Birdspotting in Bengaluru, with an app in hand

April 23, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 02:01 am IST

From the land of technology comes a birding app that acts as a field guide. BHUMIKA K. checks out the app at Cubbon Park

I’m thinking “How many birds will I really see in Cubbon Park, using this new birding app I’ve downloaded?” Meddling with these thoughts, I’m chatting with Kannan A.S., a birdwatcher and technologist who developed the Android BirdExplorer app. A spotted dove stops by, sitting casually on the railing at the entrance to the park, as if to answer my question.

My hopes are raised. Hardcore birders in the ooru might just ‘pshaw’ at this, but hey, for beginners, it is all excitement.

I’ve switched on my GPS location and there are more than 370 birds in the vicinity, says the app (that covers the whole of Bengaluru, I’m told). There is an option — do I want to see the resident birds, winter or summer visitors, or the passage migrant? I opt for resident birds — I don’t really know birds beyond crows, kites, parakeets and bulbuls. So let us first get familiar with the residents. The app also allows a filtering by size!

Meet the myna

We are soon joined by Ulhas Anand, an experienced birder and director of EcoEdu, an organisation involved in environment education. The myna is the first to greet us. You have probably seen them around your house if you have a sizeable garden. Ulhas points out that there are jungle myna and common mynas among those we see, explaining the difference in features. I’m handed binoculars to take a look. We quickly scroll down the list and I’m wondering where I’ll find mynas, and down the list, I do (it helps if you have some birding knowledge already). Now we click on the ‘logger’ option in the app, where along with our latitude and longitude locations, we can log in the birds we just saw and how many. These will then be used by the app when others use a feature to check “birds seen in the last 30 days”. I’m kicked with the idea. Next we spot the white-cheeked barbet up on a tree branch.

Kannan began developing the app after a discussion he had with members of the Yahoo group ‘bngbirds’ (that has over 2,800 members).

“We were wondering how we could tap technology to make birdwatching relatively easy, compared to referring a field guide.”

His son, Anirudh Kannan, helped with digitisation of the maps last year. Four people helped him test the app — Amith Kumar, Chandu Bandi, Gautam Krishnan and Prashant Kumar.

It took Kannan a good two years to complete the development.

We’re still on the periphery of Cubbon Park and I can hear the traffic around us. But I can also hear the birds. And that’s the beauty of our city, I suppose.

A pariah kite swoops down from the tree, and then another follows. One chooses to go sit up in a low tree branch; another settles on the ground. They are probably gathering twigs to make their nest, I’m told. We decide to go close to this filthy pond opposite the Bal Bhavan gate, because there seem to be so many kites hovering around there.

Ulhas talks of how these kites, scavengers, often visit school grounds after lunch break and clean up all the leftover food!

As filthy as the little pond may be, with plastic and a helmet floating around, it’s home to a white-throated kingfisher which flashes its blue wings at us, before settling down. Pond herons, egrets, a night heron and a little cormorant are ticked off on the list.

Are you a “twitcher”?

Ulhas tells me about “twitchers” – obsessive bird-watchers who travel long distances just to see a new species and tick it off their list!

A little walk around the pond helps us get a peek at the tailorbird in between the giant bamboo clusters, and an oriental magpie robin pecking on the ground. Ulhas and Kannan identify a Tickell’s blue flycatcher and a purple-rumped sunbird by their calls, though we don’t get to see it.

We spot almost 20 kinds of birds as we amble for over 90 minutes. A reassurance that there is hope still in Bengaluru’s little lung spaces, and a strong pointer to preserve them.

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