On September 25, the members of The Bird Watchers of Kerala who undertook a ship journey from Azheekal in Kollam into the deep sea had been in for an enormous shock. First, they noticed a carcass of a whale “in a highly decomposed state,” recalled Praveen Jayadevan, a scientist with Bird Count India. But the larger shock was recognizing a flock of Wilson’s Storm Petrels pattering over the water. “There were thousands of birds,” he says, including, “there’s no documentation of such a large flock. A congregation was spotted earlier off Kannur waters but these numbers were far more than that.”
The group was on a visit referred to as pelagic birding, which permits chicken watchers to review birds that reside on the waters and are available to land solely to nest. The group of 30 boarded a fishing trawler early within the morning. “Our aim was to document sea birds,” says C.R. Anoop, a chicken watcher and wildlife photographer, enterprise his eleventh pelagic journey. They noticed the Storm petrels a little bit over 30 km into a peaceful sea off the South Alappuzha coast. “The Storm petrel is a small bird and generally flies solitary or is found in small groups of three to four. It is very rare to see them as a tightly knit flock,” says Anoop.
Wilson’s Storm Petrels feed on floating animal particles like useless fishes.
Praveen, who stop the company sector final yr to take up full-time birding, says the chicken “does not fish for food but feeds on floating animal debris like dead fishes. They are one of the commonest sea birds and have a huge population with an estimated global population of eight to 20 million birds. They breed in Southern oceans, close to Antarctica and migrate during the austral or Southern winter (May to August) to the Northern hemisphere.”
Anoop explains that chicken depend, particularly on the ocean, is taken not solely with images but additionally visually. {A photograph} helps in confirming the id of the chicken, since there are minute variations between among the comparable species, for instance the Artic Skua and the Pomerine Skua. It vital to have photographers and other people with binoculars within the group.
The lacking Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel
One of the numerous species absent from the pelagic journey was the Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel that breeds within the northern Pacific Ocean, says Praveen. All previous pelagic expeditions from the Kerala coast in September had encountered a number of people of that species. Another pelagic journey performed on the identical day from Kannur noticed two Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel.
“We still do not know the migration patterns of many of our sea birds, which is why every pelagic trip adds substantial new information about our birds”, says Anish Sasidevan, who coordinated this expedition.
Some of the birds noticed within the expedition had been the Parasitic Jaeger (Arctic Skua), Bridled Tern, Little Tern, Common Tern, Great Crested Tern, Lesser Crested Tern, Wilson’s Storm-Petrel and Flesh-footed Shearwater.
Praveen Jayadevan has been accorded the title of Fellow of the International Ornithologist Union
Source: www.thehindu.com