Pongal Bird Count to be held from January 13 to 16; result uploaded to ebird.org

The Pongal Bird Count, which brings together avian enthusiasts in a joint endeavour to document bird species, will be held from January 13 to 16.

According to Surendhar Boopalan of Tamil Birders Network, which is holding the exercise in coordination with the Bird Count India, the event is part of a worldwide effort to document birds in a scientific manner and to popularise bird watching.

The result of the count will be uploaded to ebird.org (an online portal for bird watchers to register their sightings/observations in a systematic manner).

Pongal Bird Count was initiated in 2015 and has been attracting more and more bird lovers by the year. Last year, for instance, birders from across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry participated in the count and submitted 1741 lists. The highest number of submissions were from Coimbatore, Kancheepuram, Thanjavur and Tiruvannamalai.

Of the nearly 525 species likely to be present in the region, 346 were reported in a span of four days during PBC 2017. Each of the 178 participants spent an average five hours on birding.

House Crow was the most common resident bird appearing in 53.8 per cent of all check-lists, followed by Common Myna (53 per cent), Black Drongo (45 per cent), Large-billed Crow (41 per cent) and Indian pond-heron (39 per cent), Mr. Boobalan said.

The most common migrant reported in 31.2 per cent of the checklists was the Barn Swallow followed by the Blue-tailed bee-eater (25 per cent), Blyth’s reed warbler (21 per cent), Rosy Starling (13 per cent) and Common Sandpiper (12 per cent).

This year, birders from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are expected to document bird species and count their numbers for at least 15 minutes each day and upload observations on the portal. The participants are free to choose any site of their interest for the count, whether a pond, lake, balcony or terrace.

Various resource materials are available on how to prepare bird checklists in ebird, including online pictorial guide to some common birds of the region and an introduction to birds and birdwatching. Resource materials are available in English and Tamil. Details are on birdcount.in/ event/pongal-bird-count- 2018.