Poll duty takes toll on birders, hits Bengal’s summer avian count

Kolkata: The fourth edition of Poila Baisakh Bird Count ended on Sunday with participants, according to preliminary reports, recording 400+ species during the three-day exercise that started on April 17. In 2024 and 2025, the species count stood at 544 and 523, respectively.The 410 initial checklists are also fewer compared to 775 recorded last year, and Kanad Baidya of Birdwatchers' Society (BWS) that organises the event with Bird Count India attributed this to a number of reasons, including the ensuing assembly election that has kept many away from the field for poll duty and the rush of most birders to one site of South 24 Parganas' Patibunia beach to click the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper that has been recorded in the state only for the second time after 2018.Some of the key species recorded include green cochoa in Latpanchar, spoon-billed sandpiper at Patibunia in South 24 Parganas and black-tailed gull at Kargil beach, also in South 24 Parganas.According to Baidya, there has been no participation from Jhargram and South Dinajpur this time. Kolkata-based birder and BWS member Hiya Chatterjee, who is the assistant professor of English dept at Swarnamoyee Jogendranath Mahavidyalaya under Vidyasagar University in East Midnapore, rued missing the summer bird count. "I will be on poll duty at Khejuri for the first phase polling on April 23. I had my final training on April 16. Since I also had to make preparations for my presiding officer duty, I decided to skip the event this year," she said.Malda's Samiran Jha, founder-member of BWS, also couldn't participate due to poll-related training and other restrictions in the district. "I am a teacher at Kamalabari High School and I will be on duty in the Habibpur assembly segment on April 23. There are poll-related curbs here. So, we decided not to go out with our cameras and binoculars. Though, I stepped out for some backyard birding," he added. Darjeeling has so far emerged as the top district with the most numbers of both species and checklists at 218 and 84, respectively, followed by South 24 Parganas at 135 species and 78 checklists. "Poila Baisakh marks the start of the Bengali New Year and welcomes the onset of summer. To celebrate, BWS, in collaboration with Bird Count India, invites birdwatchers across Bengal to join this annual summer birding event," said Sujan Chatterjee of BWS. He, however, added that many birders are still not using eBird, an online database and citizen science project for bird records."This, too, can be a reason for fewer records. Participation may be there, but not all are uploading their data on eBird," he said.
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