Looking out for our avian friends

Peering through cameras and panning across the vast Tanguar Haor is not an everyday activity. And when the main goal is to spot and track the many visiting birds, it just gets better. But this is no vacation; it is a mission to protect the place’s inhabitants and understand them further.  

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) initiated a ten-day wild bird monitoring programme at Sunamganj’s Tanguar Haor on Sunday.

As a part of the programme, IUCN wild bird monitoring team along with Bangladesh Forest Department and volunteers of Bangladesh Bird Club are conducting the bird research and monitoring camp.

The programme, being supported by Linnaeus University, will feature censuses, bird ringing, attaching GPS devices to long-distance migratory ducks, and tracking movement using artificial intelligence. Bird ringing is the practice of attaching a tag with a unique code on a bird’s body for future identification.

On the first day, the team conducted a water bird census -- led by Enam Ul Haque, founder of the bird club -- while IUCN researchers Sakib Ahmed and Zenin Azmiri, and renowned bird club members Paul Thompson and James Pender accompanied him.

A total of 51,368 birds of 35 species were recorded in the census. The highest counted number is that of the common coot (9,925). This year’s most notable birds were the glossy ibis, falcated duck and the endangered Pallas’s fish eagle, all rarely spotted.

According to IUCN Bangladesh, some 1,50,000 birds of around 40 species were recorded in different waterbodies of Tanguar Haor in January last year. ABM Sarowar Alam, senior programme officer of IUCN Bangladesh, said the depth of waterbodies is still very high, which is the reason behind the lower bird count.

The birds are counted using long distant cameras and at night, when all of them return to their nests, they are carefully caught for a brief period and ringed.

“The water-level will fall in February and the count will increase notably,” he said. Birds get attracted to waterbodies with the right depth, as it is easiest to catch food, he added.

Sarowar said, “So far, we have attached satellite trackers to two birds, including a gadwall duck, and ringed 40. Species like the firethroat, common pochard and tufted duck are being ringed for the first time in Bangladesh.”

“All this will play an important role in our understanding of migration routes, wetland connectivity, and will help our efforts to conserve wild ducks in the area,” he said.

Tanguar Haor is a unique wetland of global importance and is protected under the Ramsar Convention. The international convention’s goal is to ensure proper and sustainable use of wetlands and conserve their environment. The other Bangladeshi site under the convention is the Sundarbans.

Under leadership of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, IUCN has been involved with protecting the environment by establishing community-based management and biodiversity conservation since 2006.