7 December 2020.

Introduction:

Bihar is set to host its first ever migratory bird festival this year. This is a three-day festival to be organised in Bhagalpur District, which is to be jointly organised by Bhagalpur forest division, Bombay Natural History Society and the local Mandar Nature Club.

Highlights:

• The festival is being organised mainly because the sixty-kilometre long Vikramshila Dolphin Sanctuary between Kahalagon and Sultanganj has been a hub of migratory birds for a long time.
• The festival is also intended to check cases of poaching in the region.
• The main objective of holding the festival is to create awareness among the people about the importance of migratory birds.
• The region is home to a large number of migratory birds between November and March every year.  
• The migratory birds arriving in the region are Steppe Eagle, Eurasian Curlew, Ferrunginous Duck, Eurasian Coot, Common Greenshank, Great Crested Grebe.
• The migratory birds come to the region mainly between March and November as they find the region favourable to spend the winter.
• Various programmes  like bird racing, presentations on birdlife and setting of bird ringing  stations in Bhagalpur will be organised during the three-day festival.
• The ‘ringing of birds’ involves trapping them in nets and snares. Subsequently, they are weighed and their details logged before a metal ring inscribed with a unique number is tied to their tibia bone.
• This helps birdwatchers and professional conservationists log their presence across the globe.
• Ornithologists have found Bhagalpur to be a ‘bird paradise’ with a number of migratory birds reaching there every year

Migratory Flyways in India

• India has three migratory flyways.
• They are the flight paths used by the birds.
• The flyways are Asian East Asian Flyway, Central Asian Flyway and East Asian Australasian Flyway.

•  The East Asian Australasian Flyway extends from North America and Arctic Russia to the southern limits of New Zealand and Australia.

• The Central Asian Flyways covers 30 countries.

• It includes their breeding grounds in Russia to the southernmost non-breeding grounds in South and West Asia, India and Maldives.

• COP 13 was the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory species of Wild Animals.

• It was held in India in February 2020.