Kerala gets its first ever scientific bird atlas

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 etc.
• 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.