The cattle egret generally found in the Terai region and foothills of Uttarakhand has been photographed for the first time in the mountainous region with more than half a dozen of these birds being sighted in the Pindar valley in Bageshwar district.
While some officials are enthused by the evident range expansion of this bird, others point out that though the cattle egret could have been visiting this or some other valley in the past too, this sighting is worth noticing and points at a positive trend of bird sightings being recorded properly from different areas, especially mountainous regions of Uttarakhand.
However, the range expansion will have to be studied in order to ascertain the reasons for it. As part of the survey being undertaken on the directions of Kumaon chief conservator of forests, Param Jit Singh, statistical officer at the CCF office, Shankar Kumar photographed the cattle egret last month in the Kapkot village in Bageshwar district.
A total of 10 individuals of this species were spotted in the village located in the Pindar valley. The department has claimed that this is the first photographic record of these birds in the central Himalaya.
The short, thick-necked Cattle Egret spends most of its time in fields rather than streams, foraging for insects near farm machinery and grazing cattle or riding on their backs to pick at ticks. According to Singh, the range expansion of the cattle egret and white-rumped Munia which was photographed last year at an altitude of 2,500 metres in Jatoli village, Bageshwar are interesting discoveries.
“Uttarakhand has a wide range of avifaunal diversity about which a lot remains to be known. The department has been organising expeditions to know the actual status of birds in higher Himalaya as well as in other parts of Kumaon region and the effect of climate change on them,” he said.
CCF, Wildlife and ornithologist Dr Dhananjai Mohan said, “It may be possible that the cattle egret have been present in such mountainous areas in the past. However, the photographic record of this bird at Kapkot is definitely worth noticing also because it points towards the positive development of photographic records of birds being reported from different parts of the State,” he said. According to Kumar, further study will be carried out on this matter under Singh’s supervision.