The all-India lockdown began towards the end of March, but people had already begun restricting their movements some days before. Despite this, there was a lot of birding in March. It isn’t straightforward to compare birding with the previous months, though, because February has higher-than-average birding due to the Great Backyard Bird Count. Here is the breakup of eBirding in the country in March 2020 (with previous month in brackets):
Number of birders: 2,533 (3,405)
Number of lists (all types): 28,300 (51,800)
Number of observations: 4,48 lakh (7.62 lakh)
March challenge
The challenge for March was to revisit at least four locations from those visited between Dec 2019 and Feb 2020, and upload at least one list from each during the month of March (details at the link above). A total of 127 birders met the target. These are (excluding group accounts and those with no identifiable name):
| AAKIB HUSSAIN, Afsar Nayakkan, Ajay Agarwal, Ajinkya Supekar, Akshay Shinde, Albin Jacob, AM AMSA, Amritesh kumar, Anagha devi, Angeline Mano, Aniket Prakash, Aravind AM, Arun Murali, Arun Prabhu, Ashok Agarwal, Baseer Baniya, Bhavesh Rathod, Bhuvan Raj, Bijoy Venugopal, Bopanna Pattada, Bruce Wedderburn, CHANDRA BHUSHAN, Chitra Shanker, Civin Solomon, Deepti Krishnan, Devika Rani, dhanapal kondasamy, Dhruba Saikia, Divya Mudappa, Divyaraj Shah, Dr Mohammed Umer Sharieff, Dr. ADIL A, Elavarasan M, fermin jose, Ganpat Deshmukh, Gireesan TU, Gopi Sahu, gurdip boparai, Hakimuddin F Saify, Hareesha AS, Harish Babu M, Hemant Ware, Himavat Gouresh, Irshad Theba, jagdish negi, Jageshwer verma, Jaideep Krishnan, Janardhan Uppada, Jayadev Menon, JOE M RAJA, Kaajal Dasgupta, KARTHIKEYAN R, Kishore P, Krishnamoorthy Muthirulan, Lakshmikant Neve, Lathika K K, Lathish R Nath, Manoj Karingamadathil, Mehala Kumar, MetalClicks Ajay Ashok, Muthusamy A, Navaneeth Sini George, NIRANJANA Meshram , NIRMAL GEORGE, Nishad Eshaal, Panchapakesan Jeganathan, Pankaj Chibber, Parmil Kumar, Periyasamy Rajangam, Prabhudatta Bal, Pradeepa Sudhakar, Pradyumna Vidwansa, Pratyusha Bal, Praveen Tammy, Prem swaroop Kolluru, Pushpa Puliyeri, Raghavendra Pai, Rahul Singh, Rahul M.S, Rainer Rehwinkel, Rajesh Panwar, Rajesh Radhakrishnan, Rajkamal Goswami, Ramaswamy V, Ramesh Desai, Ramnarayan K, Renju TR, Rofikul Islam, Roozbeh Gazdar, Ryan Irvine, Saddam Husain Lodha, Sahana M, Sai Shailesh , Sajeev Krishnan, Samakshi Tiwari, Sandeep Dhagat, Sandeep kumar reddy Gangasani, Sandhya Lenka, Sankar V, Santhi K, Sarabjeet Kaur, sasidharan manekkara, Savio Fonseca, Selvaganesh K, Senan D’Souza, Shasank Ongole, Sheena S, Shilpa Gadgil, Shivaprakash Adavanne, shyamkumar puravankara, Siddharth Shah, Sonam Choldan, Sreekumar Chirukandoth, Sri Vidhya, Steffin Babu, Subhadra Devi, Sukhwant S Raj, T R Shankar Raman, Taukeer Alam Lodha, Vaidehi Gunjal, VASEN SULI, VASI ., Vidhya Swaminathan, Vigneshwaran B, Vinay K L, viral joshi, Vivek chetry |
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Many congratulations to all of them!
From these 127 names, one was drawn using a computer-generated random number. This person is
Lathish R Nath (see eBird profile)
who receives a copy of The Thing with Feathers, by Noah Strycker, as a small gift in appreciation.
Have you managed to meet the target for April (lockdown birding). There is follow-up challenge for May (one list a day). And of course, there are also the yearlong challenges for 2020!
Thanks a lot Bird count India team for selecting me and to slect my image as banner in this page. Happy Birding!!!
Lathish R Nath, Thrissur, Kerala