Spur Winged Lapwing finds a companion at Ammavaripeta Lake

A team of birders from Hyderabad, Sriram Reddy, Gopalakrishna R, and Rajashekhar, accompanied a well-known birder from Bengaluru Ashwin Viswanathan to Ammavaripeta Lake on Sunday.

Sangareddy: Finally, the Spur-winged Lapwing, the presence of which in Telangana drew the attention of bird watchers across India, has found a companion.

Since the first Spur-winged Lapwing was sighted in February this year by birdwatchers Jagan Pannala and Indaram Nageshwar Rao at Ammavaripeta Lake in Warangal district, hundreds of birdwatchers from across India and parts of the world had visited the lake to photograph the rare bird, but they could not identify the second one until Sunday.

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A team of birders from Hyderabad, Sriram Reddy, Gopalakrishna R, and Rajashekhar, accompanied a well-known birder from Bengaluru Ashwin Viswanathan to Ammavaripeta Lake on Sunday.

The team identified the second one  while photographing the avians. While one of them was feeding in the shallow waters on one side, they sighted another bird at another end of the lake. They had sensed that there was a second bird in the lake. However, they had waited for long to capture both the birds in the same frame after 45 minutes of effort as they preferred to move separately with two separate flocks of Red-wattled Lapwings.

The sighting of the Spur-winged Lapwing, also called Spur Winged Plover, at Ammavaripeta Lake is the first in India. The closest sighting of the rare bird to India before this was in the United Arab Emirates.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Sriram Reddy said that the bird is rarely seen beyond its usual habitations in African, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. He said experts could not even understand where and how these birds came to Ammavaripeta Lake.

Since February, more than 200 birdwatchers have visited Ammavaripet Lake after the first bird was sighted. The sighting of the second one would surely attract a flurry of birdwatchers from across India again.