A delightful piece on Rosy Pastors by MigrantWatch participant and journalist Vikram Jit Singh.
The start of the 2011 migration season
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).)
Pied Cuckoo animated map
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!
Ousteri: Threatened Bird Area of Pondicherry
By Aju Mukhopadhyay
Born in Kolkata and settled in Pondicherry, Aju Mukhopadhyay is a bilingual poet, critic and author of fiction and essays. He has authored 28 books and received several awards for his work.
Usud-eri or Ousteri, as it is usually spelt, is the large water-body in Ossudu village, north of Kaveri River, some 10km from Pondicherry town. The tank, constructed during the Vijayanagara dynasty some 500 years ago, is connected through the Suthukanni channel to Gingee and Varaha Rivers. Once upon a time Ousteri would have some thousands of winged visitors during the full migratory season (between November and the beginning of February).
In 1995 the lake recorded some 20,000 birds and in 1998 it went up to 25,000 birds of 44 species (BNHS, 2004). In addition to residents like Little Cormorant and Common Coot, Cotton Teal, Spot-billed Pelican, Spoonbills, White Ibis; migratory species like the Eurasian Wigeon were recorded in large numbers (up to 4600 individuals!).Various species of ducks, herons, cormorants, hawks, kites, darters, terns, kingfishers, lapwings, flycatchers were abundant.
Ousteri Lake has been designated as one of the important wetlands of Asia by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Bombay Natural History Society has also nominated it as an Important Bird Area. The lake has also been declared as a bird sanctuary by Government of Pondicherry.
The lake, however, faces numerous threats. Dredging and de-silting by the authorities has caused removal of some useful weeds that the birds would nest on. Trees have been uprooted to make the spot suitable for a children’s park; only a few trees stand on the lakeside giving just a handful of tree-nesting birds the opportunity to breed here. The lake is also facing problems of poaching, fertilizer poisoning, plastic waste pollution and inflow of various other pollutants that also flow in from nearby manufactories. Motor and pedal boats regularly ply in the lake when the water level is sufficiently high and that also happens to be the bird season. A big hospital has been constructed nearby and a restaurant-cum-bar has grown ostentatiously. Further urbanization, as has been proposed, around the lake will only add to the commotion and noise and additional pollution. Apathy and reluctance on the part of the authorities to run it as a real bird sanctuary are visible.
Although the Government declared it a bird sanctuary in 2008, no positive action was taken to match the declaration. The Government has formed a committee that will take suitable action and will look into rights of different individuals and groups around the lake. The authorities have assured us that all-out action will be taken to maintain the integrity of the lake as a bird sanctuary once all the formalities are over. We hope that the lake will see better days in the coming years.
The state of the Bahour Tank that lies north of Pennaiyar River, about 22 km south of Pondicherry is better as it has not been ‘developed’ for tourism. As a matter of fact there is no indication anywhere to show that it is an Important Bird Area, either on the way or near the site. The water body was full when we visited it and we are told that more birds will visit it when the water levels go down. By March, however most of the water will be drained for irrigation. The field next to this tank is big and birds often congregate here. If this site is neglected it may get degraded and soon also become unsuitable for birds.
Nature and wilderness, whatever remains of it now, are being systematically destroyed in favour of commercialism, entertainment and so called tourism. If managed well these lakes could attract many keen bird-watchers and nature enthusiasts in addition to harbouring a fantastic collection of bird life.
References –
Important Bird Areas of India. 2004. BNHS, Mumbai. (pp. 833-837)
You can contact Aju Mukhopadhyay at ajum24[at]gmail.com
You can view sightings from Ousteri Lake on the MigrantWatch database.
Other related links -
Where are the birds going?
Where are the birds going? Article in OPEN Magazine, 4 June 2011 by Shubhangi Swarup. Talks about ringing and satellite tracking work by BNHS; and mentions Kunta, our heroic Grey Wagtail!
Pied Cuckoo in the news
News articles about Pied Cuckoo arrival in 2011.
Tracking the cuckoo. By Marianne de Nazareth, The Hindu, 5 June 2011.
Please note this clarification. The article says that MigrantWatch data shows that the arrival of the Pied Cuckoo does not herald the onset of the monsoon. On the contrary, our conclusion (based on 2009 and 2010 sightings) was that “Pied Cuckoos often do arrive at a location before the monsoon does, but the degree to which they do so varies with location and year.”
African bugler of Indian monsoon is back. By Vikram Jit Singh, Times of India, Chandigarh, 7 June 2011.
Vikram is a keen MigrantWatcher!
Call of the cuckoo brings hope of rain. The Telegraph, Kolkata, 7 June 2011.
Note the comment from the director of IMD Bhubaneswar: “There is no confirmed scientific finding to relate the arrival of the monsoon clouds with the birds.” In fact, MigrantWatchers have contributed data to show that there is!
You can see all recent Pied Cuckoo sightings here.
How Bar-headed Geese cross the Himalayas
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 original research article:
The trans-Himalayan flights of Bar-headed Geese.
World Migratory Bird Day (14-15 May)
Migratory birds are renowned the world over for heralding the changing seasons. World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD), observed on the second Saturday of May each year, encourages us to celebrate these wonderful species and to renew our commitment to conserve them. This is a day to spread a message, take action or even just spare a thought for migratory birds and the challenges they face in our changing world. These challenges are many; this year’s theme is land use change.
This year, WMBD in India was marked by a number of events across the country. At Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir, students from various educational institutions came together to participate in an awareness programme built around the theme of land use change and bird migration (Newspaper article). There was also a two-day workshop organized at the Jammu University based on the same theme. In Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, a photo exhibition featuring migratory birds and a field trip to a nearby bird sanctuary were organized to mark the day (Newspaper article). J.C. Uttangi, a seasoned campaigner for migratory birds in north Karnataka, was felicitated on the day in Dharwad, Karnataka (Newspaper article). A scientist himself, Uttangi expressed concern over the lack of awareness and the need for more scientific research into bird migration in the Indian context. News also emerged from Gujurat of efforts by the State to improve the conservation status of a number important migratory bird destinations across the state (Newspaper article).
If you are aware of any other events that were organized across the country, please let us know by leaving a comment on this blog. We would also like to hear from you about what you think would be a good way to celebrate this day in coming years.
For most birdwatchers in India, WMBD is a time to say goodbye to our winter visitors, while us less fortunate ones prepare to face the brunt of the Indian summer. This is also a good time for MigrantWatchers to call an end to the winter migration season for 2010-11, and to upload their species last sighting data. Please take a moment to login to the MigrantWatch website and update your records.
Pied Cuckoos and the monsoon: 2009 & 2010
By Suhel Quader and Uttara Mendiratta from the MigrantWatch team
In 2010 we continued the Pied Cuckoo Campaign, an effort started in 2009 to gather data that would help understand the association between the southwest monsoon and arrival of the migratory population of the Pied Cuckoo to the Indian subcontinent from Africa.
Many people believe that the arrival of the Pied Cuckoo precedes the onset of the monsoon by 1–2 weeks. Is this indeed the case? The Pied Cuckoo campaign was started precisely to answer this question.
Mousumi Dutta, a MigrantWatch participant who works for the Indian Meteorological Department presented an analysis of the 2010 Pied Cuckoo data earlier on this blog; and a year and a half ago, we summarised the findings from the first season of the Campaign.
In this post, we compare the 2009 and 2010 sightings of this species in relation to the onset of the monsoon in these years. (For details of how we filtered and analysed the data, see Details, below.)
The monsoon in 2009 and 2010
The ‘normal’ onset of monsoon on the Kerala coast is 1 June. In 2009, the monsoon arrived 9 days earlier than this; and in 2010, it arrived 1 day earlier than normal. After the onset, cyclones disrupted the normal progress of the monsoon in both years. In 2009, a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal slowed the monsoon’s progress despite an early start across southernmost India, West Bengal, and the northeastern States. In the beginning of June 2010, cyclone ‘Phet’ in the Arabian Sea brought rain to parts of western India, but delayed the northward progress of the southwest monsoon.
Pied Cuckoo sightings in 2009 and 2010
Between 1 May and 15 July, the number of sightings of the Pied Cuckoo reported to the MigrantWatch database was 28 in 2009 and 25 in 2010.
Despite the earlier arrival of the monsoon in 2009 than in 2010, the first sightings of the Pied Cuckoo were on similar dates in both years (17 May and 18 May from Kolkata and Alibag respectively in 2009; and 16 and 17 May from Bhubaneswar and Jalpaiguri respectively in 2010).
First sightings are shown in relation to monsoon arrival in the maps below. These maps show ‘isolines’ (connecting locations with similar monsoon arrival dates) that depict the approximate advance of the monsoon in the two years (simplified and redrawn from maps issued by the Indian Meteorological Department). The coloured points show the locations and first sighting dates of Pied Cuckoo reports submitted to the MigrantWatch database. Twelve of the points have numbers beside them – these are locations for which first sighting dates are available for both 2009 and 2010. These points are: 1-Ahmedabad, 2-Bhubaneswar, 3-Chandigarh, 4-Jaipur, 5-Jalpaiguri, 6-Mount Abu, 7-Mumbai, 8-Nagpur, 9-New Delhi, 10-Panchkula, 11-Pilerne (Goa), 12-Pune.
To examine more closely the relationship between monsoon arrival date and Pied Cuckoo sightings, we show a scatterplot of the relationship below. Each point represents a location for which we have both the first sighting date and the approximate monsoon arrival date (taken from the IMD maps). If a point falls on the solid diagonal line it would mean that Pied Cuckoos were sighted on the date of monsoon arrival at that location; if on the dashed line, 5 days before; and if on the dotted line, 30 days before the monsoon arrived. So, if Pied Cuckoos are good at anticipating the monsoon, we would expect the points to march from the lower left to the top right of the plot. If you click on this graph you will see a larger version, on which twelve points are numbered just as in the map above.
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Details All records of Pied Cuckoo sightings in the database can be viewed and downloaded here. The analysis and discussion presented here pertains only to sightings North of 15º N latitude, as sightings from South of this line are likely to belong to the resident population of this species. (All 28 reports of Pied Cuckoos from December to April in 2009/10 and 2010/11 come from the four southern states, and all below 13.4º N latitude.) We’ve also only used sightings from between 1 May and 15 July for both years. And when there were multiple sightings for a location, we used only the earliest sighting for that location. Caveats and improvements Data and Analysis If you wish to check how exactly the data were processed to arrive at the scatterplots above, take a look at these three files: The data downloaded on 30 April 2011 from the MigrantWatch database using a general Pied Cuckoo search; the monsoon arrival dates; and the R script used to process the raw data and generate the scatterplots. For more information on R, see www.r-project.org. After the plots were outputted from R, we made small stylistic improvements in Inkscape. |
The maps and scatterplots suggest that the degree to which the arrival of Pied Cuckoos precedes the monsoon is highly variable. Sometimes the earliest sighting is no more than a few days before the monsoon arrives, and sometimes the earliest sighting precedes the monsoon by more than 30 days. So Pied Cuckoos often do arrive at a location before the monsoon does, but the degree to which they do so varies with location and year.
Let’s look at the 12 sites for which we have first sighting dates in both years. The monsoon arrival dates and the first sighting dates from these sites are shown below, with points from 2009 in black and those from 2010 in red. The points for a single location are joined by a line to show how the arrival of the monsoon changed in the two years; and consequently how Pied Cuckoo sighting dates changed. Again, the numbers correspond to the numbered locations on the maps, above.
To help interpret this graph, the two asterisks joined by a dashed line show what one would expect for a hypothetical situation in which the Pied Cuckoos adjusted their arrival perfectly with changes in monsoon arrival — we would see a line pointing upwards from left to right. (For a more comprehensive pictorial and verbal description for how to examine this graph, click here.)
What do we see in the actual data? Out of the 12 locations for which we have information, 6 lines point upward and 6 downward, which means that cuckoos appear to show no consistent differences in arrival date with differences in monsoon onset!
Does this mean we have to revise our dearly-held beliefs about the impeccable timing of Pied Cuckoo migration? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Acknowledgements: The most important people in creating this report, as in all of MigrantWatch, are the participants who contributed their time and effort in reporting sightings to the database. This link lists all those whose sightings of Pied Cuckoos between May 2009 and April 2011 were uploaded to MigrantWatch. MO Anand helped in various ways with the preparation of this report. We are grateful for comments from Umesh Srinivasan and R. Jayapal.
Participant Profile: Shantilal Varu
Where do you live?
I am living at Madhapur village of Bhuj Taluka, Kutch District (Gujarat)
What do you do?
I am retired government servant.
When did you start watching birds?
I have been bird-watching for over 40 years.
Who would you consider your birding mentor?
I was a keen birdwatcher since childhood and I found great inspiration from Late Dr. Salim Ali and M. K. Himmatsinhji, who I consider as my mentors. I met Salim Ali at Hingolgadh in 1977 and Bhuj in 1979 and I had many birding trips in Kutch with Himatsinhji.
Please describe a memorable birding experience.
One of my most memorable bird-watching experiences was in the year 1978 when we were visiting the Flamingo City in the Great Rann of Kutch. We lost our way in the darkness and had to stay the night in the Rann without any food and very little water. It turned out to be one of my most adventurous birding trips.
What is/are your favourite migrants?
My favourite birds are waders.
What is your favourite place to watch migrants?
My favourite bird-watching places in Kutch are: Great and Little Rann of Kutch, Chhari Dhandh, Naliya Grassland, Banni Grassland and the coastal belts of Kutch.
Why do you think people should care about birds?
Nature has given birds its nicest colours and sounds – people should enjoy these.
View photos by Shantilal Varu.
View sightings by Shantilal Varu.
Shantilal Varu has contributed 629 reports on the MigrantWatch Database from 26 locations in Gujarat (as on 8 April 2010).
You can write to Shantilal Varu at snvaru at yahoo.in
