Today I got a call from one of birder friends, who works actively towards wildlife conservation in North India. He wanted me to join him for some of the bird counting events in wetlands in India, but unfortunately I can't join him this month. This phone call made me open my old catalog to look at these photographs from bird counting activities with some professional birders in Pong dam (Himachal Pradesh, India).
This was a brilliant opportunity for me to meet some of the passionate birders from different parts of the country and such meets made you learn a lot.
Different wetlands in India attract lot of migratory birds from different parts of the world and these birders become active during winters.
It was a two days events in Nagrota town and different birders, Wildlife professionals & conservators joined for the counting event.
Different groups were made to cover multiple regions of Pong Dam lake. Each group had few birders, conservators, photographers and forest department folks.
Can you imagine how bird counting would have happened? It's highly technical method to count number of migratory birds visit a particular wetland. Counting activity takes places for 2 or more than 2 days, and this done to reduce the errors. Things like movement of bird folks is very well taken care while counting these birds. Behavior of different types of birds is different and that's important to know and do calculations. Without these technical details there is very high probability that birds are counted twice of thrice. It was an amazing experience to know that how these birders know which bird is flying high in the sky and how far they can go in a day. Do they move in circle, or with the flow or water or hot places etc.
Knowing about birds, their behavior, how different characteristics of birds differentiate them from others was a great experience.
Spending 2 days with diverse set of passionate birders was a great experience and very inspiring one.
It was a great journey with birders and birds of Pong Dam Lake in Himachal Pradesh.