Endemic Bird Day is Here!

Tomorrow (Saturday 14 May) is Endemic Bird Day. You’ve seen the list of all of our endemics, heard some interesting facts about some, including Spotted Creeper, Painted Sandgrouse and Indian Pitta, and done the quizzes, now all that is required is to go birding on 14 May and enter your lists into eBird. (We request you to upload you lists by the night of Monday 16 May so we can publish some summaries soon afterwards). Do sign-up for the Facebook event, maybe let others know of your plans by posting there, and on the day itself we welcome updates of interesting sightings and experiences from the field.

If you are in the Delhi area, you can combine your Endemic Birding with the Summer Bird Count.

Forest Owlet

Forest Owlet © Rohan Chakravarty

Many of you will know the story of the Forest Owlet, one of our most famous endemics. Known from just seven central Indian specimens, the most recent having been collected in 1884, it was unsuccessfully searched for a number of times, notably by Sálim Ali and S Dillon Ripley, and generally considered extinct. After some intriguing detective work by Nigel Collar and Pamela Rasmussen it was realised that the last collected specimen had actually been stolen from the British Museum by Richard Meinertzhagen and relabelled with a false location. Hence the various recent searches had not been focused on the most likely locations. Armed with this new information, Rasmussen joined Ben King and David Abbott on an expedition which resulted in the sensational rediscovery after 113 years in Maharashtra in November 1997.

The Forest Owlet story does not end there however. Just over 2 years ago the species was found for the first time in Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary, by Sunil Laad and Rohidas Dagale, a mere 100km from Mumbai! Shortly afterwards came another new location, this time by Jenis Patel, Shashank Patel, Saurabh Rathor, Jaymal Patel, Pratik Patel and Anirudh Vasava, in Purna Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat. From this story it is clear that there is still a lot to be known about our birds, and anyone actively birding could play a part. With endemics especially, it is key for their conservation that we understand as fully as possible their distribution: your eBird records are therefore vital.

Forest Owlet © Tarique Sani

Green Avadavat © Rohan Chakravarty

As a teaser for those who are excited by such prospects, here is a modern mystery. Why is it that a species described just four years ago as being “resident in C India… from Rajasthan to Bihar, and S Uttar to N Andhra; scattered records further south”
(Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide), has no regular records away from one known small area for at least the last 30 years? The species is of course Green Avadavat, easily seen at Mount Abu in Rajasthan but apparently nowhere else at all! We look forward to an Indian eBirder adding a new chapter to this story…

Global Big Day

Saturday 14 May is also Global Big Day, and your eBird observations will automatically count towards this, the biggest day of birding ever worldwide! India is a major contributor to this event, as you can see from the table below which lists the 66 species (of the total of 6,158) that were only recorded in India in 2015. Will it be more this year? (The Bird Count India Coordinator is currently in Nagaland doing his bit!)