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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.