A hitherto unexplored new birding hot spot is one of those holy grails of birding; and so Arya made the trip to Bil Akbarpur. He found thousands of birds; waterfowl, resident water birds, song birds, and raptors—more than in Okhla, in terms of the number of species. Among the birds sighted was the Bristled Grassbird (Chaetornis striatus), a species endemic to the Indian subcontinent, and a globally threatened bird according to International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Arya, a 66-year-old management consultant, tirelessly recorded the presence of the bird on subsequent visits to Dadri, even as he fought a losing battle in the courts to save his own backyard—the forested area adjoining the Okhla Bird Sanctuary where around 9,000 trees were felled by the Mayawati government to make way for Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Memorial Park.
In August last year, on a visit to Dadri, Arya observed that the Bristled Grassbirds he had spotted were gathering nesting material. His trips became even more frequent after that, as he sought to find out if the birds were breeding in the tall grass beds common in Dadri. In September, he saw a female carrying food. In November, he got a glimpse and photographed a juvenile. This is the only breeding record of the Bristled Grassbird in India.
Rapid development is paving over crucial bird habitats
The Bristled Grassbird gets its name from five strong bristles set on a movable flap of skin that the bird moves back (almost as if on a hinge) to protect the eye as it moves through dense, sharp-leaved grass where it is generally found. This enigmatic bird is slightly smaller and slimmer than the Jungle Babbler (popularly known as the Seven Sisters) that frequent backyards and city parks—a bird with a short, thick bill and streaked heavily with brown-buff.
Not much is known about the Bristled Grassbird and records of sightings are scarce. In the past few years, the bird has been spotted a few times in and around the National Capital Region of Delhi, in Corbett Tiger Reserve and most recently in the Naliya grasslands of Kutch district, Gujarat. The Gujarat sighting comes almost 100 years after the bird was last seen in that area.
Even as Arya was recording the breeding of the Bristled Grassbird, the land use pattern in and around Bil Akbarpur changed. The government sold huge tracts of commons (or government land widely used by the local community) and farmland acquired from farmers, to real estate developers who wanted to build residential townships and apartment blocks. Almost overnight, the lake at Bil Akbarpur became “Lake Olympus." Read the full report here.
Source: by Ananda Banerjee, Climate Story Tellers.
