About 3,000 residents of Dhanamandal village in Jajpur district are acting as Good Samaritans for thousands of birds in the ongoing monsoon season.
They stand guard to their nests in the nearby trees and protect them from poachers between July and October every year. This is what they have been doing for the last ten years.
“Earlier, their eggs would be stolen and children would stone the birds to death out of fun. Even locals ate some of them. Now, the villagers are protecting them, seeing them as assets,” Ananda Palei, a farmer of Dhanamandal said.
“We are protecting them because we realise that the birds add colour to our otherwise humdrum existence and make us happy. Every year, we form a bird protection committee. It takes care of the birds,” he added.
If anybody knowingly or unknowingly kills a bird or damages the nests or eggs, we summon him and impose a fine on him, said another villager Sk Safiquddin.
Officials are full of praise for the villagers. About 15,000 birds have landed on six banyan and other trees in the village during the nesting season, said a forest officer of Bari.
“I recently visited the village. I was happy to see the care the villagers are taking to protect the birds,” said the forest officer.
According to him, thousands of egrets, herons, storks, cormorants, darters, spoonbills and ibises are now breeding on the trees in the village and nearby areas. Not an inch of space is available on the trees. Any fresh bird trying to nest has to wait, a villager said.