Source: The post is based on the article “145 bird species spotted during the first bird festival in Sundarbans” published in The Hindu on 11th February 2023.
What is the News?
Birders, wildlife enthusiasts and forest officials have sighted 145 different bird species during the first Sundarban Bird Festival.
About Sundarban Bird Festival
It is the first-ever festival organized by the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR) division of the West Bengal Forest Department.
The species recorded during the Bird Festival included 78 forest birds and 42 species of waders, raptors etc.
Some of the birds spotted during the festival are Eurasian Curlew (Near Threatened), Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker (Least Concern), Lesser Sandplover (Least Concern) among others.
About Sunderbans
The Sundarbans is a cluster of low-lying islands in the Bay of Bengal, spread across India and Bangladesh, famous for its unique mangrove forests.
The Sunderban forest in India is divided into the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve and 24 Parganas (South) Forest Division, and together with the forest in Bangladesh is the only mangrove forest in the world where tigers are found.
A publication by the Zoological Survey of India(ZSID) in 2021 recorded 428 bird species in the Sundarbans which is one-third of all the avian species found in the country.
Despite being home to so many species of birds, the habitats face threats including plantation activity along the chars (river islands) which disturbs the birds, and illegal activities along chars and uninhabited islands.
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