People of this village in Prakasam district do everything they can to provide safety to winged visitors

Fourteen-year-old Harish is busy putting back a young bird which fell off the nest from a tamarind tree. Such spectacles are replete in the remote village of Velamavaripalem in the Ballikurava mandal of Prakasam district as the villagers take pride in providing a safe and secure environment for the winged visitors.

Borewell sunk

Painted storks and other birds make it a point to visit the village in the first week of January for nesting, and return in July along with their young ones.

“'We don’t harm them. We don’t allow others to do so either,” says village sarpanch M. Praveen Kumar, who has taken the initiative to sink a borewell in the dry pond, mobilising ₹4 lakh to ensure water for the avians during this summer as the district faces severe drought for the third consecutive year.

“Our village is more like a mother’s home for these birds which come for breeding and return in July only when the young ones are in a position to fly,” adds 65-year-old Pitchaiah.

These birds have been breeding at the village since time immemorial. They used to come in thousands till the devastating 1977 Diviseema super cyclone which uprooted several big trees in the village, laments villager V. Rosaiah.

Their number had come down in recent years as the irrigation canals fed by river Krishna had been receiving dwindling inflows, following the construction of reservoirs by the upper riparian States of Karnataka and Maharashtra, points out V. Venkateswarlu with a tinge of sadness.

Fast-growing trees

“We planned to raise fast-growing tree saplings in two acres behind the village school this year to improve the birds’ natural habitat,” says the sarpanch in a conversation with The Hindu.

Repairs are being carried out to the Mylavaram Lift Irrigation scheme at a cost of ₹1 crore to bring under irrigation 1,800 acres, he adds.