Study shows gradual decline in Redvented Bulbul population

Coimbatore, Apr 1 (UNI) The population of common bird species, Redvented Bulbul (Pycnonotus Cafer), has declined drastically in the past decade due to the changes in their vegetation at the Point Calimere Wildlife Sanctuary on the Coromandel Coast in Tamil Nadu, according to a study.

A recently concluded a year-long study on 'Monitoring the ecology of the tropical dry evergreen forest in Point Calimere' by the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) here revealed that the 'Redvented Bulbul', recorded as one of the most abundant bird species in the earlier study, was now on the verge of extinction.

Similarly, another species, the Red Spurfowl, recorded during the previous study done over ten years ago, could not be sighted by the observers.

SACON scientist P Balasubramanian told UNI, ''the Point Calimere Sanctuary harbours the tropical dry evergreen forest and it is an endangered forest. The tropical forest ecosystems, though biotically most complex are extremely fragile and easily degradable by anthropogenic disturbances.'' The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) had done extensive research on various ecological aspects of the sanctuary and created a baseline documents.

''A documentation of avifaunal changes requires a temporal baseline data or information against which subsequent records can be compared and evaluated,'' he said.

The study was done to assess the structure of bird communities in the tropical dry evergreen forest and compare the present status with the past to find out changes if any.

About the methods used for the study, he said they had adopted the methods of earlier BNHS study with five transects, each measuring one km, for bird census and breeding biological studies. The bird censuses were done fortnightly using variable width line transect method.

About the ''possible'' extinction of Redvented Bulbul, Dr Balasubramanian said the plesent study shows that the number of birds has come donw to 10-20 compared to the previous study in which 40 to 50 birds were sighted.

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