Birders gather at Madayipara on learning about the arrival of a Buff-breasted Sandpiper on Thursday. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
A rare yellow-legged cute little bird that mesmerised the authorities of Kannur International Airport by flying 12,000 km from the Arctic region to Kannur some years ago is back at Madayipara, Kannur. Jayan Thomas, an ophthalmologist-turned birder from Kannur who had sighted the Buff-breasted Sandpiper way back in 2010 saw the rare migrant bird again at Madayipara on Tuesday.
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If it was the bird’s beauty and its 12,000-km-long flight that made the Kannur airport authorities to feature Buff-breasted Sandpiper on the airport’s international terminal wall some years ago, it is the rarity of the bird that has been pulling ornithologists and birders to Madayipara since Monday.
The Buff-breasted Sandpiper, sighted only a few times in Asia, has triggered a bird festival at Madayipara. Shashank Dalvi, one of the top e-birders from Mumbai, and Sathyan Meppayur from the Malabar Natural History Society, Kozhikode, joined Dr. Thomas to observe the bird on Thursday.
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Delhi’s well-known birder Atul Jain, ornithologists Praveen J. and C. Sashikumar are likely to reach Kannur in a couple of days. “If a bird can elicit so much excitement among enthusiasts, then the bird must be so special,” said C. Dinesh Kumar, Managing Director of Kannur International Airport Ltd. (KIAL), taking a look at the picture of Buff-breasted Sandpiper on the airport wall.
It is the second sighting of this Arctic shorebird in South India. Dr. Thamas, who was the first birder to photograph it in the country, said he found the juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper feeding voraciously in the grass at Madayipara. “The bird is quite at home here. It must be feeding heavily in preparation for its onward migratory flight,” he said.
Dr. Thomas could go as close as 20 ft to the beautiful migrant bird as it fed on insects and other invertebrates along with a group of Lesser Sandplovers. The long-distance migrant with brown spotted plumage and buff face and underparts and yellow legs looked calm as Dr. Thomas shot with his 600-mm tele-lens. It breeds in the open arctic tundra of North America and winters usually in South America. Rarely is this near-threatened bird seen in Asia.
With its warm tones, neat streaking and wide-eyed expression, the Buff-breasted Sandpiper is one of the most delicately beautiful of the shorebirds. Unlike most shorebirds, they forage in dry, grassy habitats, not wetlands.
Dr. Thomas’s first sighting was on October 13, 2010. The second sighting too took place around the same time at the same place after 13 years. “It is not the same bird, but a juvenile again. What surprises us all is that this less than one-year-old bird flew 12,000 km all the way from the tundra and is apparently preparing for its onward journey,” said Dr. Thomas.