National

Birds perish in sanctuary

Marcus Dam

Rain and storm take their toll of fledglings

KOLKATA: Up to a thousand fledglings of migratory birds could have died in heavy rain in one of West Bengal's largest bird sanctuaries in Kulik in Uttar Dinajpur over the past three days. The remains of more than 500 of them have been retrieved for burial.

They include those of the open-bill stork, night heron and egret species. Too young to fly to safety, they were trapped in their nests, which came crashing down in the rain and storm in the 1.30-sq km sanctuary since Sunday, Divisional Forest Officer Ajoy Das said in Raiganj on Wednesday.

District officials were assisting personnel of the sanctuary to collect the carcasses and clean up the area, Manish Jain, District Magistrate of Uttar Dinajpur, said. Birds from different parts of South Asia reach the sanctuary by mid-June each year to stay till January. Last year nearly 70,000 birds came. The count for this season was still under way.

Mr. Das said: "They apparently find the sanctuary, which is criss-crossed by rivers, an ideal site to give birth to their young, after having built their nests up in the trees to lay and hatch their eggs. They stay on till the fledglings are around six months old and ready to fly home. Those that perished... had yet to acquire feathers and wings... " According to him, most of the dead were less than four months old.

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