Smallest migratory bird spotted in Manakudy reserve forest

Kanniyakumari has three bird reserves, apart from Manakudy the others are Suchindram and Theroor lakes, where mostly migratory ducks as Eurasian pintail, garganey, shoveller and wigeon and some species of terns visit for wintering, besides local species as spotbilled duck, coot, painted stork, pelican, common teal, jacanas, moorhen, open-billed stork, cormorants, shag and varieties of herons.

After having spotted the bird, Davidson Sargunam, a conservation educator and a member of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for Ecosystem Management in South Asia, explained about the nature of the Manakudy Reserve saying that it was blessed with estuary, salt pans, estuarine mudflats and intertidal flats, mangroves, which are home to a host of migratory avifauna as sandpipers, ducks, terns, gulls, greater flamingos, snipes and plovers.

The little stint has its migration from the Arctic to the tip of India covering a distance of about 11,000 kilometres. The Reserve is far from human habitations providing the required food as small invertebrates obtained by rapid pecking action on muddy surfaces.

Referring to its characteristics, he said the ‘little stint’ breeds across a broad range in Arctic Europe and Asia and is a long-distance migrant, wintering south to Africa and South Asia. It’s gregarious in winter, sometimes forming large flocks with other waders.

“It’s small in size, fine dark bill, dark legs and quicker movements distinguish this species from all waders except the other dark-legged stints. Little stints retain partly rufous as non-breeding plumage,” Davidson told DT Next on Monday. While recalling, he said Robert Grubh, a renowned ornithologist, who worked in Bombay Natural History Society ( BNHS ) in his study of the bird said that he had weighed the bird and found it had about 20 grams on arrival to the Reserve and while going back to its native place weighed 26 grams.

This stint is one of the species to which the ‘Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds’ (AEWA) applies.

However, it does not breed in the UK, but is a passage migrant, with most birds being juveniles seen during autumn. It’s much scarcer in spring when small numbers of adults could be seen and a very few birds spend the winter there. The bird is a widespread breeder in the Eurasian Arctic and migrates to non-breeding grounds in the Indian subcontinent and other places.

On the other hand, it’s locally threatened by habitat degradation mainly by salt marsh reclamation, illegal hunting and climate perturbation affecting salt regimes in saline wetlands and illegal fishing. While license was meant for salt manufacturing, the supplementary activity of fishing is done illegally, resulting in food for bird scarce, he said.