Radio-tagged Amur falcon makes return journey

• 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.
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• 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.
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• “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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• ‘Chiuluan2’ is a male Amur falcon, while ‘Gwangram’ is a female. Chiuluan and Gwangram are two roosting villages of the Amur falcons in Tamenglong.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• “Two falcons named ‘Tamenglong’ and ‘Manipur’ were radio-tagged that year, followed by five birds named ‘Chiuluan,’ ‘Puching,’ ‘Phalong,’ ‘Irang’ and ‘Barak’ in 2019, in an effort to raise awareness about wildlife conservation,” said the officials.
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• Amur falcons, the world’s longest-traveling birds, are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act. They breed in southeast Russia and northeast China during the summer and migrate to their wintering grounds in Africa.
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• Their yearly journey covers about 20,000 km, passing through Afghanistan and East Asia. Along the way, they stop in northeast India and Somalia.
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• The pigeon-sized raptors, locally known as Akhuaipuina, arrive in the northeast, including Nagaland and Manipur, in October. They leave the region in November after feeding enough to sustain their non-stop flight to Africa, where they spend their winters.