The World Sparrow Day - March 20

The abase house sparrow has fans outside the rarefied world of birdwatchers. “It's because successive generations arose up with this passerine bird. It's little surprise that they feel its absence,” says Madras Naturalists' Society (MNS) and adds that this love for the sparrow bird is adequte to script its comeback.

MNS is creating a “Sparrow Map of Chennai” and it relies mostly on residents to achieve this task. To involve the community in this conservation effort, MNS has called an event for World Sparrow Day for the every year “March 20” that requires people to write in about places where they have seen sparrows.

Participants are awaited to look for these birds in their neighbourhood on March 20 and note down the location, time, weather, number of sparrows, activities they were engaged in, location of nests (if any), other birds or animals found in the vicinity and other relevant information. If participants have managed to click photographs of these sparrows, they may send them in.

MNS will work on this data, visiting these sites and looking for ways to improve sparrow populations there. “Areas where sparrows even flock may offer clues to understanding factors that confirm these birds. Various theories have been forwarded to brief the dwindling numbers of sparrows and collecting data about these birds from areas where they are still found may help get at conclusions about these theories.

The Bears Dancing Amazing

The bears feature as significant characters in many of our success stories. But, have you seen the images of bears abused so that their owners can make a keep out of it?

The horrible exercise of dancing bears and the deliver and rehabilitation projects to check this was one of the issues talked about at a symposium held in the city recently looked by many animal welfare organizations in India. Dr. Arun Sha, veterinary officer at Wildlife SOS's Bannerghatta Bear Rescue Centre, in his presentation explaining the projects carried out by the organization to prevent this practice, said that sloth bears were mainly poached for this purpose. Wildlife SOS with the affirm of the Government and other organisations had delivered 600 dancing bears.

The practice of utilizing dancing bears for entertainment in India dates endorse to the Mughal era when Kalandars were hired in courts. Though it was banned by law in 1972, studies found that as of 2002, there were more than 1,200 dancing bears all above the country.

Comeback of grey pelicans Bird creates immense academic interest

The return back of grey pelicans bird to Kolleru Lake has generated a wonderful amount of academic interest in the avian fauna of the lake. The amount of migratory and residential birds recorded by the Wildlife Division of the Forest Department has almost accomplished 200.

Several species of jacanas, storks, herons, ducks, teals, cormorants, daters, terns, pigeons, doves, swifts, kingfishers, drongos, bee-eaters, cuckoos, parakeets, swallows, bitterns, owls and sparrows are on the list of birds that have made a home in the lake. Many of these birds were rare and threatened spices. The large whistling teal is listed in Schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection Act) 1972. The migratory birds stopped coming and the residential birds left with the devastation of their habitat by unregulated aquaculture.

The grey pelican birds were among the first birds to stop arriving to the lake to roost. But the many steps has taken by the Forest Department brought these large birds back.

The birds remained away from the lake for a couple of decades. The lake which is a Ramsar site was then announced a wildlife sanctuary. Several illegal fish tanks were destroyed as part of Operation Kolleru. The birds came back after that, but did not stay to perch in the season. The Forest Department then took special steps to see that the pelicans that were coming every year remained back in Atapaka to nest.

Local Guardians Back to Protect Sariska Tigers

The New Year augurs well for the Sariska Tiger Reserve, for the local guardians of the 400 sq km sanctuary nestling in the lap of the Aravallis are back vowing to protect the land, the trees, the fauna and the apex animal, tiger.

One could visualise the return of the lovely days for Sariska as early this past week villagers in the neighbourhood of the park -- which had lost all tigers in the wild some years back to alleged poaching -- inspired by Waterman Rajendra Singh started a 19-day padyatra committing themselves to protection of this precious island of bio-diversity towards which the metropolis of Delhi is stretching its hands greedily!