Pollution, habitat destruction and urban bustle drive State bird Palapitta away from Hyderabad

The Palapitta usually nests in tree holes and feeds on insects. Due to the indiscriminate felling of trees and lack of food, the bird appears to be moving away from the State capital

Sangareddy: The hustle-bustle of the urban landscape, coupled with habitat destruction appears to be chasing the Palapitta (Indian Roller), Telangana’s State bird, away from the State capital.

The statistics of the bird survey carried out by 209 bird watchers across the Hyderabad city during the last 20 days, beginning from February 3, as part of preparation of the Hyderabad Bird Atlas, indicates such a situation. During this period, the 209 bird watchers, who searched at 720 locations, found the bird at just 22 locations, those too mostly on the fringes of the city and its outskirts.

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Out of 26 photographs they managed to capture of the bird at these 22 locations, the bird watchers could find a pair at Balijaguda near Hayathnagar. Usually, February to June is considered as the breeding season for the Indian Roller in South India. Seasoned bird watcher Sriram Reddy said the Palapitta usually nests in tree holes and feeds on insects.

Due to the indiscriminate felling of trees and lack of food, the bird appears to be moving away from the State capital. He said they had rarely seen the Palapitta in the city even before the survey. The closest place to Nampally, considered as the heart of Hyderabad, where the Palapitta was sighted during the survey was some 15 kilometres away in Rajendra Nagar.

However, Rajendra Nagar is not going to be a safe home any longer for the State bird as a lot of habitat destruction is being done here due to mining of hilly terrains, Reddy said.

The State of Indian Birds Report-2023 (SoIB) also found that the population of Indian Roller, the State bird of Telangana, Karnataka, and Odisha, was declining sharply. The SoIB report says that the population of the Indian Roller declined by 30 per cent in the last 12 years.

The report called for the inclusion of the birds in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) so that governments and other organisations would make some special efforts for the conservation of the bird.

“Aren’t these statistics enough to make the Telangana government launch a special survey to study the sharp decline of the Palapitta population and initiate some conservation measures to save it?” environmentalists who have been following the bird survey as part of preparing the Hyderabad Bird Atlas ask.