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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I belong to the Punjabi Clan and my family’s roots can be traced back to Amritsar and Lahore in the pre-partition era; the family migrated and settled in Delhi in 1947. Since my father was from the defense services, we lived a gypsy’s life, spending most of our time in Cantts (Cantonment area), that were often quite open and wild. And that’s where the early childhood interest in watching nature grew. This hobby also provided a good escape from mathematics in school!

My love for nature kept growing during my days in the army. Once armed with Salim Ali’s book on ‘Birds of the Indian Sub-continent’ my tryst with the hobby of bird watching started, and later bloomed into a life-long passion. My dependence on this book increased with every reading. Salim Ali’s capacity to accurately describe birds and their habits was beyond comprehension, and each description was equivalent to a thousand good photographs.

The rewards of bird watching are endless and every single sighting has been a memorable one. I vividly remember each of my sightings, whether it is the song of a Crested Lark, flying concert of Small Pratincoles, the hunt by an Osprey, sight of low flying Saras Cranes, the air show of courting Indian Rollers or the flight of over a hundred Demoiselle Cranes making mid-course corrections over the Ganga, on the way to their winter destinations. The charms of bird watching are countless, and you can pursue them anywhere, anytime – be it in the middle of an ocean or a desert, on a railway platform, or from your office window or even your balcony.

Come winter and one is mystified by the phenomena called migration. I have watched with amazement as White Wagtail arriving at the same spot, year after year, keeping their appointments by the date. There is never a dull moment on the banks of the Ganga, all throughout the winters. The Black Redstarts, Bluethroats, water fowl and the wading birds keep you spell-bound till March end.

Regular and systematic penning down of every insignificant and uneventful field observation, can add up to be a wealth of data, which when compiled over the years, may prove to be of great relevance, in the fast degrading environment and ever changing climate.

Feeding trays for birds and a bird-bath is a must in every home. I find that the Jain religion, which advocates this culture, has helped sustain a healthy population of the House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) in the city of Jaipur, while we have observed shocking declines of this wonderful bird from our midst in the recent years. Many a time conservation at the grass-root and individual levels can be far more effective and rewarding than national projects. Bird watching must be a part of the curricula in every school. This would help the cause of conservation, and highlight the economic importance of birds and the nature in general amongst the young generation.

You can write to Praveen Chopra at capt_praveenchopra@rediffmail.com. His MigrantWatch sightings can be seen here.

Many birders who keenly monitor wetlands across the country have had a somewhat disquieting year. It seems that several migratory birds across the country have been giving some of their usual haunts a miss. Newspaper articles^1-6 over the past months have reported lower number of birds or few species of birds from wetlands across the country. Even some of the most widespread and common migrants like the Garganey have not been seen at a number of locations across their recorded distribution in India.

Reports from the latest Asian Waterbird Census suggest that a number of regular migrants at Delhi’s Okhla Bird Sanctuary, like the Black-tailed Godwit and Garganey (photo), did not turn up this year, while several other species like Gadwall and Bar-headed Goose arrived in much smaller numbers^1,2. Similar patterns have been reported from the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur³ and sites across Maharashtra⁴ and Karnataka^5,6.

The media reports, mostly informed by local expertise, have suggested that apart from the usual suspect (habitat loss), unseasonal rains just before the onset of winter are a major reason for the altered patterns. The most severely affected habitats appear to be natural and man-made wetlands that lie downstream of large dams in rain-affected areas. The argument is that water released from the dams submerged islands presumably making conditions unfavourable for a number of species such as the Garganey that forage in shallow water.

MigrantWatch Data

A glance at the MigrantWatch data also seems to suggest that some of the species have been reported from fewer locations this year as compared to last year. (Links lead to MigrantWatch data on the species.)

The Garganey (Anas querquedula) was not reported from Hyderabad, Pune and Nagpur this season (2010-2011) but it was reported from these locations last season (2009-2010). The Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) was reported from Jamnagar in Gujarat and Udaipur in Rajasthan last season (2009-2010) but not this season. The Common Pochard (Aythya farina) during 2010-11 has been reported less than half as often and from far fewer locations than during the 2009-10 or 2008-09 seasons. The Tufted Duck (Aythya fuligula) was only reported from Uttarakhand, Goa and two locations in Gujarat this season; last season it was also reported from locations in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.  The Black-tailed Godwit also was not reported from locations in Goa, Kerala and Karnataka this season.

We should caution that these findings (about MigrantWatch sightngs) should not be taken as definitive. Since the total number of sightings reported to MigrantWatch in the 2010-2011 season is lower than in the previous season (1,887 versus 2,745), it is possible that the absence of species from particular sites or States may simply reflect the lower reporting rate. Note also that MigrantWatch does not have the goal of assessing year-to-year changes in species distribution or abundance — for that, the Asian Waterbird Census is the appropriate source of information.

Still, sightings reported to MigrantWatch  contribute to an overall picture of what is happening to our migrant species. So please do upload your sightings for this season to MigrantWatch so that the combined information becomes more and more valuable.

While it is not new that climate (including rainfall) can affect the distribution of waterbirds, much remains unknown. For instance, where do the displaced migrants go? Do they merely redistribute themselves locally, moving to other wetlands created by the rains? Or, do the changes in rainfall patterns bring about much larger-scale changes in bird migrations? If you have information or an opinion on these questions, please do add a comment to this post.

Newspaper Articles –
1. Some sightings, several misses at Asian waterbird census; Hindustan Times, New Delhi, January 24, 2011
2. Migratory bird count falls sharply in Delhi; The Hindu, New Delhi, March 08, 2010
3. Jairam blasts Gehlot over dry Bharatpur sanctuary; The Pioneer, New Delhi, November 26, 2010
4. Migratory birds fail to weather rain, fall in numbers; The Times of India, Pune, December 11, 2010
5. Migratory bird numbers go south; The Hindu, Mysore, December 22, 2010
6. Urban migration? Not anymore for Bangalore birds; Express Buzz, Bangalore, Feb 16, 2011

2 Feb 2011; World Wetlands Day marks the date of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands, called Ramsar Convention, on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar.

Wetlands in India come in a variety of forms ranging from small village tanks to large river systems and backwater lakes. Wetlands are exciting and vibrant ecosystems which host a wide variety of species. Over winter, Indian wetlands attract a large number of migratory birds. Nearly one-third of the species on the MigrantWatch list are birds that  live on wetlands or extensively use wetland habitats. Some prominent visitors include several species of migratory geese, cranes, storks and flamingos.

MigrantWatchers across India have diligently monitored numerous wetlands over the past few years, generating valuable data from not only popular locations such as the Chilika lagoon, but also several lesser-known wetlands that dot the countryside.

Wetlands are highly threatened ecosystems and are declining at an alarming rate. Among the plethora of threats they face, over-exploitation, drainage for land development and pollution are among the most prominent. There is a pressing need for increased awareness and action to conserve wetlands.

Join us in celebrating Wetlands Day. Wetlands Day works as a reminder of the crucial services that these fast disappearing habitats provide not just to us but also the birds that we love to watch.

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.

Article on bird migration in the New Indian Express. by Raman Kumar. You can download a pdf of the article here.

Even if you’re not on Twitter, you can follow the exciting adventures of Dinara. This female Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius) is one among nine birds that have been fitted with state-of-the-art satellite tags by scientists at the Sociable Lapwing Project, a collaborative effort by BirdLife International, Swarovski and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Thanks to ‘The Amazing Journey’ – the popular face of this project – internet users can follow, real time, the migratory movements of these birds. The tags have revealed that these nine Sociable Lapwings, which breed in Kazakhstan, overwinter in places as far apart as Saudi Arabia and India. Dinara herself was at the Little Rann of Kutch over the new year. Learn more about the life of one of the planet’s rarest birds at The Amazing Journey. And if you live close to Ahmedabad, keep an eye out for Dinara.

Check out Sociable Lapwing data on MigrantWatch, and add your sightings!