Conservation India reports on the mass-hunting of migrating Amur Falcons in Nagaland. These superb little raptors migrate from their breeding grounds in and around northeastern China all the way through India and to their wintering quarters in southern Africa. Along the way they gather in large numbers in northeastern India, where they are vulnerable to being caught.

Please check the Conservation India site for further updates on the situation. And in the meantime, do report your Amur Falcon sightings to MigrantWatch so that information on the occurrence and migration of this beautiful bird is available in one place. If you have seen large numbers congregating in one place, and are concerned about making this information public, please do contact us over email: mw@migrantwatch.in

In the course of putting the MigrantWatch 5-year report together, we are looking at migration timings of various species. Here are the sightings of one species — Rosy Starling — in the database.

Each sighting is indicated with a vertical black line, just as in this image of sightings of several species.

You can see that Rosy Starlings arrive quite faithfully in mid-to-end July, and leave fairly punctually at the end of April or very early in May. There are a small number of exceptional sightings: as early as 2nd July in 2008-09 (by Arpit Deomurari in Jamnagar); and as late as 10th June in 2011-2012 (by Tushar Takale in Nagpur – this is also supported by a photo).

Because we have simply put all sightings together, the first and last sightings of the season really only reflect what is happening in northwest India. As the number of sightings increase, regional arrival and departure dates will be interesting to look at.

You can see all Rosy Starling sightings in the database here.

By Mousumi Ghosh

When I started birding seriously in the year 2005 after joining the Master’s course at the Wildlife Institute of India, I conveniently ignored every warbler I saw. Since visual identification was very difficult (given their frustratingly similar and drab appearances), I was happy enough to say that so-and-so bird was of a warblerish persuasion, and leave it at that. But then, as fate would have it, I wound up studying the wintering ecology of three species of leaf warblers in the Himalayan foothill forests of Himachal Pradesh for my MSc dissertation. While my primary motivation was to understand how they survive the winter sharing dwindling food resources, I now had to identify them accurately for my work to make any sense.

In most situations a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, but when it comes to identifying leaf warblers it is better to have a bird singing in the bushes than have even ten in your hand! This wisdom came to me from my supervisors Mr. Pratap Singh and Dr. Dhananjai Mohan, who taught me how to identify leaf warblers in the field from their calls and song.

These remarkable little birds belong to the family Phylloscopidae, whose members are dressed in various hues of dull green, yellow, grey and occasionally bright chestnut (as in the Chestnut-crowned Warbler). They are among the commonest species of European and Asian forests. The word Phylloscopus literally means ‘looking into the leaves’ and this aptly describes our industrious friends, who spend almost 75% of their waking hours searching for insects among the leaves. 

The genus is famed for its astounding diversity: more than 60 species of Phylloscopus are described. Most of them breed in the temperate areas of Europe and Asia. Despite weighing only 5-10g, some leaf warblers migrate over thousands of kilometres to arrive in their wintering quarters in the tropics of Africa and South Asia, including the Indian subcontinent. To cite an example, Hume’s Warbler (weighing just about 6 g) covers almost as much distance as the celebrated Siberian Crane (weighing 6 kg) to reach the plains of India from where it breeds in Siberia!

The same attributes which make them so difficult to identify (so many species, yet so similar in appearance) have made them one of the most well-studied groups of birds in the world. Within India, detailed studies of their breeding (in the Himalayas) and wintering ecology (Himalayan foothills, peninsular India) by Dr. Trevor Price and his students have revealed a great deal about these leaf warblers in both breeding and wintering seasons.

Read Part II of this series of articles on leaf warblers

By Raman Kumar

While the details of bird migration are still somewhat mysterious, the broad patterns are reasonably well-understood; for example the direction of migration. The main reason why most migratory birds follow a north–south path is simple: they follow the seasonal patterns in availability of food and breeding resources. Most migratory birds follow this general pattern: (1) breed at higher latitudes during spring-summer; (2) when days start to get shorter and conditions harsher, fly to kinder regions in the tropics.

But there are some species of birds that scoff at these conventions; instead of migrating along a north–south trajectory, these birds move east–west. Among the more celebrated of such “misfits” is the Pied Cuckoo which shuttles east–west between northeast Africa to north and central India. However, there is a lesser-known bird that shows this kind of unconventional migration – the Spot-winged Starling (Saroglossa spiloptera).

This starling, formerly known as Spottedwinged Stare, is unfamiliar to birders from peninsular India because its distribution is limited to the sub-Himalayan and Himalayan region. Unlike mynas and most other starlings the Spot-winged Starling is sexually dimorphic: the male is a dark brownish-and-chestnut and the female is markedly paler. Both sexes sport a prominent white wing patch, giving the bird its name.

In the Western Himalaya the Spot-winged Starling appears in late spring, feeding at fruiting and flowering trees. Small groups are often seen guzzling nectar from the blossoms of trees such as the Indian Silk Cotton. The Spot-winged Starling usually chooses open forests at elevations near 1000 m in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand for breeding. Birdwatchers have seen Spot-winged Starlings at roughly the same spot in successive years, suggesting that they may remain faithful to the same place year after year, but this remains to be verified.

Sightings become rarer in June and by July the bird virtually vacates its breeding quarters. This is the period when the Starlings are believed to make their eastward passage through Nepal and Sikkim. After this hopping flight of thousands of kilometres they set up their winter home in sub-Himalayan Assam at about 300 m elevation.

Why do they make this unusual journey? Why don’t they winter in the terai closer to their breeding grounds? Do they breed in areas in Central Himalayas? In their 1983 epic Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan Salim Ali and Dillon Ripley have described the distribution of the Spot-winged Starling as “equivocal and imperfectly known”. Ornithologists haven’t added anything much beyond this and the status of this starling remains shrouded in mystery.

Have you seen this species? Where? Do add your sightings to the MigrantWatch database so that collectively we can better understand the migration of this odd species.

Here is the data page for Spot-winged Starling. At the time of writing, there were no records of this species in the database.

Rohan Chakravarty draws wonderful cartoons based on green themes. One, from a few days ago, is about How the Pied Cuckoo brings monsoons to India. Do take a look, and while you are there, check out his other bird cartoons, including the one describing 11 types of birdwatchers. As Rohan asks: which one are you?

By R. Jayapal

Dr R. Jayapal is an assistant professor at the School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Essentially a birdwatcher trained in wildlife ecology and conservation, he has been doing ecological research on birds for more than 15 years, and has worked in various landscapes across India ranging from the Central Indian Highlands of Madhya Pradesh to the trans-Himalayas of Ladakh.

Until the 1990s, life used to be simple and straightforward for a serious warbler-watcher in the Subcontinent. One would know this was a Chiffchaff and that was a Booted Warbler. Although both had two subspecies wintering in our region, one normally wouldn’t bother about that as all the literature would say it was nearly impossible to identify them unless in hand. I also suspect that just identifying them authoritatively as a Chiffchaff or a Booted Warbler in the field was esoteric enough to impress and awe others. But things changed with the increased use of DNA to lump or separate species, supported by analysis of vocalizations in the field. These developments have both advanced the science of taxonomy and jolted us good old birdwatchers and subverted our long-cherished complacency.

The Chiffchaff has been split into Common Chiffchaff and Mountain Chiffchaff (actually more, but that’s another story) and the erstwhile Booted Warbler has been found to consist of two species – Sykes’s Warbler (Hippolais rama) and Booted Warbler (Hippolais caligata). [They were initially treated so in 19th century, but then that was before the era of trinomial nomenclature].

Now to the mundane, but yet the most pertinent question –– is it possible to differentiate these two Hippolais warblers in the field? The answer is Yes and No… Yes, if you are careful to note down some subtle yet distinct field-characters and fortunate to observe the birds in fresh plumage closely. No, if you are a birder like me who does not have those discerning pair of eyes and who has this inexplicable habit of always encountering birds in worn plumage or moult, or worse, individuals showing intermediate characters (Apparently, they do hybridize).

To begin with, a birder is more likely to come across two types of Hippolais warblers: one that looks like a reed-warbler (Acrocephalus) but behaves typically like a leaf-warbler (Phylloscopus), and another the other way round. If this peculiarity strikes you in the field, well, half the battle is won. [Warning: Judging a bird as a look-alike or behave-alike can become subjective].

Sykes’s Warbler (H. rama), with a longer bill and a longer, graduated (i.e., narrowing in steps) tail, looks strikingly (!) like an Acrocephalus reed-warbler. It also has a relatively longish body (from bill to tail tip) that is accentuated by somewhat longer under tail-coverts. But, despite its reed-warbler-like appearance, its foraging behaviour is strangely reminiscent of a Phylloscopus leaf-warbler. You can see it actively gleaning and flycatching in the middle- and top canopy of tall shrubs and low trees, rarely descending down to ground-level vegetation. Both the Hippolais often twitch and flick open their tails, and while doing so, rama’s graduated tail feathers are hard to miss.

Other diagnostic characters of rama may be either difficult to observe in the field or may not always be conspicuously present in all the individuals. These include: a completely pale yellow lower bill lacking any dark-tip, absence of darker margin to the short white supercilium (just above the lores), and pinkish-brown legs (which are slightly darker compared to caligata’s pale yellow tarsus).

Booted Warbler (H. caligata) has a comparatively shorter bill and a squarish, shorter-looking tail with an abruptly-ending belly (owing to much shorter under tail-coverts). These features make the bird look rather like a Phylloscopus leaf-warbler. H. caligata distinctly lacks the proportionately long body plan of rama. When the tail is twitched open, the Phylloscopus-like squarer tail feathers are quite unmistakable (contra rama). The Booted Warbler invariably forages like an Acrocephalus reed-warbler among the undergrowth and herbage at the ground-level (though more tame than many Acrocephalus). It does, however, occasionally visit the middle canopy only to return to lower vegetation in a moment or so.

As described under rama, there are other diagnostic characters of caligata that may not always be useful in the field. These include a dark-tipped pale lower-bill, a dark supra-ocular margin just above the lores (present only in fresh plumage), and paler looking legs.

It is important to note that both rama and caligata have almost indistinguishable calls in their winter quarters – a hard and dry chuk. And it should be remembered here that NOT ALL individuals are identifiable with certainty in the field, as individuals with intermediate characters are ‘not uncommon’ (ah, what a wonderful phrase!). There have also been recent revisions in the taxonomy of Family Acrocephalidae resulting in placement of both these Hippolais taxa in the genus Iduna along with Thick-billed Warbler.

One should also keep in mind that the wintering ranges of both rama and caligata have not been completely worked out as all our current understanding is based on museum collections and subspecies identity was not possible in a majority of past sight records (For more information, see P.C. Rasmussen & J.C. Anderton, 2005. Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC & Lynx Edicions, Barcelona). For all practical purposes, both taxa are likely to occur in most parts of the Subcontinent (probably except the higher Himalayas and north-eastern hills) either as winter visitors or passage migrants.

If you do find these tips helpful (or hopeless) in the field, please do write to me as that would greatly reassure me (that I am not alone).

———————–
You can contact R Jayapal at rajah.jp[at]gmail[dot]com

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.

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.

In the Pied Cuckoo campaign, MigrantWatchers have contributed 363 sightings of this wonderful species so far (until 15 July 2011). A summary of these sightings from places to where the Pied Cuckoo migrates shows that it does, by-and-large, arrive in advance of the monsoon, but the exact dates are variable.

To illustrate the general pattern of migration of this species, we have put together this animated map, which shows the progression of Pied Cuckoo migration across the country in advance of the monsoon.

This animation has been made by selecting March-to-July sightings from all Pied Cuckoo reports in the MigrantWatch database between 1 July 2007 and 15 July 2011. To compare these sightings with the onset of the monsoon, we have also added in lines depicting the normal onset of the monsoon (digitised from a map available from IMD Pune).

In March and April, almost all sightings are from southern India, where the species is known to be resident year-round. This remains so until the middle of May. In the third week of May, the first migrant sightings appear, in the West and the North-east. As the monsoon hits the Andamans, the first birds in northern India are seen. More and more birds are subsequently seen across the West, North and East. By the time the monsoon reaches Kerala (in the first week of June), Pied Cuckoos are everywhere, except perhaps the extreme West and North-West.

Where are the gaps in information? Do you see patterns that would be interesting to follow up? Do leave a comment below.

Thanks, of course, to all MigrantWatchers who have contributed their Pied Cuckoo sightings!

Every year, thousands of Bar-headed Geese make an epic journey, twice crossing the mighty Himalayas over some of the highest peaks in the world. In doing so, they fly higher than any other bird in the world and faster than most others. It’s an inspirational story of tenacity and physical endurance, which even inspires poetry (of a sort!) in some people. Read on to learn more about this fascinating species.

Size: 71-76 cm; Weight: 2-3 Kg. Unmistakable; sexes alike; juvenile has pale grey head and neck with brown stripe running though eyes, across crown and backward down the neck. Forages mostly on land by grazing; feeds on grasses, roots, stems, sea-weeds on coasts, etc. Breeds on mountain lakes generally at 4,000-5,000m in the Palaearctic region and winters in the lowland swamps and lakes in India and some neighbouring countries.¹

The Bar-headed Goose is among our most good-looking and charismatic migrants; but there is more to this beauty than meets the eye. Every year the species embarks on one of the most incredible high altitude migrations known from the avian world.

The Bar-headed Goose breeds near wetlands across the vast trans-Himalayan highland, and further north in Central Asia. During winter, a large number of these birds migrate to the Indian subcontinent, crossing the towering Greater Himalayan range before panning out across the region, all the way to Kanyakumari. Incredibly, some populations are known to over-fly the very highest peaks, 8km above sea-level, where the air is extremely thin (Oxygen pressure only a third of that at sea level) and incredibly cold (sometimes below -50 degrees C) ². A recent study that tracked the migration of Bar-headed geese using satellite telemetry states that “The bar-headed geese… actually crossed mountain areas regardless of their height and did not avoid even very high summits… (One of the individuals) had to overcome the Tien Shan Mountains and the Alai Range, with summits up to 7km above sea level.³”

This migration is remarkable not only because of the altitude at which the birds fly but also the speed at which it happens. Using jet streams these birds can achieve speeds of over 150km per hour, and cover distances of 700-1,000km in a single day ². In other words, an individual that takes off from a wetland in north India, reaches altitudes over 7km in a few hours, crosses the Himalayas, and lands in Tibet, all in the same day!

Bar-headed Geese have physiological adaptations that help it achieve this feat of a migration that few other animals can possibly survive². It has a large heart which beats extraordinarily fast and haemoglobin with a remarkably high affinity to oxygen making it possible for the bird to take on high-altitude flight without any time to acclimatise². Also, their wings are rather large and they are powerful flappers⁴.

So this is clearly a star migrant that is built to fly high. But why it chooses to fly over the highest peaks instead of using lower passes is a question yet to be answered.

The current global population of the species is estimated at around 52,000-60,000 mature individuals and a range (breeding and winter) of 2,370,000 sq km ⁵. But it is possible that the distribution of the species might be dramatically altered in the future because of global warming, change in agricultural patterns, the creation of wildlife reserves in Tibet, and loss of wetland habitat in the wintering grounds⁶.

Global Distribution Map © WWF Wild Finder

In India, we have a population of the Bar-headed Goose that breeds in the wetlands of Ladakh, but for the rest of the country, this species is a winter migrant⁷. Its distribution in winter stretches across the northern plains and southwards to the southern most tip of the country⁸.

MAPS – (a) Sightings on MigrantWatch and BirdSpot⁹ (b) First sightings (2008 to 12 Dec 2010) in the MigrantWatch database

The birds arrive in India in November and migrate back to their breeding areas around mid March⁶. According to MigrantWatch data, the species is usually first sighted across the northern pains in Nov-Dec and in south India in Dec-Jan.

Conservation

The Bar-headed Goose is currently categorized as ‘Least Concern’ under the IUCN Red List, which means that it is not considered to be under threat. However, there are reports that the population has been affected adversely in recent decades due to hunting by humans, unsustainable levels of egg collecting and habitat destruction^1,3. In addition to persecution by humans, this species is also known to face serious threats from disease. High mortality of these birds was recorded from lakes in China in 2005 during an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza ². The species may also be sensitive to climate change if migration patterns become mistimed with periods of peak food availability during the breeding season⁶.

Satellite tracking

In recent years some research on the migration of this goose has been taken up using satellite telemetry. One such study found that the individuals that were captured in the wintering grounds of India-Nepal migrated distances of 500-800 km and climbed more than 4.5 km to reach their breeding grounds on the Tibetan plateau. Geese captured in China were found to be breeding and wintering in relatively higher elevations – wintering at 4,000 m and breeding at 3,200 m, but migrating 400-800 km farther than the geese from India-Nepal. Finally, geese captured in Mongolia demonstrated a leapfrog migration – i.e. they were flying over the other sub-population from their wintering grounds in the Indian subcontinent to their breeding grounds in Mongolia ⁶.

MAP – Locations (circles), migration pathways (lines), and capture areas for 60 Bar-headed Geese marked with satellite transmitters in China (red), India (yellow), Mongolia (green), and Nepal (blue). The red-dotted line between China and Mongolia represents a goose marked pre-breeding (April) at Qinghai Lake, China which migrated to Mongolia for breeding; all other red lines represent birds marked post-breeding at Qinghai Lake.⁶

Another study that followed migratory geese in Kyrgyzstan fond that the four individuals marked in Kyrgyzstan followed three completely different migration routes leading to their wintering areas in Pakistan, India and Uzbekistan via southern Tajikistan and in western Tibet ³. The study also recorded flight speeds of up to 680 km per actual migration day, even during crossings of very high summits ³.

The Bar-headed Goose is a remarkable bird in many ways. It is amazing think that these birds can simply wake up one morning, take a test flight to check the winds, and decide to simply fly over the highest mountain range on the planet. How lucky we are to be on the other side of this flight to see these geese land noisily on our waterfront!

The Anser – by Uttara Mediratta & M. O. Anand

How many peaks must a goose fly above
before it can earn its stripes?
Now, how many days must a goose fly strong
before it reaches its home?

Yes, how many blizzards must it face
before it can see the sun?
The Anser my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The Anser is blowin’ in the wind …

(with partial credit to Bob Dylan)

Illustration – Sartaj Ghuman

References

1. del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Sargatal. 1992. J. Handbook of the Birds of the World: Vol 1 : Ostrich to ducks.  Lynx Edicions.

2. Newton, I. 2008. The Migration Ecology of Birds.  Elsevier Academic Press.

3. Köppen, U., Yakovlev, A.P., Barth, R., Kaatz, M. & Berthold, P. 2010. Seasonal migrations of four individual bar-headed geese Anser indicus from Kyrgyzstan followed by satellite telemetry. Journal of Ornithology 151, 703-712.

4. Whiteman, Lily. 2000. The High Life. Audubon Magazine. Downloaded from <http://audubonmagazine.org/birds/birds0011.html>

5. BirdLife International. (2010) Species factsheet: Anser indicus. Downloaded from <http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=379>

6. Takekawa, J.Y. et al. 2009. Geographic variation in bar-headed geese Anser indicus: connectivity of wintering areas and breeding grounds across a broad front. Wild Fowl 59, 102-125.

7. Rasmussen, P.C. & Anderton, J.C. 2005. Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide. Volumes 1 & 2.  Lynx Edicions.

8. Krishnan, M. Occurrence of the Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus) in south India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 84, 204

9. Shyamal, L. BirdSpot. Accessible from <http://sites.google.com/site/birdspot/home>

Relevant Links –

Videos and other information on BBC Wildlife Finder

Bar-headed Goose Bibliography on AVIS-IBIS (An Avian Information System – Indian BioDiversity Information System)

BirdLife International’s summary sheets on Bar-Headed Goose

Bar-headed Goose on MigrantWatch: Sighting data || Species Identification Guide

(Update on 8 June)

New research (by the BNHS and others) on Bar-headed Geese based on satellite-tracking shows that the geese display amazing feats while crossing the Himalayas on migration. They can climb many thousand metres in altitude in only a few hours; and do so without the assistance of tailwinds. Wonderful studies like this add greatly our understanding of Bar-headed Goose migration!

Press coverage:
Wise geese chase sinks a myth – Telegraph (Kolkata)
High-flying geese don’t need winds – The Hindu
The Most Extreme Migration on Earth? – Science Now

The original research article:
The trans-Himalayan flights of Bar-headed Geese.