Two tagged migratory birds spotted in salt pans in Manakudy bird reserve

Two tagged migratory birds — a redshank and a whiskered tern — have been spotted in the salt pans of Swamithoppu in the Manakudy bird reserve in Kanniyakumari district.

Davidson Sargunam, a bird watcher and conservation educationist, has spotted the birds. He says the reserve has an enough provide of freshwater fish fauna, crustaceans, barnacles and freshwater weeds, and has offered the birds safety and a protect from sound air pollution.

Every yr, birds from European international locations go to the reserve for wintering from September to November. They depart by March or mid-April, relying on the supply of water in the wetlands, Mr. Davidson says.

S. Balachandran, Deputy Director, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), says that is the primary time a whiskered tern, marked outdoors the nation, is reported from India. “As the numbers in the ring are not visible, we are unable to conclude from which country the bird has migrated,” he says.

The whiskered tern is presumably from European international locations. “There are terns that breed in India, but those birds will not come here,” he causes.

According to Mr. Balachandran, there are 5 sub-species of redshank, and so they migrate from the Himalayas, China, Mongolia and the Russian Far East.

“The redshank spotted in Kanniyakumari district is possibly from the subarctic region and it could be one of the birds tagged by the BNHS. We follow the practice of tagging birds on the tibia, the upper leg of the bird. It was either from Point Calimere or Mumbai, the two places where these birds were marked in considerable numbers,” he says.

Tagging helps ornithologists and scientists examine the space that birds journey, the areas they go to, the variety of days they take to achieve the wintering spots, meals availability, water high quality, climatic components, habitat areas, challenges they face and human intervention in the wintering spots.