Birds of the Yellow Sea

The familiar bar-tailed godwit, plovers, looking so different in their breeding plumage.   

Thanks to Umesh for sharing this absolutely beautiful video.

"The intertidal mudflats of the Yellow Sea contain the most important stopover sites for migratory shorebirds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway - a flyway that has transported birds from breeding grounds in the Russian and Alaskan Arctic to wintering areas in Southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand for hundreds of thousands of years. The productivity of the Yellow Sea’s mudflats and the food they provide to migratory birds are critical to the survival of many species.

This film provides a primer on the basic biological principles of migratory shorebird ecology and why the Yellow Sea is a critical international hub for bird migration. 

Film is also available in Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian.

Filmed and narrated by Gerrit Vyn

Edited by Tom Swarthout

Kunta, the grey wagtail

Kunta, means lame, and a 15gm lame wagtail was christened thus. What was amazing about this wagtail was its migration from Central Asia to the Biligirangan hills on three consecutive years.

Where are the Birds Going? | OPEN Magazine

The ‘epic willfulness’ baffles scientists and amateur birdwatchers alike. It is what makes palm-sized Kunta a nationwide celebrity. Kunta, a Grey Wagtail, weighs just above 15 gm, and despite being handicapped has made a migratory journey of 1,500–2,000 km from the highlands of Central Asia to Billigirirangan Hills in Karnataka for three years consecutively. It arrived at TS Ganesh’s coffee estate, south of Bangalore, with one leg missing. Ganesh had noticed it for the first time in 2007, when it spent the winter in his garden with another Grey Wagtail. Its missing leg made each of Kunta’s visits an epic one, and brought it fame by being featured in national newspapers and magazines, including Open.

Kunta was last seen in the winter of 2009-10; perhaps the perils of migration finally caught up with our courageous Wagtail.

Kunta features in the article on migration and changing patterns, over summering and the lack of sufficient data in India.

A new bird in town

The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Fulvous Whistling duck sighted at Pallikaranai

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

See that brown duck, he's not supposed to be here. This is Pallikaranai marsh, a wetland in Madras, and that brown bird is a Fulvous Whistling Duck. According to the experts, this is a first sighting for Madras!

Its visit to Madras was captured by MNS member Skandan. While we were all getting excited and celebratory by Skandan's report in our e-group, the coots don't seem in the least bothered, and the black-winged stilts in the foreground seem to be largely ignoring him.

Poor chap, here he's come from some far-away land, and nobody to give him a half-decent welcome. Now, if it was Bharatpur, it would be a different matter altogether.

Well, I bring up Bharatpur, because I went all the way there, (along with Skandan and others), and we saw Mr Fulvous' extended family - (I assume they are distant relations, the lesser whistling teals.)

Its like finding Toblerone in the local grocery store nowadays, when once they were symbols of your travel to distant and exotic foreign lands. Globalisation, I suppose.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

So now, I need to learn how to tell a Greater Whistling Teal from a Lesser. The latter is below. Gorgeous aren't they?

The lesser ones that we saw in Bharatpur, did whistle a lot. They would take off as a flock, whistle away as they did a sortie and then land noisily back among the red azolla.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna javanica

Photo by Carthic - Dendrocygna javanica

Well, its do with the streakings and the size. The larger, is larger (well, but naturally,), and also has more white streakings on its sides. The Fulvous Whistling Duck is supposed to have a distinct, dark black line down the rear neck.

So, now I need to go off to Pallikaranai and see if I find Mr Fulvous still there...after all, one has to be hospitable to visiting guests.....maybe a Mrs Fulvous has joined?

Fulvous Whistling Duck - videos with their calls - Click on the link.

The day's surprises continued....

It was not done with. Skandan and Sripad, then also witnessed a David-Goliath kind of battle. The courageous black-winged stilts (David), took on a black Kite and then some crows, chasing them away, as they fiercely protected their little chicks.

Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt chasing a crow
Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt taking on a Black kite

Update - 20/7/09

Of course, the sightings led to much excitement, and many MNS members trooped off to Pallikaranai to see the new bird in town.

Chitra wrote in that she saw around fifteen of the ducks (so it was not a maverick couple), as they flew overhead, crossing the road, and heading north. She also reported that the marsh was teeming with avian life.

spot billed ducks, pheasant tailed jacanas, grebes, coots, BWS, glossy ibises, and the fulvous whistling ducks, along with the usual pelicans, painted storks, egrets, moorhens, purple herons, we also saw three bar tailed godwits one male in breeding plumage (reddish upper body), blue tailed bee eaters, ashy prinias, and black kites

I dragged my husband off and had a quick look-see this morning. We did not see the "stars" of the show, well in any case not well enough to identify...there was a distant bunch of brown ducks.

But I did not mind, because I added two more to my lifer list - Pied avocets and Pheasant-tailed jacanas!

The Pied Avocets have a lovely black-and-white wing pattern, which is captured in this photo by Abhijit Avalaskar so beautifully. I enjoyed watching them take off as a flock, and then come and settle down in the water. When they rested, they were in the background, and I could not see their markings all that clearly, but when they were in flight, it was oh-so-clear.

I cam back home and read a bit about them. They seem to have interesting feeding habits with their long slender upcurved bill, but they were too far away for me to observe this, but I did hear their "high-pitched kleet call" (Salim Ali), as they took off in flocks.

My first encounter with a jacana was at Dungarpur in December 2008, when an immature bronze-winged jacana had me foxed, with its spidery legs and walk-on-leaf spryness.

This time, I was prepared. There were these four spidery-legged birds poking about in the mud, with a long elegant tail, like as if they were in coattails! It was a dull and cloudy day, and these pictures dont do justice to a rather interesting looking bird, with a touch of yellow on its neck.

Sangeeth VS has taken a lovely close-up picture of the pheasant-tailed jacana here.

We then saw another two in the water, holding their tails up, as if they did not want to get them wet.

We wandered around for a while, seeing coots, black-winged stilts and dabchicks by the hundreds, and pelicans lining the electric pylons. There were so many bee-eaters, flashing past us, or sitting on the reeds. Then there were the large purple swamp hens and the smaller moorhens, the solitary purple heron, and a few white ibis. every now and then a black kite would glide overhead, and the ducks and stilts would all get a trifle nervous.

The cars and motorbikes zoomed by, honking impatiently and oblivious to all this lovely bird life.

About Pallikaranai

Pallikaranai is a freshwater wetland, situated in Madras/Chennai. I guess in the old days it served to keep the city's groundwater charged as well. Then came a few years of poor rain, and the city realtors and developers decided it was a jolly good idea to build in this marsh - how could we let such prime land go to waste.

On the other side, the city Corporation also decided to use it as a garbage dumping ground.

Choked from all sides, the birds fled. Citizens got together under various banners to reverse the trend, and there has been some success. The High Court has ordered that garbage dumping and burning in the area be stopped.

According to a report in the Times Of India, though, a High Court panel says garbage is still being burnt at Pallikaranai. The Chennai Corporation has been asked to reply to this charge by July 29th. Lets hope for the best.

Also, the remaining undeveloped areas have been notified as a Reserve Forest, and I noticed that the protective fencing has increased slightly.

These small steps have already brought the birds back. I do hope it continues!

Featured in I and The Bird #105.

Arun spots a Mongolian!

Arun of MNS "saw(and photographed) this female Barheaded Goose ( 2nd March, 2009
5.40 pm), in Koondhakulam (flock of about 120 birds). Contacted the concerned people and found out that -- it had been banded in Darkhad Valley of Northern Mongolia on 17th July 2008 by the Wildlife Conservation Society of Mongolia.... 5000 km journey"

Photo by Arun
I saw these birds for the first time in January this year, when I travelled to Bharatpur, the bird sanctuary in north India.  These geese are quite common in other countries I know, but for us they are definitely not-so-common.

I remember being amused at their honking and bossy ways in the marsh, as they quarreled with each other and waddled around in this most busy fashion!  But to find them all the way down south!  That's quite astonishing!

I wonder what these "Mongolians" thought about our country and our water tanks!  But it looks like their visit is not entirely unusual, as I came across this 2005 The Hindu article where it states that "bare-headed geese" expected to arrive from China are being monitored for the Bird Flu virus!

Koodankulam/Koondakulam, by the way is a sanctuary near Tirunelveli in southern-most Tamil Nadu.  Its well known for a nuclear plant located there.

Look out for wild birds marked in Mongolia

The Wildlife Conservation Society exhorts us to look out for marked birds and report to them if you see any such birds banded either as a collar or on the leg.

Photo by Arun

As I saw this picture of them in flight, I wondered, were they looking to return to their summer homes?

Great work Arun!  (Arun's a doc, by the way, no kidding, a medical doc. )

Update - 30th April, 2009

It seems to be the season to visit Koondakulam.  Other MNS members, (maybe inspired by Arun?) also visited and came back with a gallery-ful of excellent shots and poses of water birds.

Skandan witnessed quite a flamingo performance, reminiscent of the Bolshoi ballet performances of old.

Prof Chandrasekaran on the other hand, was at hand to record the Council Meeting of the Painted Storks, as well as the General Assembly, taking detailed visual notes all the while!

Skandan wrote in, "It ws a great birding trip for us as Mr Pal Pandiyan,the birdman of Koondakulam guided us perfectly to the right spots to have a closer look at many a species.... 

All the snaps are taken from very safe distance and the birds were not disturbed from their habitat at any point..."

The uncommon incident of the Common Crane

The Bharatpur story never seems to end, does it? To start at the beginning, click here.

Apparently, they are common somewhere, but to me and all of us who saw them, they were definitely uncommon and elusive!!

We were hot and sweaty, having pedalled away on the brick-lined, bone-jarring bund bordering the Ghana canal.  The early morning mist and cool air had long gone, and now we were thankful for the shade of the occasional tree that lined the bund, and against which my faithful purple steed  could be rested!

It was our last day at the sanctuary, and I had already seen my first munia ever, a tree full of yellow footed pigeons, and even several black Redstarts.  While the munias would just not sit still as they hopped from twig to ground to bush to twig, the pigeons just sat and stared!  They looked glum and disappointed like a bunch of Congress workers after their party had lost an election!  The redstarts had no time for us as they zipped and flew through the air, and I felt quite dizzy and tired just trying to follow them!

So, I had had my fill of excitement - or so I thought, and was just staring contentedly into the dry grassland, looking at some cattle moving around in a desultory fashion.  But not Divya. Ever vigilant, thats what she is, and she suddenly barked, "Hey Varun, there's some big bird, look past those cows."  So, while I was going, "where, I cant see, oh thats just a calf", etc etc, Varun the sharp-eyed declared that they were Common Cranes.

Inskipp and Salim Ali were consulted, binoculars trained and a consensus was reached. Common Cranes they were.  See that black streak down the face, or is it a white streak on a black face?  But they are not common, I wailed.  So Varun placates me, "They are common in Europe, you see, they are only winter visitors here."  I was still miffed and truculent, and muttered militantly that we should give them our own name, and its not fair, etc etc.  

Anyway, common cranes they were, and a lovely family of four, mum, dad and two teenagers?  Now they were actually more than 600m away, (atleast I think so), and our binocs were at the limit of their capabilities.  Thankfully we had two large gunners with us, who crept a little ahead and got these photos.

Photo by CarthicGrus grus- thats their official name.

Like the Sarus, these too have an extended and elaborate calling and dancing behaviour.

The International Crane Foundation site says:

Mated pairs of cranes, including Eurasian Cranes, engage in unison calling, which is a complex and extended series of coordinated calls. The birds stand in a specific posture, usually with their heads thrown back and beaks skyward during the display. The male always lifts up his wings over his back during the unison call while the female keeps her wings folded at her sides. In Eurasian Cranes the male initiates the display and utters one call for every three female calls. All cranes engage in dancing, which includes various behaviors such as bowing, jumping, running, stick or grass tossing, and wing flapping. Dancing can occur at any age and is commonly associated with courtship, however, it is generally believed to be a normal part of motor development for cranes and can serve to thwart aggression, relieve tension, and strengthen the pair bond.

This calling is seen in several crane types, and I do wish I had witnessed it!

Photo by SkandanWell, I guess I was lucky just to be in the right place at the right time.  After a while, papa crane kept looking watchfully and warily to his right, and then we saw a group of jackals in the grass.

A few minutes later, and the cranes were off, flying away from us, with the long graceful strokes of their wings.  With a wingspan of some 6-7 ft, it was quite a sight to see the four of them, in a similar rhythm, take off and fly in a "V".  It was another of those silence moments, where I was dumbstruck, though Varun kept muttering deliriously, fantastic, fantastic!

As we moved on, our eyes caught another two families of these cranes take to the air!  Where had they been hiding?  We had not noticed them at all!

And so ended the uncommon incident of the Common Crane.

E7's record bested

E7 was a bar-tailed godwit which was recorded as flying some 11,570 kms non-stop from Alaska to new Zealand! If you thought that was a lot, then the record has been beaten this year!

11,655 kms is this years' record for non-stop flying. Same route. Same species.

Birds Fly More Than 7,000 Miles Nonstop, Study Shows - washingtonpost.com

Gill and his colleagues outfitted 23 bar-tailed godwits with satellite transmitters that periodically sent a signal detected by a satellite.

Female godwits are substantially larger than males. A one-ounce, battery-powered device was surgically implanted in them, with the antennas exiting their bodies just beneath the tail. The smaller males got a solar-powered device weighing less than half an ounce strapped to their backs.

Nine of the transmitters functioned well enough on the southward flight to provide evidence of sustained, nonstop flight.

One female flew directly from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska to New Zealand in eight days. Other birds either landed short of their destination in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, or the signal was lost near those places. Four were later identified in New Zealand by leg bands.

The birds weigh no more than 1.5 pounds when they leave. Half of that is fat, which they burn off completely during the flight. Some of the males may have lost their transmitters in flight as their bodies shrank.

The starting and stopping places are not chosen by chance. The Kuskokwim Delta is rich in food supply, which the birds must consume in prodigious quantities before leaving. The wintering site in New Zealand is largely free of predators. When the birds arrive in early October, they molt almost immediately.

The birds leave from late August to late September, departing only with favorable tail winds. How much of their journey is wind-aided is something the researchers hope to determine by overlaying the birds' routes with day-by-day meteorological data.

A major mystery is how high the birds fly. Gill said that since word of his research has spread, researchers on boats in the Pacific have told him of seeing godwits 3,000 feet high and "smoking by at deck level."

PS: If you do read the Washington Post article, check out the comments as well - some are intsructional, and some are pretty funny - lots of Palin jokes, what with the Alaska connection.

Great Knot 'LW' tagging record - India

Great Knot 'LW' tagging record - India

Remember E7, the bar tailed Godwit? Scientists put a radio tag on her, when she set off from New Zealand. She went from NZ-China-Alaska and back. The rounds trip lasted from 6th February to 7th September, and was a total of 30,000 kms or so.

Now the amazing thing was that on her return, she did something like 11,570kms NON-STOP.

Well, here are examples of further such epic journeys.

One, of a Great Knot tagged as LW was spotted in Bengal's Henry Island after flying in from China and Siberia! The link gives an account of the excitement of the birders who actually found the bird.

Another is of a Bar-headed Goose, C6, seen in Veer Dam, Maharashtra.

I shall keep my eyes peeled for such tags!