Pongal Bird Count 2016 January, 15-18 Organized by Powered by Pongal Bird Count Pongal was celebrated by birders of Tamil Nadu through Pongal Bird Count (PBC), an event organized by the Tamilbirds group and Bird Count India. This event was organized for the second time in Tamil Nadu and saw an increase in enthusiasm and participation from last year. 2015 2016 329 lists 1296 lists 285 species 334 species 174.3 hours 790.4 hours 85 participants 170 participants 1296 Checklists in 29 districts Out of 32 districts in Tamil Nadu, birders from 29 districts and an adjoing Union Territory, Puducherry, participated in PBC 2016. Map of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry showing the lists submitted during PBC 2016. Each list is shown in the map as a translucent circle: darker areas therefore represent multiple lists from the same or adjacent locations. Dotted regions represent the districts (Dharmapuri, Karur, Perambalur and Theni) from where no lists were submitted. Out of 1296 lists submitted most lists were from Chennai, Kancheepuram, Pudukkottai, Coimbatore and The Nilgiris (top 5 districts). In camparison, districts from central and southern Tamil Nadu submitted relatively lower number of checklists. No. of Lists No. of Species 300 200 180 250 160 140 200 120 150 100 No. of ofLists No. 80 ofSpecies No. 100 60 40 50 20 0 0 During the PBC 2016, more than 200 checklists were submitted daily (Day1-389, Day2- 359, Day3-324, Day4-224) of which 94% were effort based complete checklists (Stationary and Travelling) and rest being casual or incidental observations. Travelling Staionary Incidental 6% 42% 52% 334 species Out of nearly 525 species likely to occur in Tamil Nadu region, 334 species were reported within four days of PBC 2016. Complete list of birds reported during this period can be seen in Annexure 1. House Crow was the most common resident bird appearing in 64% of all the checklists and the Blyth’s Reed Warbler was the most common migrant appearing in 26% of the checklists. Top 5 species reported in individual districts of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry during PBC 2016 can be seen in Annexure 2. Top 10 resident birds reported during PBC 2016 Sl. No. Common Name Scientific Name Percentage occurrence 1 House Crow Corvus splendens 64% 2 Common Myna Acridotheres tristis 58% 3 Indian/Eastern Jungle Crow (Large-billed Corvus macrorhynchos 49% Crow) 4 Rose-ringed Parakeet Psittacula krameri 46% 5 Indian Pond-Heron Ardeola grayii 44% 6 White-throated Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis 37% 7 Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus 35% 8 Purple-rumped Sunbird Leptocoma zeylonica 33% 9 Eastern/Western Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis 33% 10 Yellow-billed Babbler Turdoides affinis 32% Top 10 migrant birds reported during PBC 2016 Sl. No. Common name Scientific name Percentage occurrence 1 Blyth's Reed-Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum 26% 2 Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica 24% 3 Blue-tailed Bee-eater Merops philippinus 24% 4 Indian Golden Oriole Oriolus kundoo 10% 5 Pied Cuckoo (Jacobin Clamator jacobinus 8% Cuckoo) 6 Ashy Drongo Dicrurus leucophaeus 8% 7 Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus 7% 8 Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus 7% 9 Common Sandpiper Actitis hypoleucos 7% 10 Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola 7% 790 hours and 170 participants During PBC 2016, each participant spent on an average 4.65 hours on birding. This includes individual participants and group accounts. Coimbatore and Kancheepuram districts had highest number of participants (28 each). Nagappattinam and Erode had highest per person effort of 6.0 and 5.9 hours, respectively. The table shows the top participants (including group accounts) per union territory/ districts, in terms of number of lists recorded (up to 5 participants per districts are shown). For a complete list of participants, see Annexure 3. Districts No. of Ave. Per Person Participant Names Participants Effort (hrs) Puducherry 8 2.5 Surendhar Boobalan, Vigneshwaran B, Arulmozhi Senthil, J Nagaraj, Coumarane Kupps Ariyalur 3 3.8 Albert Relton, Raja Simma Pandiyan, Babu santhanakrishnan Chennai 17 4.2 TheNatureTrust(GroupAccount), Vivek Puliyeri, Rama Neelamegam, Susy Varughese, Mahathi Narayanaswamy Coimbatore 28 2.4 Appavu Pavendhan, CinchonaGHS(GroupAccount), Prakash G, Selvaganesh K, Gunasekaran M Cuddalore 1 1.3 Surendhar Boobalan Dindigul 5 1.7 Mohan Raj K., Amudha Hariharan, Arunsankar N, Dhruv Athreye, Bharathidasan Subbiah Erode 8 5.1 Himanshu Dave, Abu Clicks, Shanmugam Kalidass, Anand Palani, R Selvamani Kancheepuram 28 3.9 TheNatureTrust(GroupAccount), Ganeshwar S V, Vijay Kumar, Devika Rani Kanniyakumari 2 1.7 Jayadev Menon, Nila Subramanian Krishnagiri 3 3.4 Rupa Maity, Rajesh Balakrishnan, Arvind Adhi Madurai 11 5.1 Badri Narayanan Thiagarajan, Priya Rajendran, Raveendran Natarajan, Patrick David, Priya Darshini Nagappattinam 7 6.0 Nature Society of Tirupur Tirupur (GroupAccount), Amol Mande, Pradeep Kumar V B, Balaji P B The Nilgiris 10 5.9 Indira Srinivasan, Bhoopathy A & Indrajith A, Vijay Krishnaraj, Sivakumar SS, Kavin SG Namakkal 6 3.2 Mohanraj T, Subash Nachimuthu, Elavarasi P, TheNatureTrust (GroupAccount), Sivaranjini K Pudukkottai 10 4.7 Selvaganesh K, GovtArtsCollege4Women Pudukkottai (Group Account), Priyanga A, Priyadarshini K, Panchapakesan Jeganathan Ramanathapuram 6 4.1 Dr. Ravi M, Raveendran Natarajan, Seen Mani, Priyadarshini K, Priyanga A Salem 5 2.1 Carlton Relton, Gokul Vadivel, Subraja Vasudevan, (Maram Palanisami), Dr. Ravi M Sivaganga 4 2.7 Raveendran Natarajan, Dr. Ravi M, Priya Darshini, Karthika MD Tiruchirappalli 4 5.0 Siva T, Palani Andavan Balasubramanian, Sathiaseelan Karthikeyan, Aishwarya D Tirunelveli 2 3.8 Subbu Rajan, Thalavai Pandi Thanjavur 7 3.8 Raja Simma Pandiyan, Panchapakesan Jeganathan, Sheeba Nanjan, Griffith Michael, Duraiswamy Navaneetham Thoothukkudi 5 3.1 Naveen Joseph, Sakthi Manickam, Rajeesh Kumar MP, Amudha Hariharan, Sundar Lakshmanan Thiruvallur 8 2.5 Amirtharaj Uthirasu, Rajarajan V, TheNatureTrust (GroupAccount), Sundar Palanivelu, Melvin Jaison Tiruppur 14 2.2 Shanmugam Kalidass, Arumugam Mohankumar, AM Amsa, Anand Palani, Nature Society of Tirupur Tirupur (Group Account) Thiruvarur 9 1.5 Raja Simma Pandiyan, Amirtharaj Uthirasu, Oviya Nakkeeran, Sheeba Nanjan, Panchapakesan Jeganathan Tiruvannamalai 3 4.0 Amirtharaj Uthirasu, Kalaimani Ayuthavel, Vijay Kumar Vellore 2 1.0 Harshjeet Bal, Jaganathan Mohan Viluppuram 5 4.6 Surendhar Boobalan, Lekshmi R, Rajamanikam Ramamoorthy, Kalaimani Ayuthavel, Vigneshwaran B Virudunagar 3 1.3 Sharan Venkatesh, Junglehome Mudumalai, Viji G Some participants and groups showed dedicated efforts during PBC 2016 and are mentioned below: Top 10 individuals by no. of lists Top 10 individuals by no. of hours Name No. of Lists Name Hours Selvaganesh K 80 Surendhar Boobalan 26.0 Ganeshwar S V 65 Raveendran Natarajan 20.5 Indira Srinivasan 60 Selvaganesh K 20.0 Vivek Puliyeri 51 Ganeshwar S V 19.5 Panchapakesan Jeganathan 49 Shanmugam Kalidass 16.9 Shanmugam Kalidass 41 Raja Simma Pandiyan 15.8 Susy Varughese 38 Indira Srinivasan 15.0 Surendhar Boobalan 37 Vijay Kumar 14.6 Sheeba Nanjan 34 Dr. Ravi M 13.3 Mahathi Narayanaswamy 33 Vivek Puliyeri 12.8 Top Group Accounts by no. of lists Top Group Accounts by no. of hours Name No. of Lists Name Hours TheNatureTrust 94 TheNatureTrust 47.3 (GroupAccount) (GroupAccount) GovtArtsCollege4Women 27 CNS Nature 9.0 Pudukkottai Nature Society of Tirupur 9.0 Cinchona GHS 18 Cinchona GHS 6.9 (Group account) (Group account) CNS Nature 6 GovtArtsCollege4Women 6.8 Nature Society of Tirupur 5 Pudukkottai Birds Auroville 4 Birds Auroville 0.0 (GroupAccount) (GroupAccount) Some memorable moments of PBC 2016 from participants From A. Bhoopathy, The Nilgiris. In the Nilgiris, a team members (Myself, My grandson A Indrajit and K. Prabu) of Sackatha village, Aravenu, Kotagiri taluk covered the eastern slopes included Sackatha village, Banagudi Shola and the Longwood Shola. We started the Pongal Bird Count from the elevation of 1600mts to 1025mts. The have been observing in the farm land of Coffee and Tea estates as well as the forest habitations of Shola and evergreen forests. Out team had a good collection of birds in the farmland rather than the forest lands. The winter is the good season for observing the migrants, altitudinal migrants and resident birds. In this bird count, Mamaram, Kunjapanai, Kolikarai and Chemmanarai were intensively covered by our team. Within this Eastern slopes mountain boundaries, live characteristic, plants, animals, birds, insects and other inhabitants, adapted to the region’s climate, landforms and soil. In the tea and coffee estates eco-system, evergreen forest patches surround the tea fields and the rivulets cut across the tea and coffee estates and run through the hedges and bushes which are unique by itself in the Nilgiris; especially in the Vagapanai slopes, Cliffy slopes, Konavakarai slopes and the Jackanarai slopes . These are the geographical features of Nilgiri Eastern Slopes. The eastern slope was one of the favorite birding place of late Dr. Salim Ali, as he mentioned in his biography of “The Fall of the Sparrow”. G. Parameswaran (Shiva), Coimbatore I could only contribute a morning count of Ukkadam Big Tank in Coimbatore on Sunday the 17th of the month. Since Pongal is a time that many bird watchers have other important family commitments, I had to go it alone. My list has been posted in ebird on Jan 17th. Notable sightings are (1) Watercock and (2) Clamorous Reed Warbler. One should also point out the lack of 'long distance migrant ducks' like Pintails, Garganeys and Shovelers in the Coimbatore area this winter. Only a systematic implementation of this seasonal bird count will answer many of the questions that arise due to changes in the environment and may be even climate change. I would also suggest one simple change to the duration of the count. Given family obligations, perhaps one could consider extending the count duration to at least ten days or two weeks, by including two successive weekends. All these matters and certainly worthy of discussion in the Tamil Birder's group.