A chal­lenge today as the human pop­u­la­tion is increas­ing rapidly. Con­versely, the bird pop­u­la­tion has been decreas­ing and this has been a worry with envi­ron­men­tal­ists. KB is sup­posed to be one of the very few places where pel­i­cans and storks breed and is it there­fore very impor­tant to look at con­serv­ing this village’s ecosystem.

We had with us one bird expert, Bijoy, who was much in demand that day. Even after spend­ing a few years in the con­crete jun­gle of Mum­bai, this bird enthu­si­ast had obvi­ously not lost touch with his feath­ered friends. There were of course, many more bird enthu­si­asts in the group and the topic of con­ver­sa­tion there­fore nat­u­rally cen­tered around – you guessed it – birds!

We made a short halt in Kamat Res­i­dency for lunch at about noon. That was a good start to the bird watch­ing trip as we sighted some small birds in a tree in the hotel court­yard. The pow­er­ful binoc­u­lars came out and we were soon caught up with iden­ti­fy­ing birds – mainly by the experts Bijoy and Sahastra.

Our next stop was Tailur tank, which was filled with birds – com­morants, egrets, herons, pel­i­cans and many species of small birds. And beau­ti­ful red dragon flies. We walked along the lake­side for a while and even caught a crow and kite in flight fight! There were peo­ple wad­ing around in the water too, which I pre­sume was to catch fish. But they made a rather inter­est­ing sight, espe­cially these three men who stood in a row, doing what I could not really fig­ure! But they sure made a click­able sight :)

We car­ried on fur­ther until we noticed a diver­sion to Kokkre Belur vil­lage. As we approached the vil­lage we looked up at the sky – and what a beau­ti­ful sight up there! Pel­i­cans, kites and painted storks filled the skies, grace­fully glid­ing around – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many big birds in the sky at one time!

As we entered the vil­lage there were col­lec­tive ooohs and aaaahs as we sighted huge clus­ters of storks and pel­i­cans on almost every tree­top. This being the breed­ing and nest­ing sea­son, the vil­lage is crowded with these birds. If the vil­lagers could charge pre­mium on their trees from the birds, they would have prob­a­bly made a fortune!

We spent some time wan­der­ing around the vil­lage, tak­ing in the sights and sounds of the birds. Later in the after­noon we were joined by Gopi Sun­dar, who is a nat­u­ral­ist and works for an orga­ni­za­tion called Indian Cranes and Wet­lands Work­ing Group, that focuses on sav­ing cranes and other wet­land birds, like the pel­i­cans. Inside the vil­lage, we also catch up with Manu, another wildlife expert. Manu has been work­ing with the vil­lage of Kokkre Belur for about a decade now to save the pel­i­cans and storks.

Inside the vil­lage, they have cre­ated an enclo­sure where injured birds are given shel­ter and treated till they are ready to fly again. A boy brings in an injured bird which has fallen off from its nest and lets it loose inside the enclo­sure. Manu gave us a back­ground of how his efforts with the vil­lage started. Ini­tially, the elders were opposed to the idea, while the chil­dren were more recep­tive. But through the years, they were finally con­vinced of his work and now they openly acknowl­edge and sup­port his work.

The hot after­noon sun was tak­ing a toll as mem­bers of the group looked vis­i­bly tired after a few hours of walk­ing around. We took a small break and went to the river side as the sun began to set. It was quite a beau­ti­ful sight and I wanted to watch the sun­set there but we were get­ting late for the evening’s func­tion – a pro­gram to be put up by the vil­lage kids. We went back to the vil­lage and I man­aged to catch the sun­set from the nearby field. I watched the sun go down – a beau­ti­ful sight over the fields and the trees in the dis­tance. I walked back to the vil­lage where an area had been cleared for the kids.

They gave an enthu­si­as­tic depic­tion of how the ever increas­ing human pop­u­la­tion was affect­ing the bird pop­u­la­tion. And how the dwin­dling of nat­ural resources is all a result of man’s own mis­takes and deci­sions. The whole drama was very well done and though I didn’t under­stand the lan­guage, Reena kept trans­lat­ing the funny bits. It was quite an impres­sive per­for­mance and I thought the kids really had a sense of humour! I only hope that they grow up to be a more respon­si­ble and aware gen­er­a­tion. Oth­er­wise, it would be a lot of effort gone in vain.

At about 8 pm we made our way back to Ban­ga­lore city after a really tir­ing but very enjoy­able day. It has been a few days now since the trip. But the images of those beau­ti­ful and grace­ful birds keep fill­ing up my mind when­ever I look up at the empty sky!

A list of birds sighted (com­piled with help from every­one):
– Tickell’s Flow­er­pecker
– Purple-rumped sun­bird
– Large green bar­bet
– Iora
– Black cor­morant
– Grey heron
– Pond heron
– Black crowned night heron
– Lit­tle egret
– Cat­tle egret
– Grey pel­i­can
– Painted stork
– White ibis
– Spot­bill duck
– Pied bushchat
– Brah­miny kite
– Pariah kite
– Ori­en­tal (or Indian) white eye
– Black winged stilt
– Indian roller
– Green bea eater
– White throated king­fisher
– Red whiskered bul­bul
– Ori­en­tal mag­pie robin
– Com­mon coot
– Eurasian col­lared dove
– White-browed bul­bul
– Chestnut-shouldered petro­nia
– Grey horn­bill
– Bronze-winged jacana

Pic­tures from the trip

Some inter­est­ing facts pro­vided by Gopi and Sahastra:

• At any time of the year, one can see approx 1000 spot billed pel­i­cans in KB – this rep­re­sents almost 10% of the global pop­u­la­tion of this species.

• At the turn of the last cen­tury the pel­i­can was quite com­mon over the whole of south­east Asia num­ber­ing in hun­dreds of thou­sands, even mil­lions. Recent stud­ies sug­gest the pop­u­la­tion is approx 11,000 – 13,500. This is a decline of over 98 % in the last 100 years (this is from the BirdLife Inter­na­tional study on this species).
• Records of these birds vis­it­ing KB go back to 500 years.
• The KB vil­lage itself is nearly 1000 years old.
• Spot billed Pel­i­can is one of the three species of pel­i­cans that are found in India the other two being the Great White Pel­i­can and the Dal­ma­t­ian Pelican.
• Dur­ing the height of the breed­ing sea­son the pel­i­cans and storks in KB bring 4 tonnes of fish into the vil­lage. This food source was con­verted to guano, a valu­able fer­til­izer for the vil­lage farm­ers. Recently how­ever the shift to chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers has bro­ken this sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship between the vil­lagers and the birds.
• “Kokkare” means Stork in Kan­nada. (“Hej­jarle” means Pel­i­can. FYI.)
• The trees used for breed­ing can­not be declared to be a part of any Sanc­tu­ary since wildlife laws in India pro­hibit human habi­ta­tion and activ­ity inside wildlife sanc­tu­ar­ies. This calls for a need to invoke other, more suited con­ser­va­tion par­a­digms for KB.
• Thanks to the efforts of Manu and Mysore Ama­teur Nat­u­ral­ists, the pop­u­la­tion of pel­i­cans in KB is steadily increasing.
• The Indian Cranes and Wet­lands Work­ing Group (a pro­gramme of the Wildlife Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety of India, affil­i­ated to the Inter­na­tional Crane Foun­da­tion) will part­ner with MAN to help pre­serve KB.