Recap of the 2012-13 season: Part 3 – Species records

This entry was posted Sunday, 15 September, 2013 at 12:05 pm

In this section we explore species-wise break-up of observations on MigrantWatch for 2012-13 and compare them with the previous season’s patterns. (Note that the migration “season” is taken to begin on 1 July of one year and end on 30 June the next year.)

Top 20 species for 2012-13

Species

Records in 2012-13

Common Sandpiper

368

Grey Wagtail

298

White Wagtail

267

Pied Cuckoo

267

Barn Swallow

254

Rosy Starling

245

Wood Sandpiper

236

Blyth’s Reed-warbler

219

Western Yellow Wagtail

206

Greenish Warbler

203

Green Sandpiper

187

Western Marsh Harrier

173

Northern Shoveler

157

Northern Pintail

138

Hume’s Leaf-warbler

132

Whiskered Tern

128

Garganey

127

Brown Shrike

126

Western Black-tailed Godwit

120

Common Greenshank

119

Boldface indicates species that also figured among the top 20 during the previous season (see table below)

Species

Records in 2011-12

Rosy Starling

239

Pied Cuckoo

170

Blyth’s Reed-warbler

122

Common Sandpiper

119

Barn Swallow

117

Greenish Warbler

112

Wood Sandpiper

95

Ashy Drongo

93

Grey Wagtail

90

Western Yellow Wagtail

85

White Wagtail

79

Western Marsh Harrier

77

Common Kestrel

75

Booted Warbler

75

Green Sandpiper

71

Northern Shoveler

69

Brown Shrike

66

Eurasian Golden Oriole

59

Common Redshank

56

Asian Paradise Flycatcher

55

Zone-wise top 5 species during 2012-13

The top 5 species were considered separately for each zone (see table below). A look at this list indicates that the most-observed species vary appreciably according to zone. As there are very few sightings from the Northeast and the Islands, these zones are excluded from comparison.

North

Northwest

Central

South

White Wagtail

Rosy Starling

Common Sandpiper

Barn Swallow

Grey Wagtail

Common Sandpiper

Pied Cuckoo

Common Sandpiper

Hume’s Leaf-warbler

Greater Flamingo

Western Yellow Wagtail

Wood Sandpiper

Greenish Warbler

Western Black-tailed Godwit

Grey Wagtail

Blyth’s Reed-warbler

Grey-headed C. Flycatcher

Northern Shoveler

White Wagtail

Brown Shrike

Half of all observations logged by MigrantWatchers in 2012-13 belong to 24 of the 265 species tracked by MigrantWatch. Interestingly, this number has remained nearly constant across the past five seasons (range 19-24). This suggests that there are some species that are either more popular, or are more abundant, or are easier to detect than other species.

 

Next in the series: Sighting data

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