From the MigrantWatch Newsletter, September 2012.
With Jayant Wadatkar’s sighting of the Pied Cuckoo near Amravati, Maharashtra, on 22 September 2012, we have reached another milestone. This was the 15,000th record to be logged on to MigrantWatch. By complete coincidence, the 10,000th sighting on MigrantWatch was also from Amravati!

Congratulations to all MigrantWatchers for helping reach this landmark!

Have you been receiving the MigrantWatch newsletter? If you are registered with us, but have not been receiving the monthly newsletter, you can view the September edition here. Please also add mw@migrantwatch.in to your address book so that mail from us doesn’t get wrongly marked as spam.

Today’s edition of The Hindu has an article by KS Sudhi about the Pied Cuckoo Campaign of MigrantWatch. Do take a look.

Also, the photographer of the lovely Pied Cuckoo image is not mentioned. He is Rohan Kamath, whose MigrantWatch sightings you can see here. And here are his photos on India Nature Watch.

Text and photos by Tarun Balpande

Born in Pandhurna (M.P.) and settled in Nagpur, Tarun Balpande works as an Area Manager in the Oncology division of a pharmaceutical company. He was drawn into the excitement of birding five years ago, when he took part in a Great Indian Bustard census. After observing migrating Bar-headed Geese, he now concentrates on migratory birds. He also works on the importance of planting fruit-bearing trees, and on getting a bird-feeder in every home in Nagpur.

In 2008, I came to know through the nagpurbirds e-group, run by Tarique Sani, that several Bar-headed Geese had been collared in Mongolia. In November of that year, Raju Kasambe and I started searching around Nagpur for Bar-headed Geese to check for a collar. At one point, Raju Kasambe spotted “something” yellow on the neck of a goose, but our limited optics didn’t allow us to see it clearly.

But the big day finally came!! On 19 January 2009, my wife Rakhee, son Chaitanya and I, together with Kishor Khandekar were watching a group of Bar-headed Geese, when I suddenly noticed a goose with a yellow collar around its neck. Through my binoculars I could read the letters “NU”, and I was able to click a few images with these letters clearly visible. But what did “NU” mean?

With the help of Raju Kasambe and Tarique Sani, I came to know that black lettering on a yellow collar meant that the goose had been marked in Mongolia. Martin Gilbert informed me that NU was an adult female, captured on 17 July 2008 in the Darkhad Valley, Hovsgol province of Mongolia.

Many Bar-headed Geese had been collared there to understand the migration of this species. These birds were collared by a team led by Martin Gilbert, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Mongolia. A number of species have been marked using different techniques appropriate for each species. The Bar-headed Geese were marked with a neck collar inscribed with a unique alphanumeric code.

All this happened 4800 km away! The Bar-headed Goose we sighted was at Paradgaon lake, which is situated on the Umred road, around 28 km from Nagpur. The entire season myself and other fellow birders were looking for a collar other than NU, but no one find another collared Goose. At the end of the migration season, we were all looking forward to the next season — NU had left us with wonderful memories.

Next season, on 5 November 2009, Raju Kasambe recorded the first arrival of a flock of 300 Geese at Paradgaon lake. 0n 12 December 2009, I clicked a photo of my old Mongolian girlfriend NU! This affair continued in 2010, when I photographed her again on 26 November. I emailed a message to Martin Gilbert, and he replied: “How good to hear from you again, and thank you so much for sending your sighting! …it is indeed great news that you have been able to relocate NU once again, and I believe this is the first time that we have had any bird resighted in three consecutive years!”. This is the best appreciation for any birdwatcher.

This year, 2011, I started monitoring the lake from 10 November. On 24 November 2011, Rakhee, Chaitanya and I, together with birdwatcher Avinash, saw a flock of 275-300 Bar-headed Geese. I started searching the flock for NU. Euphoria !!! she was there !!! As usual I clicked a few photos.

I am proud to report that NU visits Paradgaon lake for the fourth consecutive year! The exact location of the lake is: 20°92’58.06″N 79°22’24.14″E

You can see all of Tarun Balpande’s reports on MigrantWatch.

For other reports of marked birds from Mongolia, look at this page on Birds of India. And a copy of a message from Martin Gilbert is here.

For more information about Bar-headed Geese, including some recent information on their migration, take a look at this species profile on the MigrantWatch blog.

This article, in The Hindu, titled “Migratory birds declining, government monitoring habitat“, describes Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s reply to a query in the Lok Sabha.

There are various interesting tidbits in the article, including this statement, presumably taken from the ZSI Handbook that is mentioned in the previous paragraph in the article:

“The most abundant winter migrants to the Indian subcontinent are ducks and geese. Both constitute about 85 per cent of the population.”

What do you think? Which species is likely (in your estimation) to be the most abundant winter visitor to India? Do write your answers in the comments section below.

By Dr Jayan Thomas

Dr Jayan Thomas is an ophthalmologist by profession; but early in the morning and on Sundays, he is an inquisitive birdwatcher and photographer. Watching a Blue-tailed Bee-eater catch its prey and smash it against a wire before swallowing the bee sparked his curiosity about birds and their behaviour. He lives in Cannanore, Kerala, near the ocean and is President of the Cannanore Ophthalmological Society.

It was Sunday the 30th of October 2011, and myself and Mr. PC Rajeevan had decided to go to a place called Ezhome about 23 Km from Cannanore (Kannur), on the coast of northern Kerala. I woke up at 5 AM and started my journey to Ezhome by 5.30 AM. Rajeevan was at Ezhome waiting for me and after a cup of hot roadside café tea we were on to a slow birding walk, with binos, camera and an umbrella, as it was drizzling. The first bird to be seen was a Purple Heron, then a Blue-tailed Bee-eater and so on. After 2 hours of birding we counted about 40 species and were about to call it a day, when we decided instead to first go to Madaipara, since it is close to Ezhome. We reached Madaipara just before noon, and so bird activity was very low. Suddenly Mr. Rajeevan spotted a group of birds across the road and we went to check them out. There were about 200 Lesser Sand Plovers feeding on a burned patch of grass, and some bathing in rock pools. Among these Lesser Sand Plovers was a smaller and slimmer bird with yellow legs and pearly edged wings. What could this be? We were intrigued.

With caution we approached the bird and found to our surprise that it was quite unusual. Since the bird was feeding and walking around we had ample time to take some decent photos. During flight the upper parts appeared uniform, with no prominent wing pattern. Driving back home we discussed the possibilities of a new species being sighted in Kerala.

We whittled down our “differential diagnosis” of the bird to three species:
1. Buff-breasted Sandpiper.
2. Long-toed Stint
3. Reeve (Female Ruff)

Long-toed Stint is almost similar to this new bird, but the stint has prominent facial markings. Reeve was a possibility, but this new bird did not have a post-ocular stripe. A post-ocular stripe is essential for the bird to have been a Reeve. Moreover this bird was substantially smaller in size than a Reeve. (For a visual estimate of size see the photos below, which have this bird together with Lesser Sand Plovers.)

Now the only other possibility was the Buff-breasted Sandpiper, a New World bird. Yes, this bird looked like the Buff-breasted Sandpiper in size and all other features. This bird was about 19 cm with a plain face, an eye-ring , streaked crown and yellow legs. The picture of the bird was sent all around the world by MigrantWatch and others. We are thankful to Praveen J., Sashikumar, Aasheesh Pittie, Bill Harvey, Rex De-Silva and Krys Kazmierczak for having identified the bird as the Buff-breasted Sandpiper.

Buff-breasted Sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis) breeds in the Arctic tundra of North America and is a long distance migrant to South America, mainly Argentina. The Canadian wildlife service estimates that there are only about 15,000 birds in the world and hence it is classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. This bird which came to Madaipara could have been lost: instead of going to Argentina, this bird might have been wind-blown from the Great Plains Flyway of North America and landed up in India. Our sighting appears to be only the third of this species from South Asia.

Madaipara is a laterite flat hillock near the Ezhimala Naval Academy. On one side of Madaipara is the Arabian sea and the other side a mountain range of seven small hills (Ezhimala in Malayalam means seven hills). Sandwiched between the sea and the seven hills is a long meandering river. Madaipara is basically a flat land with few trees and shrubs and a lot of weeds. The vegetation is sometimes set on fire, and these spots are ideal for birds which come in search of insects. There are occasional rock puddles too on the hillock up to Spring. The Buff-breasted Sandpiper was seen here for 4 days. Of these, I sighted it on two different days and my birding pal Rajeevan sighted it on all 4 days.

Finding a rare bird like this is one of the dreams of the serious birder. Locating and identifying a species that is least expected is a great challenge and great thrill. You have to be ruthlessly honest with yourself for this. Reporting a rare bird carries a lot of responsibility. It becomes part of science. If you believe that you have seen a rare bird, study it carefully, take photos, video if possible and note the circumstances of the sighting. Then as soon as possible alert other birders.

You can see Dr Jayan Thomas’s MigrantWatch sightings and photos here.

More about the Buff-breasted Sandpiper from Wikipedia and from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Article in MiDDay by Lhendup Bhutia, 13 Nov 2011. View online or screen capture.

The aam scientist. An article by Padmaparna Ghosh in the Times of India, Crest Edition. Features MigrantWatch and SeasonWatch. Online here and jpeg here (600 Kb).

The 10,000th report on MigrantWatch was uploaded two days ago, on Friday, 21 Oct 2011, with an accompanying photograph. This migrant sighting comes from Mandar Pawgi, Aniket Sayam and Nikhil Wadatkar from Amravati in Maharashtra. Here is a description of the sighting, in Mandar’s words:

On 20th October morning, we made our way to a very famous birding spot in our city, the Wadali tank — a haven for birdlife and birdwatchers. On our arrival, we were welcomed by waterhens, coots, ducks, kingfisher and many other waterbirds. For the past two weeks we had been highly excited to see migratory birds at the tank. This morning, on the eastern corner of the lake, we saw a few waterhens moving actively in the sunlight within the net of Lotus leaves. As we watched them, suddenly Nikhil saw a very beautiful bird with brilliant colours and white spots on the wings. He excitedly called us as this was a new species to us. All the activity put the bird to flight, but before it did so, Nikhil managed to take a few snaps (one is shown below). We were extremely happy to see a new species, which we later confirmed as an Eastern Baillon’s Crake. According to available records the bird is a vagrant at Wadali Tank and surrounds.

The smallest rail found in India, the Eastern Baillon’s Crake Porzana pusilla breeds in Kashmir and in Central and East Asia. This quail-sized swamp bird migrates south and spreads across the subcontinent in September-October, migrating back to its breeding grounds in March-April. It frequents jheels, ponds, marshes and even irrigated cropfields, where it feeds on seeds of aquatic plants, snails, worms, and insects and their larvae.

The greenish bill, white ‘marble’ pattern on the brown upperparts, and short tail separate this species from the much rarer Little Crake Porzana parva, which has a red base to its bill, with wings projecting out more from the body. Eastern Baillon’s Crakes are mostly solitary or are seen in pairs. Because they are more secretive than other crakes, they are relatively difficult to observe, and are easily missed — and there are only 17 reports of this species in the MigrantWatch database so far.

Congratulations to Mandar, Aniket and Nikhil for an excellent sighting, which looks like a juvenile bird from the accompanying photo. Appropriately, the 10,000th MigrantWatch report comes from smack in the centre of the country!

Soon to follow on the blog: a description of the accumulation of sightings to 10,000, together with an appreciation of the MigrantWatchers whose contributions have made this happen.

A delightful piece on Rosy Pastors by MigrantWatch participant and journalist Vikram Jit Singh.

Migrant reports have slowly been coming in for the beginning of the 2011 migration season. The picture below shows which species we expect to arrive in July and August separately (based on MigrantWatch data from 2007-2010); and which species have been reported from this year (up to 22 August).

You can see that about half the species that normally arrive in July were again seen first in July this year. A few others (like the magnificent Black-tailed Godwit) were seen a bit later than usual (in August this year); and Ruff and Gull-billed Tern, although normally reported in July, have not been reported yet this year (as on 22 August).

Of species that are normally first seen in August, only a few have been reported this year. Most August migrants have not yet been reported. Whimbrel was reported twice from Kerala in July, both times by Jayan Thomas — this is the earliest report of the species in the MigrantWatch database. The last sighting of Whimbrel from the previous season was on 11 June 2011 in Gujarat, reported by Maulik Varu. (This is quite late; most last sightings are in May.)

The picture above is not definitive by any means — there must be lots of MigrantWatchers who haven’t yet uploaded their sightings for July and August 2011. Please do remember to upload your sightings to the database!

(Thank you to those who have contributed sightings in July and August 2011: A Ajit, Abhimanyu Lele, Ainsley Priestman, Avishkar Munje, Bidyut Bikash Barman, Dr. Jayan Thomas, Dr. Maulik Varu, Dr. S. Prasanth, Fionna Prins, James Williams, Mohanraj K., Nandita Amin, Prashanth, Prashanth Mugali, Rohit Charpe, Sachin Shurpali, Shantilal Varu, Subhadeep Ghosh, Sumesh PT, Tilak Chandra Sarmah, Udiyaman Shukla, Wg Cdr Y Prakash Rao (retd).)