What's On in June
It’s that time of the year when we would ideally have our umbrellas, raincoats, and gumboots out. But with the 2nd wave of pandemic, we may not be able to venture outdoors.
Photo Credit: Shyam Gaonkar
Confined to our houses, maybe this month, we can enjoy the rains and birds from our balconies, backyards, and rooftops! For example, it’s fun to watch sparrows and white-eyes bathe in the puddles left by the rains. Breeding prinias can be seen dashing in and out of bushes. As soon as the wild creepers bear fruits, bulbuls and flowerpeckers will be relishing them. Parakeets will be nibbling away at the tender pods of a peacock flower tree. Bugs, frogs, and worms are out attracting egrets, herons, and kingfishers.
Most animals and birds behave differently when it rains— a light drizzle will not affect the birds but when the weather gets bad, the birds will try to find shelter in trees, making them much easier to watch. If you are lucky, you may even see uncommon species that stop in your patch because of the bad weather. The emergence of winged termites gets the attention of many birds and it’s exciting to watch them hunt—robins are seen making short jumps in the air and sparrows too perform remarkable acrobatics; Black Kites congregate in large numbers along with swifts and drongos.
So bad weather may not result in bad birding after all!
What other behaviours do birds show when it’s raining? Is there a difference in their calls? Are some birds more vocal now than before? How do fledglings cope with heavy rains?
To document all these, watch birds whenever it rains and upload your lists to eBird. Make your checklists more interesting by adding detailed notes, breeding behaviour codes, and media.
Here are a few useful videos on how to upload media to your checklists:
Adding photographs to your eBird list:
Adding sound recordings to your eBird list:
Embedding YouTube videos to your eBird list:
eBird 2021 Challenges:
For India’s challenges, we have the monthly challenge for June and the yearly challenge for India. See here for global challenges.
Are you organizing an online birding session?
If so, please drop a line to skimmer@birdcount.org so that we can update this post to include it