Birds of Indian Sundarbans

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Mr. Prasanta Kumar Pandit, an officer of Indian Forest Service of West Bengal Cadre, is at present posted as Chief Conservator of Forests, has published more than 35 articles in numerous eminent national and international journals on forests, wildlife, ethno medicinal plants, sacred groves and rare species. He was posted in various renowned Wildlife sanctuaries and National Parks in his different capacities. He has done extensive study on some of the lesser known species found in the Indian subcontinent. Sri Pandit is a true wildlifer in every sense of word and he likes to spend spare time writing about and photographing endangered species. He currently resides in Kolkata.

Mr. Arjan Basu Roy has been a wildlife enthusiast all his life who is always ready to take good measures for conserving Nature and Wildlife. Influenced by his father Late Ajoy Basu Roy and others in the family, Arjan has taken care of nature and its elements in own way since young age. He became a WWF Member when he was in class five. Later he started Nature Mates-Nature Club under WWF-(1) WBSO. Nature Mates got registered as an independent NGO in 2006 which looks after Nature and Wildlife. By training a printing technologist, Arjan has worked in various parts of the nation and has published many books and articles on Nature. Winner of several Nature related awards, Arjan has pursued his passion abroad as well. He has been very much fascinated about the Sundarbans and is an ardent observer of the magical mangroves. Though known better for his work with Butterflies, Arjan's passion for birds will be unveiled through this book.

Indian Sundarban spreading over an area of over 4000 sq km is a part of the mangrove ecosystem which extends into Bangladesh on the estuary of the Ganga and Bramhaputra. This vast deltaic formation comprising of Mangrove Forest on islands is dissected by numerous criss-cross water channels in the form of rivers, canals and creeks which is an unique wetland that harbours an assemblage of unique flora and fauna.

Birds being one of the most conspicuous group of fauna, acts as a sensitive indicator of this dynamic environment. The change in its bio-diversity is now being propelled by the imminent threat of climate change with its associated global warming and sea-level rise that is certainly going to affect this landscape. Submergence of existing forest and its flora and fauna will certainly going to change the existing bio-diversity.

This book "Birds of Indian Sundarbans" is an important tool to be used by bird watchers and researches working in this landscape to follow change in the avian diversity of the area. It would indicate the changes and allow us to predict future trends in population dynamics and we may, can provide means to mitigate the course of decline or increase in certain bird population.

Apart from the serious implication that this book can help us to tackle, the book is hopefully a treasure trove of information on the birds of Indian Sundarban.

The images and the text give us information about 354 species of birds that has been recorded from the area. A reader has the information about the English name, scientific name, Bengali name, Family, size, description, habit and habitat, food, call, nesting and about the distribution of the bird species. The text also covers the present IUCN status of each species, and their schedule in WLPA 1972.

This publication will fulfill our need for a tool to appreciate the avian diversity of an extremely important but frail ecosystem of the Indian Sundarbans.

Sundarban, the word has tremendous resonance, a bright realization. Sundarban, the beautiful forest, holds enormous bio-diversity across all taxa. Sundarban is always related to the Royal Bengal Tiger, still there are thousands of visitors, nature lovers who visit this area looking for its avifauna. The enormous diversity of birds, their seasonality, and the presence of the significant number of migrants has made this place a paradise for bird lovers. Keeping all these in mind and to make a compilation of bird list, recorded from the place so far, the idea of this book was conceived.

Since inception, various people, friends of ours have helped us in making this book a reality, to start with we must name Animesh Manna, who had taken the pain of compiling the initial list of birds from the data of Prakriti Samsad and various personal records. Following that Uttam Mahatha, Sudip Ghosh had taken up the responsibility of arranging the images of various species from their own collection and also by informing various people whom they knew to have various images of birds needed for the compilation. Souryadeep Mukherjee took the responsibility of correcting the entire manuscript, minutely. Devsena Roychaudhury played the instrumental role of assembling all the components into a page. Debarpan Datta, a young enthusiast have played a very positive role during the final correction to make the book print ready. Apart from them, there are many others whose involvement and contribution have played a crucial role in making this book a reality. Our sincere thanks to the entire editorial board and to all those who had helped in making this book a reality. It took us almost 5 years to finish it to this, which includes discoveries as recent as in January 2019. We can't say this includes all the species seen so far from that soil. as many personal records, which were not shared or published yet, may remain missing in this compilation.

The compilation of the book is done mostly from the following sources, the list prepared by Prakriti Samsad during their UNDP project, various checklists of eBirds, with personal level communication, from the continuous surveys done by Nature Mates-Nature Club and records of various naturalists and Eco-guides of SBR, who are actively working on the birds of Indian Sundarbans, to name a few, Jayanta Manna, Sayan Tripathi, Animesh Manna, Apurba Chakraborty, Abhisekh Das, Nityananda Chaukidar and others.

For the text part we have followed, Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan Volume 1 to 10 by Salim Ali and Ripley; Birds of Indian Subcontinent, Second Edition, by Grimmett, Inskipp and Inskipp; Birds of India by Bikram Grewal, Bill Harvey, Otto Pfister and various other literature. In cases, for certain information, we have followed their terms almost as it is, as there are hardly any meaning in altering just the language for the sake of a variation.

Sundarbans is the largest mangrove deltaic region of the world which spreads over an area of approximately 10,000 Sq Km in India and Bangladesh encompassing over hundreds of islands with a maze of innumerable rivers, rivulets and creeks. 'Sundarbans' is a Bengali word which means a "beautiful forest". Apart from the pristine beauty of the mangrove, the name 'Sundarbans' is believed to be derived from the local name of a large mangrove tree "Sundari" (Heritiera fomes) which is found in this area in large number. The 'Indian Sundarbans' is a part of estuarine delta formed by the River Ganges and Brahmaputra in the Bay of Bengal. It is situated little south to the Tropic of Cancer between the latitudes 21° 51' and 22° 31' North and longitudes 88° 10' and 89° 51' East, mainly in the district of 24 Paraganas (South) in the state of West Bengal in Eastern India. It occupies approximately 40% of the total Sundarbans (India and Bangladesh area). In India the forest area is 4263 Sq. Km of which Sundarban Tiger Reserve is stretched through an area of 2585 Sq Km. Sundarban Tiger Reserve was established in the year 1973 under "Project Tiger" and is one of the pioneers in the field of tiger conservation. The tiger reserve comprises of Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary (362 Sq Km) and Sundarban National Park (1330 Sq Km). In 1997 Sundarbans was inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It was enlisted as one of the finalists among the "New 7 Wonders of Nature". Recently Sundarban wetland has been designated as the 27th Ramsar site of India for its enormous international importance.