On 11 June 2022, a single day workshop on bird monitoring in Kerala was organised at the Academy of Climate ChangeEducation & Research, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. This is the eight year of this workshop and was attended by 100 birdwatchers and nature enthusiasts, representing various organisations in Kerala. Participants represented Cochin Natural History Society (CNHS), Malabar Natural History Society (MNHS), World Wide Fund for Nature – Kerala (WWF), Bird Count India, Birdwatchers of Kerala, Kerala Natural History Society (KNHS), Hume’s Centre for Ecology & Wildlife Biology, College of Forestry, Kole Birders, Kottayam Nature Society , Natural History Society of Palakkad (NHSP), Kasaragod Birders, Kollam Birding Batallion, Malappuram Birders, Pathanamthitta Birders, Birders Thodupuzha, Malabar Awareness & Rescue Centre for Wildlife, as well as members from several Whatsapp groups and college students.
Discussions were on various topics, including how to:
- Continue existing annual monitoring exercises.
- Scale monitoring to local levels.
- Support districts in their monitoring plans.
- Use existing data and information for next-level outputs in conservation.
- Improve data quality
- Monitor specific species that are not covered in general monitoring.
Key Decisions: Overall
- Increase participation in Kerala Red List creation with appropriate training.
- Kerala Beach Combing is turning out to be an important activity. Keep enough thrust.
- Heronries and highway impact: several districts volunteered to collate data.
- EpiCollect5 was demonstrated as the tool for heronry data collection.
- Concerted plans to cover all Ramsar wetlands each month were finalised.
- Fine-tuning ideas discussed for improvising sky-island surveys
- Big birding events like OBC and GBBC turn out to be both data collection and birder recruitment.
- Several new monitoring programmes have been proposed to address data gaps in the state. Nocturnal count, black kite roost monitoring, campus biodiversity register, Hornbill population estimation, etc.
- Minutes of the meeting.
Kerala Bird Monitoring Workshop 2023
For past workshops, click on the year.
Header Image: Purple-rumped Sunbird Leptocoma zeylonica by Aparna Purushothaman/ Macaulay Library
