with the collected info applied for tutorial analysis. Citizen science hen checking initiatives released in India in the final 10 decades involve the Prevalent Chook Monitoring Programme of the Bombay Normal Heritage Modern society, Bird Atlases in a few States done by Hen Rely India, and the once-a-year Asian water chook census that comes about throughout all significant wetlands in India. Rather often, it is a popular migratory gray wagtail or a leaf warbler somewhat than a rarely occurring fowl species that will have a tale to explain to.
Highlights
-
Migratory birds are rapidly losing their migratory quarters and wintering grounds in India
-
There are 3 major flyways in Asia, namely the West Pacific flyway, the East Asian Australasian flyway, and the Central Asian Flyway (CAF). India falls in the CAF.
-
Long-time period monitoring programmes to assess the populations of the migratory birds are even now in their nascency.
-
Even so, area communities and citizen scientists have created huge contributions to prolonged-term chook checking.
Citizen attempts
Not long ago, the results of a analyze of wintering water birds from southern Tamil Nadu spanning 10 winters was posted by scientists from the Ashoka Believe in for Study in Ecology and the Natural environment (ATREE). The review documented a drop in 28 for each cent of the 50 species observed around 10 many years whilst noting the role that big reservoirs and crucial wetlands together the Tamiraparani river engage in in the lives of wintering birds in the course of droughts.
Birdwatchers consider component in a fowl and butterfly census in Salem in Tamil Nadu on February 16, 2020. In new yrs, there has been a spurt in personal and group chicken-looking at voluntary programmes, in which birdwatchers volunteer to systematically rely birds at quickly obtainable areas (this sort of as in areas to near to metropolitan areas). The facts uploaded by these programmes are a must have for analysis.
| Picture Credit rating:
E. Lakshmi Narayanan
The review was produced probable by the help of citizen groups from Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi towns, as effectively as of student teams and volunteers across the two districts. ATREE has also started out species-oriented monitoring initiatives this sort of as the HarrierWatch programme, which not only displays the migratory harrier populations but also collects very important facts on the species’ diet regime via photos and on their actions by ringing and GPS tagging them. It maps patches of grasslands across the country as nicely. Quite a few additional of such initiatives are enlisted in the Citizen Science India website. In accordance to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), a United Nations initiative, the CAF has the minimum accessible information and facts on migratory birds in comparison with the other big flyways.
Precise tracking data is obtainable for considerably less than 1 for each cent of the hen species employing the CAF. Reviews show that a amount of threats impact the birds on this route: habitat reduction, common practices of hunting, intense agriculture, and lack of pesticide administration. Unless extra information and facts on the migratory pathways and the community of habitats together the CAF is obtainable, conservation programmes are not able to be set in location.
Need of the hour
For this, international locations together the CAF should collaborate. The CMS enacted the Central Asian Flyway Motion Approach in 2020, which “provides the foundation for the 30 Assortment States (Nations) to choose individual and coordinated region-broad activities to preserve waterbirds and their habitats.”
This was followed up in a assembly (May well 2 to 4) held by the Ministry of Atmosphere, Forest and Weather Change in collaboration with the CMS in New Delhi, where by selection nations around the world formalised the Central Asian Flyway initiative, agreeing to collaborate to improve conservation efforts for migratory birds and their habitats. The main challenge to the selection of date together the CAF are the several ongoing geopolitical conflicts and tensions in the area.
“The Central Asian Flyway is applied by at least 400 species of birds, which breed in the central Asian region and migrate to the Indian subcontinent in the course of winter”
The focus of the CMS, even though significant, is nevertheless restricted to wetland birds and their habitats. There is an urgent need to monitor other migratory birds in the CAF as nicely, such as eagles, falcons and songbird species that winter in crucial habitats across India.
This sort of coordinated scientific studies are usually restricted by the truth that birds of forests, open habitat ecosystems and agricultural regions do not come their purview. For occasion, the Raptors MoU signed by the govt in 2016, aiming to market analysis and monitoring of migrant and resident birds of prey, focusses on just the raptors, which, as prime predators, type the flagship species. Birds decreased down in the ecological chain deserve notice much too.
Local climate transform in the study course of the previous few a long time is explained to have altered the distributional ranges of birds around the world. The want of the hour is not just to have out analysis on how migratory birds alongside the CAF will respond to far more of such unfavourable alterations in the foreseeable future, but also to employ insurance policies to preserve ecosystems, which would hold the impressive odysseys alive.
Arjun Kannan is a PhD researcher with ATREE, Bengaluru, who is functioning on the migration ecology of harriers in India. Prashanth M.B. research birds in human-dominated landscapes and savanna grasslands, and performs with citizen experts to build inventories and map waterbirds. T. Ganesh is a senior fellow at ATREE.
Additional stories from this concern
It was a late wintertime evening in the early 1980s. Just one of us (T. Ganesh) was in a little patch of grassland in the vicinity of Hyderabad, counting harriers, a hawk-like bird that migrates to India in winter season. There were hundreds of them, all flocking down to spend the night on the grassy meadow.
When we went again to the position some 15 years afterwards, the grasslands had disappeared, replaced by trees planted in neat rows. The harriers ended up nowhere to be viewed. A lot more recently, in Tamil Nadu a massive patch of grassland was shed to a tree plantation generate, robbing the harriers as soon as once more of their night time roosting grounds. As we travelled throughout India searching for harriers, we discovered the identical story repeated everywhere—as grasslands have been diverted to other forms of use, harriers and other grassland dependent species stopped viewing. No question, harrier counts carried out by several birdwatchers and researchers across India indicated a continual drop in their numbers in the very last 30 yrs. It is the very same with many other species of migratory birds, which are fast losing their migratory quarters and wintering grounds.
Twice a year, 1000’s of birds migrate between their breeding and non-breeding grounds divided by thousands of kilometres spanning mountains, deserts, and oceans. The prolonged journeys are not devoid of perils, but they nevertheless undertake it. There are illustrations of birds covering astounding distances although migrating. Birds like the Amur falcon, wandering albatross, Arctic terns, and the bar-tailed godwits are expert voyagers, with the latter regarded to undertake sea-crossings of much more than 11,000 km non-quit.
The flyways
Why do birds do this? Research implies quite a few good reasons guiding the dangerous undertaking: the reduction in working day length and temperatures in temperate areas during wintertime lowers food availability, making the birds shift southwards to the hotter tropical locations for meals. Another explanation is to decrease competition with other similar species.
Prolonged-distance migratory birds have evolved to use specific flight paths for their journeys: identified as flyways, these span continents and oceans. A flyway contains not just migratory pathways but also breeding and wintering ranges. Broadly, there are 8 migration flyways throughout the world. They ended up at first categorised on the foundation of the migration of the waterfowl, which journey in huge flocks, but these paths are also used by other birds ranging from little songbirds (passerines) and tiny warblers to significant birds of prey (raptors). Yrs of research that involved capturing the birds and marking them with colored rings have helped discern these flyways. The rings have exceptional numerical and color codes which assist monitor the birds. Although chook ringing has been practised for far more than a century, scientists right now have the alternative of tagging birds with transmitters and GPS loggers, which trace their migratory paths and map crucial stopover places, where by they feed and replenish on their own.
A poster by Rohan Chakravarty for Bombay All-natural Record Culture depicting migration journeys, ringing and recovery initiatives carried out for 25 species of birds. To the remaining is a map of the Indian subcontinent that demonstrates birds ringed and recovered inside of India. To the ideal is a map of the Outdated Globe, showing rings and recoveries outside the house of the subcontinent. The icons that enclose the birds also depict their preferred habitat in ringing and recovery places. The poster was shown at the CMS COP 12 held in Manila in October 2017.
| Photograph Credit:
BNHS/ Rohan Chakravarty
There are three important flyways in Asia, specifically the West Pacific flyway, the East Asian Australasian flyway, and the Central Asian Flyway (CAF). India falls within just the CAF, which is unfold across Eurasia from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and geographically spans 30 nations around the world. This flyway is utilised by at minimum 400 species of birds, which breed in the central Asian region and migrate down south to the Indian subcontinent all through wintertime. The topography and ecosystem variety alongside the flyway contain the high-altitude Himalayan plateau, deserts, lakes and marshes, and steppe/grassland habitats.
Long-time period checking programmes to assess the populations of the migratory birds are continue to in their nascency in India, the principal challenge becoming the large spatial scale with umpteen amount of essential habitats that make it tricky to observe each individual of them continually. Ecologically developed scientific studies have been carried out only not too long ago: ahead of this, two decades of mid-winter waterbird counts across Asia and India ended up the only source of info on migratory birds. Initiatives to check birds are far more typical now. In modern a long time, there have been many person and team hen-viewing programmes, wherever birdwatchers volunteer to systematically depend birds at quickly obtainable areas (in spots close to towns). Fowl Rely India, an informal partnership of organisations and groups functioning alongside one another to boost the collective understanding about hen distribution and inhabitants, has been instrumental in marketing little-scale checking programmes by personal birdwatchers.
Bleak photo
The Condition of India’s Birds report (SoIB), revealed in 2020, was the very first in depth examine on the distribution array, trends in abundance, and conservation standing for most of the chicken species that commonly come about in India. Based on group-sourced and citizen science knowledge, uploaded in the eBird system, the report provides a bleak photo for bird populations: 52 for every cent of the 867 species assessed are on the decrease. This contains prolonged-distance migratory birds and birds related with open ecosystems these as grasslands. For instance, species these as pallid harriers, steppe eagles and tawny eagles, all of which migrate to or within India from the central Asian steppes, are acquiring rarer. Nonetheless, for most birds, the components leading to the drop are at the moment unknown.
A female Montagu’s harrier at Yenkathala grasslands around Hyderabad that has migrated from Kazakhstan.
| Photograph Credit score:
Dr. Nisarga
This underlines the urgent need for nation-wide chicken checking and investigate programmes. The SoIB report pointed out that due to the fact most of the central Asian breeding locations are distant and uninhabited, a great deal of the monitoring have to be carried out in India. India can comply with the case in point of other big nations in carrying out this.
Europe and North The usa have been conducting prolonged-time period investigate on chicken populations for pretty much fifty percent a century, building precious details. Insights from this sort of programmes notify govt policies for the conservation of birds and their habitats. Ringing programmes these kinds of as EURING have operate for many years, mapping the migratory routes of extra than 100 species of birds together the Eurasian-African flyways. These programmes, strengthened by the arrival of satellite telemetry, support delineate the breeding and resting web pages during migration as nicely as the wintering sites of just about every species, even of specific birds. Superior resolution GPS trackers are now generating information at extremely great spatial and temporal scales. Scientific tests utilizing this kind of datasets have even been in a position to determine at which stage of the migratory cycles there is a higher threat of mortality.
Fowl ringing programmes have been going on in India for the past 5 a long time. Although these programmes have presented superb information and facts on substantial-scale migration patterns in the CAF, the proportion of ring recoveries is very low. Until a ringed hen is captured at another web site, we get no facts concerning its actions. Hence for most species, we continue to do not have info on migration routes and breeding ranges.
Collared bar-headed geese originating from central and western Mongolia have been sighted in Hadinaru lake, Mysuru, in 2017.
| Photograph Credit rating:
Sighted and photographed by Vijayalakshmi Rao
Tracking know-how is staying ever more employed to give facts on how birds use the CAF. So, now we know about the significant-altitude crossing carried out by the bar-headed geese throughout the Himalaya, the very long migratory flights of the Amur falcons, the loop migrations throughout and away from the Himalaya by the demoiselle cranes, and, additional importantly, the movement and behaviour of threatened species these kinds of as the fantastic Indian bustard and the lesser florican, which shift within rather lesser ranges in the arid portion of the region. Raptors this sort of as black-eared kites, harriers, and numerous species of vultures are also getting tracked.
Neighborhood communities and citizen experts have built huge contributions to prolonged-time period hen monitoring, with the collected info applied for tutorial analysis. Citizen science hen checking initiatives released in India in the final 10 decades involve the Prevalent Chook Monitoring Programme of the Bombay Normal Heritage Modern society, Bird Atlases in a few States done by Hen Rely India, and the once-a-year Asian water chook census that comes about throughout all significant wetlands in India. Rather often, it is a popular migratory gray wagtail or a leaf warbler somewhat than a rarely occurring fowl species that will have a tale to explain to.
Highlights
- Migratory birds are rapidly losing their migratory quarters and wintering grounds in India
- There are 3 major flyways in Asia, namely the West Pacific flyway, the East Asian Australasian flyway, and the Central Asian Flyway (CAF). India falls in the CAF.
- Long-time period monitoring programmes to assess the populations of the migratory birds are even now in their nascency.
- Even so, area communities and citizen scientists have created huge contributions to prolonged-term chook checking.
Citizen attempts
Not long ago, the results of a analyze of wintering water birds from southern Tamil Nadu spanning 10 winters was posted by scientists from the Ashoka Believe in for Study in Ecology and the Natural environment (ATREE). The review documented a drop in 28 for each cent of the 50 species observed around 10 many years whilst noting the role that big reservoirs and crucial wetlands together the Tamiraparani river engage in in the lives of wintering birds in the course of droughts.
Birdwatchers consider component in a fowl and butterfly census in Salem in Tamil Nadu on February 16, 2020. In new yrs, there has been a spurt in personal and group chicken-looking at voluntary programmes, in which birdwatchers volunteer to systematically rely birds at quickly obtainable areas (this sort of as in areas to near to metropolitan areas). The facts uploaded by these programmes are a must have for analysis.
| Picture Credit rating:
E. Lakshmi Narayanan
The review was produced probable by the help of citizen groups from Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi towns, as effectively as of student teams and volunteers across the two districts. ATREE has also started out species-oriented monitoring initiatives this sort of as the HarrierWatch programme, which not only displays the migratory harrier populations but also collects very important facts on the species’ diet regime via photos and on their actions by ringing and GPS tagging them. It maps patches of grasslands across the country as nicely. Quite a few additional of such initiatives are enlisted in the Citizen Science India website. In accordance to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), a United Nations initiative, the CAF has the minimum accessible information and facts on migratory birds in comparison with the other big flyways.
Precise tracking data is obtainable for considerably less than 1 for each cent of the hen species employing the CAF. Reviews show that a amount of threats impact the birds on this route: habitat reduction, common practices of hunting, intense agriculture, and lack of pesticide administration. Unless extra information and facts on the migratory pathways and the community of habitats together the CAF is obtainable, conservation programmes are not able to be set in location.
Need of the hour
For this, international locations together the CAF should collaborate. The CMS enacted the Central Asian Flyway Motion Approach in 2020, which “provides the foundation for the 30 Assortment States (Nations) to choose individual and coordinated region-broad activities to preserve waterbirds and their habitats.”
This was followed up in a assembly (May well 2 to 4) held by the Ministry of Atmosphere, Forest and Weather Change in collaboration with the CMS in New Delhi, where by selection nations around the world formalised the Central Asian Flyway initiative, agreeing to collaborate to improve conservation efforts for migratory birds and their habitats. The main challenge to the selection of date together the CAF are the several ongoing geopolitical conflicts and tensions in the area.
“The Central Asian Flyway is applied by at least 400 species of birds, which breed in the central Asian region and migrate to the Indian subcontinent in the course of winter”
The focus of the CMS, even though significant, is nevertheless restricted to wetland birds and their habitats. There is an urgent need to monitor other migratory birds in the CAF as nicely, such as eagles, falcons and songbird species that winter in crucial habitats across India.
This sort of coordinated scientific studies are usually restricted by the truth that birds of forests, open habitat ecosystems and agricultural regions do not come their purview. For occasion, the Raptors MoU signed by the govt in 2016, aiming to market analysis and monitoring of migrant and resident birds of prey, focusses on just the raptors, which, as prime predators, type the flagship species. Birds decreased down in the ecological chain deserve notice much too.
Local climate transform in the study course of the previous few a long time is explained to have altered the distributional ranges of birds around the world. The want of the hour is not just to have out analysis on how migratory birds alongside the CAF will respond to far more of such unfavourable alterations in the foreseeable future, but also to employ insurance policies to preserve ecosystems, which would hold the impressive odysseys alive.
Arjun Kannan is a PhD researcher with ATREE, Bengaluru, who is functioning on the migration ecology of harriers in India. Prashanth M.B. research birds in human-dominated landscapes and savanna grasslands, and performs with citizen experts to build inventories and map waterbirds. T. Ganesh is a senior fellow at ATREE.
