The Asian water bird census 2018 began today from Lotwa dam situated inside Hazaribagh sanctuary area. Team leader of Indian Bird Conservation Network Satyaprakash, who is also the coordinator of Jharkhand said that this year 25 water reservoirs of the state, where winter visitor birds have been seen earlier are in their list and they will complete their job by the end of February 2018.
The team of Indian Bird Conservation Network started their work from Lotwa dam early in the morning. From here the team will go to Tilaiya dam Koderma, where they will count the number of birds in that area. According to team members this census is going on with the help of forest environment and climate change department of government of India.
Since Lotwa dam has already been declared imported bird area so the team has started its work from Hazaribagh and from here they will go to another IBA tag holder site, Tilaiya Dam of Koderma District.
The team members said that they will not only count the numbers of birds but will also identify the visitor birds and their resident birds, they will also identify their scientific names and families and will compare it with the data collected last year. It will help them establishing that in which area birds are getting attracted more and more and which areas are no longer safer for them.
In the evening team leader Satya Prakash informed that on first day they got Rudy Sulduck in Lotwa dam and Darter Bird in Tilaiya dam area for the first time since we had started this census work about five years ago.
Bird watcher Indrajeet Samanta, Research scholar Harishankar Lal and M Singh are also a part of this census team this year.