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Journal of Threatened Taxa Building evidence for conservaton globally www.threatenedtaxa.org ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Communication Report of five interesting avian species from Durgapur ecoregion, West Bengal, India by citizen science effort Sagar Adhurya & Shantanu Bhandary 26 September 2019 | Vol. 11 | No. 12 | Pages: 14496–14502 DOI: 10.11609/jot.3980.11.12.14496-14502 For Focus, Scope, Aims, Policies, and Guidelines visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-0 For Artcle Submission Guidelines, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions For Policies against Scientfc Misconduct, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-2 For reprints, contact <[email protected]> The opinions expressed by the authors do not refect the views of the Journal of Threatened Taxa, Wildlife Informaton Liaison Development Society, Zoo Outreach Organizaton, or any of the partners. The journal, the publisher, the host, and the part- Publisher & Host ners are not responsible for the accuracy of the politcal boundaries shown in the maps by the authors. Partner Member Threatened Taxa Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2019 | 11(12): 14496–14502 Report of five interesting avian species from Durgapur Communication ecoregion, West Bengal, India by citizen science effort ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) Sagar Adhurya 1 & Shantanu Bhandary 2 ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) PLATINUM 1 Department of Zoology, Visva-Bharat University, Santniketan, Birbhum, West Bengal 731235, India. 1,2 Durgapur Wildlife Informaton and Nature Guide Society, Fuljhore, Durgapur, Paschim Bardhaman, OPEN ACCESS West Bengal 713206, India. 1 [email protected] (corresponding author), 2 [email protected] Abstract: This study aimed to report a few lesser known species from Durgapur ecoregion, West Bengal, India. In spite of the anthropogenic pressure, Durgapur supports a high avian diversity. So far, 257 avian species belonging to 59 families were recorded with a citzen science efort during a period of more than fve years (2013–present). Out of these, fve species discussed here, are either not recorded previously or have few records: Hume’s Lark and Graceful Prinia were recorded from riverine habitat; and Lesser Racket-tailed Drongo, White-rumped Shama, and Indian Blue-Robin were recorded from woodland habitat. More extensive exploraton of this region with involvement of citzen scientsts in this study will enrich our knowledge about bird diversity, their migraton and distributon patern in this region. Keywords: Anthropogenic actvity, birds, drongo, lark, prinia, robin, shama. DOI: htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3980.11.12.14496-14502 | ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:9E0EAB8F-3F3B-496B-AFCB-76E9C711F8D6 Editor: Hem Sagar Baral, Charles Sturt University, Australia. Date of publicaton: 26 September 2019 (online & print) Manuscript details: #3980 | Received 30 December 2017 | Final received 13 July 2019 | Finally accepted 31 August 2019 Citaton: Adhurya, S. & S. Bhandary (2019). Report of fve interestng avian species from Durgapur ecoregion, West Bengal, India by citzen science efort. Journal of Threatened Taxa 11(12): 14496–14502. htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3891.11.12.14496-14502 Copyright: © Adhurya & Bhandary 2019. Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this artcle in any medium, repro- ducton and distributon by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publicaton. Funding: Self-funded. Competng interests: The authors declare no competng interests. Author details: Sagar Adhurya is Senior Research Fellow at Department of Zoology, Visva-Bharat University. Shantanu Bhandary is employee of Eastern Coalfeld Limited. Both of the authors are member of Durgapur Wildlife Informaton and Nature Guide Society and working on its project on avian diversity study. Author contributon: SA wrote the paper and performed all of the analysis. Both authors collected feld data. Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank all members of Durgapur Wildlife Informaton and Nature Guide Society for their hard eforts to explore the biodiversity of Paschim Bardhaman District; especially Nirjhar Banerjee for his frst sightng of Hume’s Lark, Sumit Acharjee for his feld cooperaton to fnd Indian Blue-Robin and Saikat Adhurya for his feld cooperaton to fnd Graceful Prinia. Authors are thankful to Amar Kumar Nayak for the help with essental literature. Authors are also thankful to prof. Santanu Ray, Dr. Utpal Singha Roy, and Dr. Moitreyee Chakraborty for their constant encouragement behind this study. 14496 Five interestng avian species from Durgapur ecoregion Adhurya & Bhandary INTRODUCTION MATERIALS AND METHODS Durgapur is an industrial city in West Bengal, India. Study area Geographically, it lies in the transitonal zone between The present study was carried out in Durgapur two ecoregions, Chotanagpur Plateau and Gangetc subdivision (23.480N, 87.32°E) of Paschim Bardhaman Plains. Complementng its unique geographical locaton, District, West Bengal, India and adjoining Damodar Valley this region harbours exceptonal biodiversity, having (Fig. 1). Durgapur is the 77th most populated city in India species from both the ecoregions mentoned earlier. with 566,517 people (as per 2011 census of Government Menton may be made that the Common Babbler Argya of India) and covers an area of about 154km2. This caudata and Striated Babbler Argya earlei are species of industrial city is at approximately 65m above sea Chotanagpur Plateau and Gangetc Plains respectvely, level and located in the transitonal zone between the but then, the present study revealed that both these Chotanagpur Plateau and the Gangetc Plains. This species are found in this ecoregion. ecoregion is surrounded by the river Damodar in the Avifaunal diversity of this region has been studied south and the river Ajoy in the north. Soil, in this region, by various researchers, however, most of their studies is red laterite type. About 100 years ago, the total area focused on Damodar Valley (Gauntlet 1971, 1985; was covered by dense Sal Shorea robusta forest, which Chakraborty 2011; Hossain & Aditya 2016). Thus, it was was cleared gradually from the late 1950s to establish felt necessary to undertake a holistc study to get an idea India’s second planned city (Chakrabart 1989). about the avifaunal diversity of the entre city and its outskirts. This was the primary motvaton behind the Data collecton present work where, for the frst tme, the whole area A citzen science program, ‘Biodiversity of Paschim of Durgapur was taken into consideraton for studying Bardhaman’ (formerly known as ‘Birding Durgapur’) avifaunal diversity. We started a citzen science program has been running since 2013 to create interest among namely ‘Birding Durgapur’ in 2013 to accomplish our job. the citzens of Durgapur and adjoining areas for nature With increasing citzen science involvement, we increased watching by Durgapur Wildlife Informaton and Nature our area of work to the whole Paschim Bardhaman Guide Society. Nature-watchers use digital cameras District in April 2017. In recent days, the citzen science for photography and feld binoculars for birdwatching. program has become a potental tool for biodiversity Nature watchers regularly post their eforts (eBird monitoring (Cohn 2008; Silvertown 2009; Devictor et al. checklists, photographs and call recordings) with date 2010; Theobald et al. 2015). Several web-based popular and place in the Facebook group. All observatons are programs (such as eBird, CBMI, MigrantWatch etc.) rely verifed by the group experts. Species were identfed on the power of citzen scientsts. The volunteer citzen by using suitable feld guides (Grimmet et al. 2011; Ali scientsts minimize the difcultes of researchers to 2012; Grewal et al. 2016) while suitable feld guides study a large region. Increase in a number of observers (Grimmet et al. 2011; Baidya et al. 2017), online range in an area, in turn, increases the frequency of sampling, maps and databases (eBird 2017) and publicatons resultng in beter coverage and public awareness. (Gauntlet 1971, 1985; Chakraborty 2011; Hossain & In present days, fnding a bird outside of its range is not Aditya 2014) on this region were followed to fnd out the uncommon. It may occur due to three possible reasons. distributon and occurrence of various bird species. A First, increase in the number of birds beyond carrying checklist of birds of Durgapur subdivision is contnuously capacity, forcing excess individuals to go beyond the range maintained by group members. to fnd suitable resources for their survival. Second, an increase in the number of observers helps to fll the gap in knowledge about the bird distributon patern. Third, RESULTS disturbances (possibly driven by unpredictable climate paterns and anthropogenic habitat alteraton) beyond Since 2013, 257 species belonging to 59 families