- IMPHAL — One of
the two satellite-tagged Amur Falcons (Falco amurensis) ‘Chiuluan2’, named
after a village in Manipur’s Tamenglong district, has now covered a total
distance of little more than 5000 km from its return migration from Somalia in Africa
on Saturday.
- According to a senior scientist at Wildlife Institute of
India (WII), the bird arrived at Chittagong hill tracts in Bangladesh day after
crossing the Arabian sea on their return migration from Africa.
- “From Chhattisgarh site where Chiuluan2 had stopped over for
a night to its present location, he has further covered 1250 km,” says WII
scientist, R Suresh Kumar, who is monitoring the bird’s migratory route.
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- It may be noted that Chiuluan2 arrived in Gujarat at 2 am on
April 28 morning near Somnath and continued its non-stop flight crossing
Khambat flew past Bharuch and Ankleshwar.
- It may also be recalled that the bird spent much of its time
in Botswana in the central Kalahari Desert (46 days out of 114 days) in
Southern Africa.
- On November 8 last year, the Manipur forest department and
local residents released two Amur falcons namely ‘Chiuluan2’ and ‘Gwangram’
after radio-tagging them with satellite transmitters. The aim was to study the
migratory routes of these birds and the environmental patterns from Tamenglong.
- ‘Chiuluan2’ is a male Amur falcon, while ‘Gwangram’ is a
female. Chiuluan and Gwangram are two roosting villages of the Amur falcons in
Tamenglong.
- But the transmitter of Gwangram had stopped working on
February 1 this year. The last location was Kenya, according to the scientist
who had radio-tagged more than 10 Amur falcons in the past few years.
- This radio-tagging programme for Amur Falcons was first
implemented in November 2018 in Tamenglong, followed by another radio-tagging
programme in 2019 with five birds.
