Manipal Bird Day on Feb. 2

The Manipal Birders Club will organise the 10th edition of Manipal Bird Day at KMC Food Court from 10.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on February 2.

Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, Tejasvi S. Acharya, member, said an art exhibition ‘Feathered jewels’ by Adithya Bhat, and an interactive session with Shubha Bhat on ‘Backyard Birding’ would be held.

The club started as a Facebook group after the release of the first edition of the book

A Birder’s Handbook to Manipal . It is now a formal group of over 500 like-minded members that meet at least once a week for bird walks.

The Manipal Bird Day was an annual event dedicated to celebrating birds in Manipal. This daylong event brings together a large number of birders from Manipal, Udupi, Mangaluru, Mysuru, Bengaluru, and other places. Around 200 people gather and are split into different teams and visit the assigned regions and count as many birds as possible.

This non-competitive event focuses on spreading awareness about the diverse avifauna around. The next step was to involve a higher number of local and young birders. The club had sighted 145 species of birds in 2017, 132 in 2018 and 141 in 2019, Mr. Acharya said.