Birdwatchers in south Goa have reported spotting the rare Himalayan griffon,
also known as Himalayan vulture.
Birdwatchers in south Goa have reported spotting the rare Himalayan griffon,
also known as Himalayan vulture.
Mandar Bhagat and Omkar
Dharwadkar of the Goa Bird Conservation Network (GBCN) said they spotted the
bird in Cacora village recently.
“Notes taken from the
field and photographs of the bird taken were sent to several expert
ornithologists across the country to confirm the species and our suspicions
were correct. It is indeed the Himalayan griffon,” said Mr. Dharwadkar, who was
the first to spot the avian.
According to the GBCN, the
Himalayan griffon was previously believed to belong to the upper Himalayas and was presumed to stray till the Gangetic
plains at the most. In 2013, however, “an exhausted juvenile” was rescued in
Thrissur district of Kerala. In the same year, multiple sightings of the
species were also reported from Bangalore in
Karnataka and Kakinada
“Himalayan griffons do not
breed in the first three years, and hence juvenile birds of the species do not
remain in breeding grounds to avoid competition. Such long-distance straying
from home territory also points towards a lack of navigational experience in
immature birds. All individuals of the species previously reported as sighted
from south India , including
the one spotted in Goa , are the immature ones.
With this, the list of birds of Goa officially
stands at 460 species, of which 14 additions were made in the last three years
alone,” said Pronoy Baidya, a reviewer for eBird, an online programme that
crowdsources information from birdwatchers.
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