Birds of a feather

India’s wealth of avian diversity makes it a prime attraction for bird-watchers globally.

Of the around 9,895 bird species extant in the world, you can see as many as 1,224 in India. This makes the country an important destination for bird-watchers — or birders as they are called — from all over the world. The result is a thriving, though still niche, birding tourism circuit, with specialised travel operators who will take you to remote forests which abound in rare birds, arrange for your accommodation there, assign you knowledgeable and experienced trackers and guides who are not just familiar with the roosting and nesting habits of these birds and will point them out to you, but even draw out an elusive species by imitating its call.

“India figures very high on the list of birding destinations because you get such a variety of habitats within one country, from dense forests to hills and mountains, large lakes and grasslands,” says Sujan Chatterjee of Kolkata-based East India Birding, a travel company that specialises in the bird-rich forests of north Bengal, Sikkim and the North-east. “South America, especially countries such as Peru, has far more species of birds, but these areas are not as easily accessible. The fact that English is easily understood and spoken is also a factor.” Around 90 per cent of Chatterjee’s clients are British, “since bird-watching as a hobby developed in that country”. He adds: “But I also get some Germans, Swedes, Australians and Americans.”

There are well-developed birding circuits in India, centred round rare birds. For instance, Bugun Liocichla, a new species discovered in 2006, is the star attraction at Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, a prime destination for birders that is home to more than 450 species. Bugun Liocichla was discovered by Ramana Athreya, a Pune-based astronomer, who also runs a community tourism project with the local Bugun tribesmen, headed by Indi Glow.

Then there is the east India route, starting from Lava and Neora Valley National Park in the northern parts of West Bengal, to Sikkim and Orissa (Chilka, the lake, is a hotbed for many bird species). The hotspots further east are the Kaziranga National Park, Dibru-Saikowa Wildlife Sanctuary, and Nameri Tiger Reserve in Assam; and the Dirang, Sangti Valley, Tawang, Mishmi Hills and Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. “The birding season,” says Chatterjee who also leads the tours, “lasts from end-October to mid-May and I get around a hundred people every season. Each tour lasts between 17 and 21 days, and costs can vary between $100 and $200 a day, depending on the size of the group.”

Equally popular —in terms of the numbers of tourists it gets — is the north India circuit which includes the wetlands of Sultanpur, Basai, Dadri, Surajpur and Najafgarh near Delhi, going on to the reserve forests of Bharatpur, Ranthambhore, Corbett and others within driving distance and from there to the extremely bird-rich western Himalayas. Says Nikhil Devasar, the founder of Delhi Bird Group and the e-group delhi-birds who also runs Asian Adventures, a wildlife travel company: “We get around 2,000 foreigners during the birding season which lasts from October to March. In the last two or three years, we’ve been getting a lot of Indians too — between 5,000 and 7,000 a year — especially for the shorter tours.”

But there is a difference between Indian and Western birders. “Among Indians, the impetus is bird photography far more than bird-watching,” feels Ananda Banerjee, author of Common Birds of the Indian Subcontinent.

Then there is the birding tour in Gujarat, especially Kutch and Saurashtra, which has rare birds such as the Great Indian Bustard (declared “critically endangered” earlier this month) and the Lesser Florican, as also migratory birds. Jugal Tiwari of the Centre for Desert and Ocean specialises in this region, while for South India, another popular birding destination, especially for the endemic species (birds native to the region, and thus not found elsewhere) such as the Nilgiri Wood Pigeon, tours are organised by Kochi-based Kalypso Adventure.

The endemics are very popular with twitchers, the bird-watching term for those who look for specific birds not because of any naturalist interest but so they can tick them off on their bird-checklists as trophies. “Around 25 per cent of my clients are tickers, as I call them. And they can be very demanding and get very rude if they are not able to spot a particular species,” says Chatterjee.

Besides the local operators, there are also large specialist companies, such as the London-based Bird Quest, which bring in tourists. “We specialise is small groups,” says Mike Watson, a tour leader with Bird Quest, “usually an average of 8 to 10 persons.”

All of India is, of course, difficult to cover in one visit; so you have keen birders from abroad who come back again and again to do different routes. Remco Hofland from the Netherlands was in the Western Ghats earlier this year, his third trip to India to bird-watch — his first two covered north and northeastern India. “In India, birds are relatively common and tame, especially when compared to other (poor) Asian countries like Vietnam, where it seems every large bird will be caught and eaten,” says Hofland who was looking for the White-bellied Minivet, a bird found mostly in central India, but couldn’t see it.

The growing popularity of bird-watching, and wildlife tourism, has also provided a fillip to “birding” lodges such as Camp Forktail Creek in the Corbett National Park, Northernhay in Madumalai, Junglelore in Pangot, etc. However, says Suniti Datta, who conducts bird-watching tours for guests at Ananda in the Himalayas, the one infrastructure that India lacks is birdwatching guides. “People just don’t think of it as a profession, especially in the cities where you get English speakers. People in the rural areas may know the birds but language is the problem there.”

That could add to the adventure, if you look at it from the other end of the barrel.