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Kerala gets its first ever scientific bird atlas

Published: 31st Jan, 2022

Context

KBA was prepared based on systematic surveys held twice over 60 days a year during the wet (July to September) and dry (January to March) seasons between 2015 and 2020.

About

  • The Kerala Bird Atlas (KBA), the first-of-its-kind state-level bird atlas in India.
  • It is arguably Asia’s largest bird atlas in terms of geographical extent, sampling effort and species coverage derived from the aggregation of 25,000 checklists.

What has it found?

  • KBA accounted for nearly three lakh records of 361 species, including
    • 94 very rare species
    • 103 rare species
    • 110 common species
    • 44 very common species
    • 10 most abundant species
  • Most of the endemics were concentrated in the Western Ghats while the threatened species were mostly along the coasts.
  • Among the species, White-cheeked Barbet and House Crow with 13,855 records 12,380 occurrence records topped the chart compared to 20 other species, which had just single occurrence records.
  • The survey, however, ignored the very short duration passage of migrant species like Eurasian Cuckoo, Amur Falcon
  • The KBA is considered to be a valuable resource for testing various ecological hypotheses and suggesting science-backed conservation measures.

Kerala is located on the southernmost tip of India and embraces the coast of Arabian Sea on the west and is bounded by the Western Ghats in the east.

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