It’s festival of feathers for ornithologists

“PBC was started in 2015 with bird watchers from all over Tamil Nadu and Puducherry participating in the event. The photographs taken by bird watchers are uploaded to a common digital platform–ebird.org–as a checklist,” said biologist P Jeganathan, coordinator, ebird.org.

This checklist will help aspiring bird watchers to keep track on the migratory birds and help them to monitor the annual migrations. During PBC 2018, more than 370 checklists were submitted.

Out of 1,734 checklists submitted last year, most lists were from Salem, Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Pudukkottai and Chennai, which are the top five districts. In comparison, districts from central and southern Tamil Nadu submitted relatively lower number of checklists, Jeganathan noted.

The event is part of a worldwide effort to document birds around the globe and to make bird watching popular and scientific. The event is coordinated by Tamil Birders Network and Bird Count India. The result of the count will be uploaded onto ebird.org, the online platform for bird watchers to register their observations in a systematic manner, Jeganthan said. Identifying, counting birds and reporting in a citizen science platform such as ebird India portal can help understand our birds better which can lead to their conservation, the biologist explained.

“Birdwatching is beneficial for both birds as well as for kids, as understanding nature makes them better citizens,” said Arun Nagalingam, Secretary, Pondy Science Forum. The annual bird count was started in Pudhucherry on Monday and the count will continue till January 17. On the opening day of PBC around 45 children participated and recorded their findings. The migration of birds is dull this year due to the deficit rainfall in Puducherry, but the birds that are visiting the Osudu lake are recorded, he said.

According to ebird followers in TN, the Common Myna was the most common resident bird appearing in 51.4 per cent of all the checklists.