Bengaluru Bird Count

The third Bengaluru Bird Count will be conducted on 14 &15 February 2015. 

Unlike last two years, this is a two day event and birdwatching teams can pick and choose any day or any session for their trips. The big motive is to balance coverage and fun, hence we do a bit of coordination to ensure that the most important sites and habitats are sufficiently covered with the available resources. This event overlaps with GBBC-India and all these lists will land in GBBC listings. We use eBird as the backbone for listing and atleast one member in each team would need an ebird account.

Birdwatching is ideally done by small teams of 3-4 members, lead by atleast one birder who can safely identify a good number of species found in the selected sites. Teams spend time at multiple sites, birding as long as it takes to cover the site before moving to the next site. Lists should not span multiple sites. It is encouraged to submit short complete lists from each site. If you are spending an entire day at a site, please divide this into two separate sessions, each being an independent complete list. Species seen on the way or when you were not specifically watching for birds can be considered as Incidental lists.

If you are a birdwatcher in Bengaluru during this weekend and would like to join us, kindly send an email to below ID so that we can plan the days appropriately. You may have already made plans for the days or you would be a birder looking out for company for one of the days/sessions, please let us know. You may not be free during this period but may have plans to do birding in your neighbourhood for short period or take general public for birdwatching, please let us know that too. We may be able to tune our plans considering the parts you may be covering. Lastly this coincides with Campus Bird Count of GBBC-India, we will coordinate to make best use of that effort. 

Details of last year’s BBC can be found below.

Contact

Praveen J. [email protected]

The second Bengaluru Bird Count was conducted on 16 February 2014. Several groups split across various parts of Bengaluru to watch birds and reported their lists in eBird. This coincided with Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) and Big Bird Day (BBD) and the data collected was also contributed to those events. A short summary of the results is provided in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of Results

The city was divided into four zones for operational purposes. The distribution of various parameters in these four cardinal zones is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig 1: Distribution of species count and effort from sites in four cardinal directions

Like most cities, development in Bengaluru happens in circles. Based on some known roads & landmarks, the sites were categorised into four concentric, nearly circular zones as described in Table 2.

Table 2: Concentric near-circular zones of Bengaluru

Fig. 2 shows how different sites were divided into near-concentric circles in the map and Table 3 lists the sites on how these sites are assigned to different zones.

Fig 2: Map showing the demarcation of the circles (Some areas of Exterior zone are outside this map)

Table 3: List of sites and their zone demarcation

Fig. 3 shows a representative distribution of species count and effort in these circles. Table 3 provides the list of thirteen Threatened and Near-threatened species as per IUCN which were recorded during the count. Apart from this list, Indian Spotted Eagle (Aquila hastata) is known to occur in several wetlands around the city but was not recorded during this count. Other Red Data species which have occurred in this area are rarities viz. Lesser Florican (EN), Lesser Flamingo (NT), Great Snipe (NT), Wood Snipe (VU), Eurasian Curlew (NT), Great Thick-knee (NT), Black-bellied Tern (EN), European Roller (NT) and Kashmir Flycatcher (VU) or locally extinct like White-rumped Vulture (CR), Great Indian Bustard (CR), Black-necked Stork (NT) and Laggar Falcon (NT). Nandi Hills (IBA #IN203), Ramadevarabetta Vulture Sanctuary (= Ramanagara Reserve Forest, IBA #IN206), Hessarghatta Lake, Thippagondanahalli Reservoir, Savandurga Hillocks and Hoskote Lake form important habitats for these species. The other Important Bird Area (IBA) in Bengaluru, Bannerghatta National Park (IBA # IN181), was not covered as a part of this count as it is a restricted area. Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary (IBA #IN186) that lies in the southern boundary of the area is considered out of limits. The four non-IBAs listed here are candidate IBAs for the next update.

Table 4 : List of Red Data Species from BBC

In 2013, 204 species of birds were recorded during Bengaluru Bird Count (then called Bangalore Bird Watch) and the following list of birds (Table 4) recorded last year was not recorded this year.

Table 5: List of species from 2013 count not recorded this year

Tables 6-9 lists the most common birds in each of the zones in the order of abundance expressed as percentage lists where the bird occurs.

Table 6: Common Birds of Inner Zone

Table 7: Common Birds of Outer Zone

Table 8: Common Birds of Peripheral Zone

Table 9: Common Birds of Exterior Zone

Table 10 provides the complete list of species, sorted taxonomically and the percentage of lists where it has been reported in each of the zones.

Table 10: Checklist of Birds recorded during BBC with % Lists where it was reported

Table 11 provides the list of participants and the link to their checklists in eBird.

Table 11: List of sites, participants and their list link

Below are the links to the data files for anybody interested in further analysis.

• Lists
• Observations