Mangaluru: Campus Bird Count 2018 @ Mangalore University
Bellevision Media Network
Mangaluru, 22 Feb 2018: Campus Bird Count (CBC) is a sub-event of the larger ‘Great Backyard Bird Count’ (GBBC), organised by Bird Count India every year. This is a collaborative effort to document the bird-life in campuses across India, to gather information about the diversity, distribution and frequency of bird species outside the protected areas. This year 230 Campuses across the India have registered for Campus Bird Count which included 23 campuses’ from Karnataka.
Mangalore University, spread over an area of 300 acres is home to variety of avian fauna. Birders from the university have been actively participating in the CBC for the past 3 years. This year the team was led by Vineeth Kumar K (Research scholar) along with Jagdish Paithankar (Research scholar), Bhagya UJ (M Sc student) and Donald Preetam Henry (M Sc student) of department of Applied Zoology. In the first year of Mangalore University’s CBC (2016), 77 species were recorded and the second year the numbers rose to 95 species. This year the event was a great success with participation of students and research scholars from various PG. departments of Mangalore University (Applied Zoology, Applied Botany, Biosciences, Chemistry, Commerce, Geoinformatics, Material science, Physics and Yogic Science), along with few staff from the Dept. of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University, P A College of Engineering, Ambika Vidyalaya and Govinda Dasa College, Students and Research Scholars from other institutions and few independent birdwatchers from Mangalore. Campus bird count had over 50 participants in total.
This year due to increased efforts of birdwatchers from the Campus, the four days of CBC (February 16-19) ended with a recording of 110 species; despite the fact that several species recorded in the last year were missing. This increasing numbers indicate the possibility that there are still more species in the Campus, which can be recorded with continuous efforts in the future.
Some rare birds found during the Campus bird count include Srilankan frogmouth, Savanna Nightjar, Common Hoopoe, Black-headed Ibis, Small minivet, Tickell’s blue flycatcher, yellow-wattled lapwing, White-browed Bulbul, Plum-headed Parakeet and Indian Roller etc.
Migratory species recorded during the CBC include Indian Pitta, Brown shrike, Booted eagle, Ashy Drongo, Blyth’s reed warbler, Green/Greenish warbler, Brown breasted Flycatcher, Eurasian Blackbird, Gray wagtail and Blyth’s pipit.
The organisers and participants are of the opinion that the existing bird numbers might be more than what has been recorded, and waiting to be discovered, and similar surveys done every year for a long duration can give a clear picture of how the bird fauna is changing with the changing environment.