Citizens to conduct online survey on urban birds

Tushar Tere | TNN | May 3, 2020, 04:40 IST

Ciitizens will have to upload information about bird nests

Vadodara: With humans indoors for over a month, sightings of birds in urban areas have gone up in the city. In a bid to understand their habitat, a city-based environmental organization has initiated an online survey of birds’ nesting. It is a first-of-its-kind survey where citizens, especially schoolchildren, will upload information about the nests in their areas.
“Due to lockdown, people are at home and have all the time to observe, click photos of birds and participate in our online survey. The participants have to simply observe their surroundings and see if they can locate nests of birds. If they spot any, they have to fill up our survey form,” said Hitarth Pandya, who runs Kids for Environmental Development Initiative (KEDI).
“And those participating in the survey should observe the surroundings from their home. No one should flout lockdown rules,” Pandya added. The survey form has names and photos of nearly 30 urban birds, including Indian silverbill, magpie robin, tailor bird, laughing dove, house sparrow, brahminy starling, green bee-eater, rose-ringed parakeet and many others.
KEDI took help of Dr Deepa Gavali, acting director of Gujarat Ecology Society, and Dr Jitendra Gavali, director of Community Science Centre, for initiating the study. \
“Once the survey is done, we will analyse the results. The idea is to find out presence of urban birds and which locality has which species of them. The study will help experts in future,” Pandya said.