Rare Treat: Sooty Tern Spotted At Yashwant Sagar

Indore: A rare black back and crowned juvenile, Sooty Tern, was sighted at Yashwant Sagar, claimed bird watchers, making it the first such sighting in the region . Experts believe that the gusty winds due to cyclone Biparjoy may have brought the rare shore bird to the city while some attributed the movement to the change in weather.Birdwatcher Ajay Gadikar said, “The winds associated with cyclone Biporjoy may have resulted in the landing of this rare Sooty Tern bird at Yashwant Sagar. We were watching a big flock of sarus cranes at Yashwant Sagar when we saw this unusual bird.”Some senior birdwatchers and a specialist of pelagic birds at Nature Conservation Foundation confirmed it as a juvenile Sooty Tern that easily get dispersed in cyclones, he said.Experts said, Sooty Tern, is found in warm tropical waters worldwide and it breeds in colonies on sandy islands but otherwise usually stays far offshore and is rarely seen near land except when blown of course by a hurricane. A non-profit organisation, Nature Volunteers, Indore, president Bhalu Mondhe said, “Change of weather could be one of the reasons for the sighting of this rare shore bird. With change in weather, they hunt for new spots and this must have attracted the bird to this region.”The bird was spotted in the back waters of Yashwant Sagar on Monday evening. It became an attraction for senior bird watchers of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. They claimed that few sighting of this bird were reported from the coastal areas of Gujarat .Yashwant Sagar houses more than 200 species of birds, including vulnerable sarus cranes, big flocks of glossy ibis, spoonbills and pheasant tailed jacanas with their juveniles were seen in large numbers here.