The Bird Count India Partnership www.birdcount.in

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2017 Results

Summary Another record-breaking GBBC in India! Nearly 12,000 lists from almost

1,500 birders clocking up close to 8,000 hours birding and recording an

impressive 825 species. Birders in India visited 37% of the districts in the

country, spending time not just in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries,

but village tanks, parks and gardens, and from their own homes.

The accompanying Campus Bird Count also set records, with 187 institutional campuses covered.

As well as the statistics described below, to relive the excitement of GBBC, or to appreciate a little

bit of the atmosphere if you were unable to take part, read various accounts from some of the

participants across the country.

Bird-watching at Asola Wildlife Sanctuary, Delhi; © Meghna Joshi

The global Great Backyard Bird Count takes place over a long weekend every February. Its aim is to

encourage people to go birding anywhere, recording and sharing their observations on the eBird

website, and hopefully introducing others to this wonderful pastime. This was the fifth year that

India has participated, and with record numbers of birdwatchers!

11,861 lists

1,449 participants 825 species 7,951 hours

The Bird Count India Partnership – 2 – www.birdcount.in

Compared to the record-breaking 2016, this year saw even more effort, with 31% more participants

spending 36% more time in the field, and recording 50% more lists and 40 more species.

GBBC Effort 2013 - 2017

GBBC Global As with last year, India was third globally

in terms of the number of checklists

submitted, behind just the United States

and Canada.

The 21% more unique (i.e. ignoring the

number of eBirders a list was shared

with) lists compared to last year

continues the year on year growth trend

in India.

GBBC Global: Checklists per Country1

See the full country breakdown by

checklists on the eBird GBBC website.

The honours for the most number of

species from a single country went to

South America this year, with Colombia

recording a fantastic number of 955.

India’s total of 8012 is most impressive

though, especially as it represents 61% of

the total species known to occur in the

1 Number of lists shown differs from that used for analysis, as the GBBC total includes only lists uploaded by a cut-off date of 3rd March, whilst GBBC India analysis has considered all lists uploaded by 9th March. 2 825 including incomplete lists.

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Number of lists Number of participants Person-hours

GBBC Global: Species per Country

The Bird Count India Partnership – 3 – www.birdcount.in

country3. By contrast Colombia “only” recorded 50% of their avifauna: the country is home to nearly

20% of the entire world’s species!

It would be interesting to see how many more species it is possible to see in India with concerted

and planned efforts to conduct birdwatching during GBBC in remote and important bird areas, such

as much of the northeast that typically has relatively little coverage.

See the full country breakdown by species on the eBird GBBC website.

GBBC India Results As last year, lists were recorded from 30 states and union territories; whilst Lakshadweep and

Tripura were added this year, there were no records from Meghalaya or Nagaland, despite their

representation in 2016. District coverage increased overall however, with birding visits to 236 (37%)

districts nationally.

Each list in the map below is shown as a translucent circle, hence darker areas represent multiple

lists from the same or adjacent locations.

3 Based on eBird (Clements) taxonomy.

The Bird Count India Partnership – 4 – www.birdcount.in

GBBC India Coverage Map

Although it’s of limited use to actually determine population and range trends, it is always

interesting to look at the “commonest” species. Overall House Crow was the most frequently

reported species, appearing on 48% of lists. With the country categorised into four regions, there is

actually a different “commonest” species for each region, as depicted in the figure below. As with

last year, Common Myna is the only species to occur in the top five for each of the four regions, with

Rock Pigeon, Red-vented Bulbul and House Crow all making the top five in three regions.

Most Commonly Encountered Species Regionally

The top six birded states in terms of number of lists were exactly the same as last year. With the

exception of the most birded state, Kerala, the others all recorded well over 300 species each. The

number of lists and species per state are shown in the graph below.

Lists and Species per State

-

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

-

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

No

. Sp

ecie

s

No

. Lis

ts

No. Lists No. Species

The Bird Count India Partnership – 5 – www.birdcount.in

Nationally 1,449 registered eBirders took part and recorded at least one list. In reality many times

this number birdwatched during GBBC, especially through the various organised bird walks and the

Campus Bird Count.

The table below shows the top participants (including some group accounts) per state/union

territory, based on number of lists recorded.

Region State No. Participants

Ave. Per Person Effort (hrs)

Participant Names (Top 5 Listed)

North & Northwest

Bihar 6 0.8 Rahul Kumar, Ameet Mandavia, Ankit Badesha, Parvez Kaleem, Wild Chhattisgarh

Dadra and Nagar Haveli

0 0

Daman and Diu

0 0

Gujarat 63 4.5 Foundation For Ecological Security Anand, Ramjee Nagarajan, Kedar Champhekar, Sivakumar Swaminathan, Vipul Trivedi

Haryana 44 4.6 Mridul Anand, Simran Tuteja, Neha Goel, Pinky Rani, Preeti Saini

Himachal Pradesh

20 23.1 Wildlife Wing Himachal Pradesh Forest Department, Santosh Kumar Thakur ( Wildlifer) , Virat Jolli, Shashi Kiran Thakur, Shubham Gautam

Jammu and Kashmir

11 7.4 Parvaiz Shagoo, Neeraj Sharma, Kashmir Birdwatch, Mohd Ayoub, Munib Khanyari

Punjab 14 6.1 Nakul Raj, Arun Prabhu, Jain Pk, Jungle Babblers, Nitheesh S Pillai

Rajasthan 15 7.4 Mittal Gala, Chirag Munje, Fes Sojat, Santosh Shitole, Sid Pai

Uttarakhand 56 7.0 Anant Pande, Mariyam Nasir, Sudip Banerjee, Dinesh Pundir, Moumita Chakraborty

Uttar Pradesh 47 4.8 Nelson George, Able Lawrence, Manan Singh Mahadev, Poonam Nayaka, Abha Manohark

Chandigarh 3 0.8 Sarbjeet Kaur, Rima Dhillon, Geeta Goswami

Delhi 55 4.4 Surya Prakash, Amit Kaushik, Vijaylakshmi Suman, Ankit Rajotia , Ayush Rajotia

East & Northeast

Arunachal Pradesh

3 5.1 Biswajit Chakdar, Saniya Chaplod

Assam 100 3.3 Narayan Sharma, Pranjal Mahananda, Anubhav Bhuyan, Hiyashri Sarma, Jonmani Kalita

The Bird Count India Partnership – 6 – www.birdcount.in

Manipur 0 0

Meghalaya 0 0

Mizoram 0 0

Nagaland 0 0

Sikkim 5 3.8 Karma Choden Bhutia, Bhoj Kumar Acharya, Hemal Naik, Karma Tempo, Sunita Khatiwara

Tripura 1 4.2 Dipak Sinha

West Bengal 50 4.8 Debayan Gayen, Sagar Adhurya, Nizar Virani, Saikat Adhurya, Dr. Subhadeep Sarker

Central

Chhattisgarh 16 4.3 Wild Chhattisgarh, Ameet Mandavia, Arun M K Bharos, Amar Mulwani, Ankur Shekdar

Jharkhand 1 1.3 Parvez Kaleem

Madhya Pradesh

26 3.8 Shruti Asn, Kanak Bali Singh, Ajay Gadikar, Richa Chitale, Tropical Forest Research Institute Jabalpur

Maharashtra 221 6.1 Mumbai Bird Race Group Account, Vishwatej Pawar, Kadambari Devarajan, Varun Kher, Akshay Onkar

Odisha 13 5.9 Sandhya Lenka, Saraju Dash, Swetashree Purohit, Anand Pendharkar, Diganta Sovan Chand

South

Andhra Pradesh

24 4.0 Instituteofbirdstudies Rishivalley, Santharam V, Vv Robin, Kaustubh Rau, Foundation For Ecological Security Madanapalle

Goa 25 3.9 Omkar Dharwadkar, Aidan Fonseca, Pronoy Baidya, Gauri Achari, Omkar Naik

Karnataka 250 4.9 Ankit Vikrant, Swapna Lawrence, Radhakrishna Upadhyaya K, Vineeth Kumar, Arun Thilipan

Kerala 212 4.2 Premchand Reghuvaran, Syamili Manoj, Bird Atlas Kannur (Group Account), Bird Atlas Palakkad (Group Account), Sumesh B

Tamil Nadu 158 6.4 Cinchona Ghs(Group Account), Ganeshwar S V, Murugesh Natesan, Aravind Amirtharaj, Elavarasan M

Telangana 49 7.2 Brihadeesh Santharam, Deepthi Chimalakonda, Madhusudhan Srinivasan, Ram M S, Ashish Jha

Puducherry 12 3.4 Surendhar Boobalan, Pranav Balasubramanian, Arjun Kannan, Arulmozhi Surendhar, Ganapathy Sivapiragasam

The Bird Count India Partnership – 7 – www.birdcount.in

Islands

Andaman and Nicobar Islands

13 3.6 Nitya Mohanty, Anet India, Basanta Behura, Harish Thangaraj, Rajesh Panwar

Lakshadweep 1 1.8 Rucha Karkarey

Total 1,105 5.4

Top Participants per State

Some people get especially addicted to birding during GBBC, spending most of the daylight hours

birding! The top dedicated GBBCers are shown below: thanks very much to them for their efforts.

Name State Lists

Ganeshwar S V Tamil Nadu 211

Murugesh Natesan Tamil Nadu 206

Aravind Amirtharaj Tamil Nadu 120

Elavarasan M Tamil Nadu 102

Ankit Vikrant Karnataka 94

Swapna Lawrence Karnataka 94

Premchand Reghuvaran Kerala 87

Syamili Manoj Kerala 84

Surendhar Boobalan Tamil Nadu 76

Nalini Aravind Tamil Nadu 74 Top Individuals by No. Complete Lists

Name State Hours

Ganeshwar S V Tamil Nadu 52.8

Murugesh Natesan Tamil Nadu 51.6

Vipul Trivedi Gujarat 46.6

Alain Sylvain Uttarakhand 39.5

Dominic Chartier Uttarakhand 39.5

Suzanne Cholette Uttarakhand 39.5

Forest Venkat Tamil Nadu 35.4

Rachit Singh Karnataka 35.0

Aravind Amirtharaj Tamil Nadu 30.3

Swapnil Wankhede Maharashtra 27.6 Top Individuals by No. Hours

This dedication is recognised globally as eight of the top ten participants in the world in terms of

checklists submitted were from India, and Indians filled four of the top ten places globally for

number of species recorded!

Campus Bird Count In India the Campus Bird Count also takes place as part of GBBC. This is an

important exercise for documenting birds in places that can be overlooked

but often provide valuable habitat, as well as introducing many young

newcomers to birdwatching and monitoring.

Campuses may belong to educational and training institutions of any kind, government institutions,

research stations, corporate campuses or even residential campuses and colonies. Overall an

impressive 44% of the GBBC lists were from the Campus Bird Count, and there was 50% increase in

participation compared to last year.

Those institutions that completed the most lists are shown in the table below.

Campus State No. Lists No. Species

1 Wildlife Institute of India Uttarakhand 508 146

2 Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) Kerala 376 103

3 Christ University Karnataka 361 43

4 Isha Home School (IHS) Tamil Nadu 197 88

5 Valley School Karnataka 187 143

6 Government High School, Cinchona Tamil Nadu 175 81

7 Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) Tamil Nadu 96 77

8 Assam University Assam 95 66

9 Mangalore University Karnataka 86 56

187 campuses 3,534 lists 452 participants 436 species

The Bird Count India Partnership – 8 – www.birdcount.in

10 Cotton College State University Assam 81 36 Top Campuses by No. Lists

We are very grateful for the various people who acted as state coordinators, helping with the

various campuses in their area.

Visit the Campus Bird Count Results webpage to see the full results and browse the data.

Photos Many great photos of both birds and people were submitted to the GBBC Photo Gallery, and these

encapsulate the spirit of the event superbly. A selection is shown here, but do view the entire gallery

online.

Kentish Plover © Vaidehi Gunjal

Rook © Parvaiz Shagoo

Odisha © Mashkoor Alam Khan

Uttarakhand © Dinesh Singh Pundir

The Bird Count India Partnership – 9 – www.birdcount.in

Press Coverage There was excellent coverage in both national and regional media about the GBBC and CBC. A few

examples are shown below.

The Bird Count India Partnership – 10 – www.birdcount.in

The Bird Count India Partnership – 11 – www.birdcount.in

Further Information GBBC 2017 was coordinated by Bird Count India and its various partners. For more information, see

the following links.

GBBC and Campus Bird Count 2017

• GBBC 2017 in India

• List of participants from India

• List of registered campuses

• GBBC Global

eBird

• Bird sightings from India

• Getting Started with eBird

• Beginner’s Guide to eBird

• eBird Global

Bird Monitoring in India

• Visit the Bird Count India website

• Join the Facebook group

Contact Bird Count India at skimmer@birdcount.in

What Next? A lot of the value in collating bird observations comes from regular monitoring of the same location

over a period of time. This is the focus of “patch birding” as well as more structured surveys, the

latter being ideal for a campus. Please keep eBirding and consider how you could make your

observations count more for science and conservation. Do contact us for more ideas.

GBBC will be back on 16-19 February 2018!

Appendix: List of Participants View the complete list of participants in GBBC and CBC 2017 on the results webpage.