Over 350 species of birds have been recorded from Tamil Nadu during the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) India 2024, a four-day bird watching event held from February 16 to 19.
According to preliminary results, 355 bird species were observed from 37 districts across the State. In the same trend as last year, Salem topped the number of checklists, which refer to entries of bird sightings, in the eBird web portal. Coimbatore recorded the highest number of species (268) followed by Salem (203), Chengalpattu (172), and Erode (147). Tamil Nadu stood 7th among 37 states in India with 348 species and 3,804 checklists.
Subramanian Sankar, regional coordinator for Tamil Nadu at Bird Count India, said the overall participation in GBBC has increased with the involvement of virtual communities, and so have contributions of photographs of the sightings. Mr. Sankar, who led a team to Ottiyambakkam big lake on February 17, sighted two Peregrine falcons and one Osprey.
Subha, a bird watcher from Erode, spotted a male Jerdon’s bush larks holding prey for attracting females, a Pied bushchat male hunting for its partner and Ashy woodswallows chasing Indian rollers from their occupied palmyrah trees.
Top hotspot
In Chennai, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) was the top hotspot.
Susy Varghese, professor at IIT-M and a bird watcher, said her team did five walks over three days of GBBC 2024. “Since it is the migratory bird season, we get many species that we can see only during mid September to late Feb. These species can fluctuate each year in terms of the numbers we see and the durations. One of the less frequently seen among these was the Malayan Night Heron,” she said.
One of the highlights in Chennai, which ranked 6th among the districts in the State, was a sighting of Common buzzard in Madipakkam lake by A.M. Aravind, a city-based birder. It is to be noted that the number of bird species recorded in GBBC is not an exhaustive representation of avian life in the State.
