Some went in cars, others on two-wheelers with their families — nothing stopped volunteers across India from doing a novel bird-count for conservation

Mihir Srivastava

Flighty: A Sarus crane

More than a week ago, at daybreak, 50 teams of conservation enthusiasts fanned out to various parts of India, on a novel exercise of counting cranes. It was the first step towards creating a database of cranes in India, as well as their habitats. Since cranes inhabit wetlands, their wellbeing means the preservation of the latter as well. Such is the motivation that led the 30-year-old ‘crane man’ KS Gopi Sundar to embark upon this venture — the first of its kind in India to involve volunteers in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Assam among others. Sundar heads the Delhi-based Indian Cranes and Wetlands Working Group. The bird count was made possible by a grant from the International Crane Foundation through the Kalpana Chawla Fund for Cranes and Wetland India.

The two-to-three member teams, totalling 150 volunteers, selected routes off the highways in crane habitat areas. Cruising at a speed of 15-20 km per hour, they watched out for the aquatic birds, making entries of those sited, the habitats they were found in, as well as their age groups. A list of 12 kinds of aquatic birds to be recorded, among them the Sarus, which is considered sacred in India, the Woolly-necked stork, Black-necked Stork, Greater Adjutant Stork, Lesser Adjutant Stork, the Purple Heron and the Painted stork.

The bird watchers were from all walks of life. In Palwal, Haryana, Anshuman Varma, a Microsoft executive, covered a 40-km area in the Khanolli wetlands. “Ignore everything else that’s not in the list,” he was heard telling his team. Shiv Kumar, a senior employee with Indian Oil, selected his route - 15 kms ahead of Panipat, near the Indian Oil Refinery. “Such surveys needed to be done,” he was of the view. And in Etawah, Rajiv Chauhan, from an ngo called Conservation of Nature, organised four teams that sighted as many as 400 cranes — not surprising, considering the wetlands in that region are host to the largest concentration of Sarus cranes in India.

In Banglaore, post-graduate student, Uttara, organised two road counts with the help of her friends. They even gorged on egrets served in piping hot curries while doing the crane count. Others, like Pranav Trivedi, in Kheda, Gujarat, pressed his two-wheeler into service. Along with his wife and 10-year-old son, he travelled 100 kms in seven hours and enjoyed the outing thoroughly.

The information that is gathered from the road count will be analysed to glean details about each specie on the list. The data will then be matched with a satellite picture of the crane habitats, procured by the Global Positioning System. This will provide insights on characteristics like density, breeding parameters, habitat use and preferences, explains Sundar. It will also become possible to keep track of any eventuality, such as the possible destruction of a habitat and its fall-out.

India has four out of the eight species of cranes found in the world — the Demoiselle cranes, the Sarus cranes, Common cranes and Blacknecked cranes. The fifth specie, the Siberian crane, became extinct in India in 2002.

“It is not just a question of knowing the listed species, but of our own survival,” says Sundar — 80 percent of all wild life is dependent on wetlands, which perform the crucial function of recharging ground water.

This time, the volunteers included experienced birdwatchers, says Sundar, because they wanted no mistakes in the identification of the birds. But the future will see a greater public participation, promises Sunder, excited at the thought of a bird count going strong in all the birding sites in India. The birds will, ultimately, come home to roost.