Rare cotton pygmy geese appreciate nesting boxes
There are white eggs to be found on the banks of Baikka Beel in Moulvibazar's Sreemangal: cotton pygmy goose eggs that signal new hope for an endangered species. Some of the eggs have hatched. Newborn light enters the world in the form of the cuddly chicks swimming about the wetland. May they always contribute to the idyllic location's biodiversity!
By habit, the cotton pygmy goose, also called the cotton teal and locally known as the “balihash”, builds its nest in an old tree. They may also adopt a quiet spot in any abandoned house waterside; even a monastery or temple will do. Yet despite their adaptability, numbers have been in decline for a lack of suitable nesting sites, or at least they were in decline until breeding boxes were discretely added to the landscape.
“We thought about how to save the cotton pygmy goose,” says Md Mazharul Islam Jahangir, the regional coordinator of the USAID funded Climate-Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihood project, which, since 2006, has been working to prevent hunting and indiscriminate fishing and is being implemented across Baikka Beel and other wetland areas. “We decided to install breeding boxes to provide the birds with better shelter and more nesting sites.”
The decision has proven itself worthwhile. Female cotton pygmy geese have found the 30 wooden boxes installed this year to their liking. This nesting season, from July to September and even into October, the pygmy geese have been busy laying eggs. And within just four hours of hatching, the chicks dive into the water to swim.
“It's so nice to see the chicks playing in the beel,” says Jahangir. The Daily Star can only agree. It's not easy to imagine how Baikka Beel in the monsoon months could be more beautiful; but the addition of cotton pygmy geese hatchlings does indeed make it so.
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