‘Responsible birding is need of the hour’

PANAJI: With birdwatching in India growing as a hobby coupled with digital photography, the onus of ensuring responsible birding lies with the people, said naturalist, Omkar Dharwadkar who is also the president of the Goa bird conservation network (GBCN).
“It is the responsibility of the local guide who accompanies them to control the kind of birdwatching that people do. They must restrict certain things like the approach used to draw the birds out of bushes or go to any extent just to get a good photograph,” Dharwadkar said in an online session for wildlife week.
He pointed out that bird watching sites in the Himalayas, Western Ghats and Andaman Islands have become popular but also very crowded with photographers. He said that he sees more photographers than birders at some sites, and there are people who will not look at the bird if it’s not photographable.
“While the onus is on the bird guides, the bird watchers need to be responsible as their actions could disrupt the bird’s activities in the nest or affect its breeding. Bird watchers need to be conscious about such things,” he added.
Dharwadkar also said that the growing popularity of social media often leads many photographers seek likes and comments by photographing rare birds. In such a scenario, common birds like crows get ignored.
Talking about bird monitoring in Goa, he said that it boils down to passion and gathering true data for monitoring.
Dharwadkar busted myths about the population of house sparrows. He referred to the State of India’s Bird 2020 and said their population is stable but there are various misconceptions like the mobile towers affecting their population.
“The kind of housing we have right now is not conducive for the breeding of sparrows which is why they are possibly moving to other areas. There is no published data which says that mobile towers are responsible for the decline of sparrows. If someone hypothesizes then we can accept it as per their report,” he said.