It’s a sight that any birdwatcher or photographer craves for: six red spurfowl and eight grey junglefowl busily pecking away at the ground just 100 metres from the main road near Kerala’s Thattekkad Bird Sanctuary. Both species are found only in India and red spurfowl are particularly secretive.
On closer inspection, it becomes evident that the entire area is littered with paddy grains. Local residents say a private resort that runs birdwatching tours sprinkles the grain every day to attract the wild birds. It’s called baiting – luring birds – for better sighting and photography opportunities, and its use is increasing.
Many guides also play back bird calls to trick elusive species. Audio recordings fool birds in the vicinity into thinking there is another individual in the territory, and territorial birds come out to defend their turf. This gives photographers and birdwatchers their prized moments.
“Guides in Thattekkad use recorded calls of the Sri Lankan frogmouth to attract them at night so that guests get good pictures,” says Susanth C., a birdwatcher from Thiruvananthapuram.
Wildlife cartoonist Rohan Chakravarathy says he saw the method being used in Uttarakhand and in the northeast. “A team of birdwatchers and their guides played calls of the Himalayan owl all night at Dibang in Arunachal Pradesh,” he recalls.
Does it hurt?
Does baiting affect birds?
Feeding and baiting wildlife can result in large congregations. In the case of the wild fowl at Thattekkad, predators – including man – then know exactly where to find them. Disease transmission – through direct contact between wild and domesticated animals, or indirectly when domesticated animals use the same area – becomes a possibility. Chasing an imaginary adversary also could stress the bird. A recent study shows that people mimicking bird alarm calls and playback increased real bird calls and decreased feeding-related behaviours in wintering birds in Louisiana, in the United States. Pishing, as it is called, also affects activity such as preening. But one study in 2013 suggests that wrens in Ecuador could get used to playbacks and ignore them.
Playback of bird calls could be used as a tool to study the functions of bird song and behaviour, says researcher Samira Agnihotri who used calls to study racket-tailed drongos in Karnataka. It is tempting to use playback, says Suhel Quader, scientist at Nature Conservation Foundation.
“But repeated playback could negatively affect the birds one is targeting,” he adds. “For this reason, the use of playback is banned in many protected areas, a restriction that we all should strictly heed,” he says.