Stray Dogs pose threat to Birds at Forest Academy

17 June 2012

As part of CBC efforts, the density and kind of birds at Forest Academy campus in Coimbatore is undertaken. As usual it is an early Sunday morning with my 2 kids. The forest campus is about 4 sq km and is one of the oldest surviving green cover in Coimbatore. This is situated in RS Puram.

This effort is taken as part of their forthcoming centenary celebrations. A team of 16 of us were there and spent about 3 quality hours in identifying the species.

The list of species identified are
1. House Crow
2. Jungle Crow
3. Common Myna
4. Black Kite
5. Shikra
6. Peacock
7. Grey Francolin
8. Common Hoopoe
9. Rocket Tailed Drongo
10. Ashy Drongo
11. Yellow wattled Lapwing
12. Red wattled Lapwing
13. Feral Pigeon
14. Blue Rock pigeon
15. Spotted owlet
16. Common Hawk cookoo
17. Yellow billed babbler
18. PR Sun bird
19. Tailor bird
20. Indian Pond heron
21. Rufous tree pie
22. Rose ringed parakeet
And many more

It was interesting to see lapwings of both - red wattled and yellow wattled were together, Also, interesting was to see a chick of YW Lapwing. We also had opportunity to see racket tailed drongo for the first time. Kites were in plenty of Black Kites type.

Blue Rock Pigeons

Yellow & Red Wattled Lapwings

Yellow wattled Lapwings

Grey Francolin

Shikra

Rocket Tailed Drongo



Black Kite


Stray dogs were really plenty and we suspect them responsible for reduction of ground dwelling and breeding birds such as these Lapwings, Grey Francolin and Peafowls.

The Hindu, Coimbatore edition covered this event on 18th June 2012.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article3541158.ece

Survey of Birds at ACC, Madukkarai

27 May 2012

It was an event triggered from Coimbatore Birding Club, the avian wing of ECG, Coimbatore that we landed at ACC Cement factory, Madukkarai on a Sunday morning along with my 2 sons. Soon the team built up to 15 and we started to take a survey of the winged ones.

It was a cloudy morning and we did not sweat out as a result. We were greeted by Indian Peacock and Grey Francolins immediately and we were excited for the exercise.

I have to admit that for all the environmental issues associated with factories of these kind, I was pleasantly surprised by the green cover they had.

We were soon greeted by Rufuous Treepie which my sons have spotted for the first time. But the surprise package for us is Lesser flameback and the White cheeked barbett.

Lesser Flame back

White Cheeked Barbett

The Lesser flame back and the white cheeked Barbett were busy with their work in the Fig Tree. It is to be observed here that Common mynas are aggressive and were trying to unsettle the lesser flameback from its position.
The List of birds we have spotted is as follows:
1. Indian Peacock
2. Grey Francolin
3. Rufous Treepie
4. Yellow Billed Babbler
5. Common Myna
6. Spotted Dove
7. White throated Kingfisher
8. Lesser Flameback
9. House Crow
10. Jungle Crow
11. Red vented bulbul
12. Copper smith barbett
13. White cheeked barbett
14. Rose ringed parakeet
15 Asian Koel
16 Asian Koel (F)
17. Black Drango
and another 11 varieties and in total 28.
Finally we had a simple and good Breakfast  and we bid adieu from the Lakshmi Narayana Temple only to comeback later regularly.

The Team

The Temple

The event was also covered in the newspaper: Deccan Chronicle, Coimbatore Edition on 29.05.12
The link is
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/regions/coimbatore/kovai-colonies-take-eco-conservation-715

Photo: Deccan Chronicle, Coimbatore Edition. Page 2, 29 May 2012