Birds in data: 
Counting cuckoos 
and other stories

Volunteer Coding, Sighting 1.0

The project ran for about five to six years. While there have been a few ‘crowdsourced’ projects, like the Asian Waterbird census that began in 1987, this was the first one in India that started off using relatively new internet tools.

MigrantWatch reached out to people through various birdwatching forums. Initially, the platform was pretty low-tech, but improved quickly. “It went from ‘Okay, email me your sightings’ to a very simple webform in two or three weeks,” says Quader.

Birdwatchers who worked in the IT industry were some of the most enthusiastic volunteers. Many from Bengaluru contributed while an engineer from Nagpur built the system that MigrantWatch ran on. “He said that was his contribution and did it for us for free,” says Quader.

One of the birds documented by MigrantWatch was the Jacobin pied cuckoo, and this was the first attempt at verifying the folklore. The team looked at how the sightings of the pied cuckoos correlated with the advent of the monsoon. But they suffered from limited data – just 363 sightings were made between 2007 and 2011.

This was not enough. Monsoons differ in the time of arrival and strength year to year. And the data they had was not enough to establish the correlation. They would have to wait.

By 2013, Quader and his colleagues realised that they needed to think a little bigger as far as MigrantWatch was concerned.

First, they needed to look at all birds in the country instead of only migrant birds.

Second, they needed to look for a new platform – preferably one which they didn’t have to develop and maintain. A couple of candidates were evaluated, but the most promising was eBird. Developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, eBird gathers in one place all the observations from many birdwatchers, which encapsulates the changes in bird distribution and population in a meaningful way. A year earlier, eBird, which until then was available only in North America, had been opened up to all regions.

The team that ran MigrantWatch also wanted the new project to be independent of any single organisation. That was when Bird Count India (BCI) was set up.

BCI functions unlike other such projects in that it exists only as a website, run by a couple of passionate birdwatchers. For one, BCI is not a registered organisation. There is one paid position (currently vacant) at the office of the Nature Conservation Foundation in Bengaluru to work on BCI. Quader co-ordinates the project, while simultaneously working on projects on citizen science and public engagement at NCF.

But the chataka legend?

In 2017, with the widespread adoption of eBird, the BCI decided to have another go at the pied cuckoo legend. Quader’s colleague M D Madhusudan, an ecologist and eBirder, was working on this.

“Madhu said that analysis and statistics is all fine, but it’s very dry,” says Quader. “He said let’s try and produce something that anybody can look up and say ‘Wow. I can see the pattern over here’.”

So, instead of a formal analysis, they wanted to try something different.

Madhusudan set out to work on this. He used data on rainfall between 1981 and 2017 from the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station dataset for the monsoon visualisation. He also used publicly available datasets from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission for topography. For the visualisation, he made use of Google Earth Engine and R, a programming language for statistical modelling.

Most importantly, he used the eBird database for data on pied cuckoo sightings. He looked at 8,000 records of the pied cuckoo between 2011 to 2016.

All of this was combined to produce this animation.

As the animation shows, between 1 April and 31 July, the progress of monsoon and the sightings for pied cuckoo go hand in hand. Before the monsoon, pied cuckoo sightings are restricted to South India until mid-May. Once the monsoon breaks and spreads across the subcontinent, the pied cuckoos also spread. At the peak of monsoon, the entire subcontinent is covered by both the cuckoos and rainfall.

The Chataka is, indeed, a harbinger of the monsoon.

A Peacock singing in the Rain

This data can also be used to establish certain changes in the natural environment.

The most visible, and audible, example of this is the peacock. Peacocks are typically found in drier, less dense vegetation, as its trailing feathers need a lot of space. This makes Kerala traditionally an unfriendly environment for peafowls.

“These are birds that were not formerly reported from Kerala, but whose distribution in bird books refer to dry tracts”, he says.

When Nameer and his group looked at eBird data, they found that until 2010, peafowls were limited to the leeward side of the Western Ghats, where rainfall is lower. But five years later, the peafowl had expanded its habitat across the state. “Preliminary results show that there is definitely an increase in peafowl in Kerala”, he says.

Nameer and his team also found that there were 35 other species, typically found in drier parts of the country, that are now being seen and reported in Kerala. Species like the Steppe Eagle and the red-headed bunting, normally found in dry-lands, are now found in the state.

Climate change could be one reason for the increase, says Nameer. There are several factors for why Kerala is getting drier. Rivers and water bodies are running dry. While the pre-monsoon heat is typical of Kerala’s monsoon cycle, the state is getting dry post-monsoon faster than before. Deficient rainfall, El-nino effect, and the effect of heat islands in a highly urbanised state is all adding up.

Nameer stresses that the analysis is still going on. “We are still looking at other variables that could be influencing this distribution”, he says. “Right now it would be a bit premature to conclude that all this is due to climate change”.

In the Himalayas, climate change has resulted in birds migrating later into the year, climbing higher, or moving sideways and abandoning traditional habitats. For researchers trying to tease out these trends, eBird has become a pivotal toole.

Monika Kaushik looked at the climate impact on the Himalayan bird species. Species from lower altitudes are expected to move higher altitude. In particular, she is looking at the distribution of pheasants.

by Monika kaushik
Post-Doctoral Researcher, Forest Research Institute

Using different scenarios as predicted by climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kaushik is looking at how changing climatic factors would change the distribution ranges of Himalayan birds in future.

In particular, she is looking at pheasants and using eBird, which has abundant and widespread data on the species, she is preparing a model.

One challenge for researchers using eBird data is quality control. For instance, some birdwatchers may be good at identifying birds, others not so much. Kaushik looked for cases where birders reported the pheasant typically not found in that area. “I downloaded distribution maps and threw all the GPS locations from eBird on the map. Whatever sightings lay outside (the distribution map), I had to go back and check why those errors were there,” she says. She had to check each one of those entries for correctness, relying on associated media and field notes, and sometimes, the reputation of the birder .

There are other sanity checks that she performs. Birders, after recording a GPS location, move a few kilometers and then make entries for birds. “So I screened checklists that had too much time logged in for sampling, say, five hours,” she says. Other errors had to be similarly weeded out.

The process can be time-consuming. In Kaushik’s case, it took almost six months to clean the data before she could start working on it.

Showing Truth to Power

eBird can also serve as a platform for studying disease outbreaks concerning birds. “Earlier, the knowledge of where and at what time of the year different species of birds migrated was scattered in people’s brains across the country. Now, when this information is collated together on a public platform, it has uses that even I had never conceived,” says Quader.

In 2014, an outbreak of bird flu (avian influenza) was reported in Kerala around major wetlands of Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Kottayam districts. The Animal Husbandry department responded to this by culling birds found around these regions — and in particular poultry birds. Entire farmlands were sanitised. The largest culling took place at the Government Turkey Farm at Kureeppuzha, where 8,000 turkey birds had to be culled.

Initial assessments by the Animal Husbandry department suggested that the virus was spread via migratory ducks and geese flying in the area. Now migratory ducks and geese are known to carry bird flu virus, but there has been very little research on whether these birds can serve as vectors to transmit the pathogen to poultry.

A few birdwatchers found this claim by Animal Husbandry department strange. Praveen J, a birdwatcher based in Bengaluru, but who is leading the BCI effort in Kerala, says “We hadn’t noticed any migratory ducks or geese in the state when bird flu broke out in the state”.

So he and his cohorts dug into the eBird database and looked for records of migratory birds in Kerala. They found that the two most common migratory duck species (Northern Pintails and Garganey) only made rare appearances before the outbreak of bird flu. Though a few migratory water fowls were present, they were small in number and there were no reported deaths.

P O Nameer used eBird to study changes in the distribution of certain birds. Some species mostly seen only in drier parts of the country noe increasingly are found in Kerela which is wet state.

by Dr. P O Nameer
Professor of Wildfire, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, Kerala

The most visible and audible example of this is the peacock, typically found in the drier less dense vegetation, as its trailing feathers need a lot of space.

Nameer, who was also involved in this case, says “We clearly demonstrated to the state government and other concerned departments that the migratory birds which were alleged to be carriers of the H1N1 virus, arrived only subsequently to the actual reported incident of the disease”, he says.

The birdwatchers issued a statement throwing doubt at the animal husbandry department’s theory. “The government then stopped mentioning this issue in public,” says Praveen.

Conservation groups have also used the accumulated data in eBird to petition the courts.

Last year, a project to redevelop government quarters in Lutyens’ Delhi was criticised as nearly 14,000 trees would have been cut to build nearly 25,000 flats. Those who opposed the project saw an opening in the Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA). The EIA specified that only 15 species were seen in the area. One of the petitioners got in touch with Pankaj Gupta of Delhi Bird Foundation, an NGO that has worked on protecting several birding habitats in and around New Delhi

Referring to the EIA, Gupta says “It became a laughing stock for us birders”. “Standing in my garden, I can see more than 15 species”, he adds with a laugh.

Using eBird, Gupta prepared a note which showed that these parts of Delhi, and Kidwainagar in particular, had about 60 to 65 species. “Anybody with a sound mind about Delhi would understand that 60-65 species in a city is nothing great”, says Gupta.

“It is normal”.

Gupta has also used eBird data in another case. About 40 kilometres outside Delhi lies the Basai Wetland, an unprotected area spread over 900 acres that is teeming with birdlife in winter. In 2017, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) received permission to build a waste processing plant there.

A few birdwatchers and conservation groups took notice and petitioned the National Green Tribunal. Now, Basai hasn’t been notified as a wetland by the Haryana government. The MCG claims that Basai is just a “piece of barren land where a few birds occasionally roost… there will be no loss of flora or fauna by setting up the plant there”.

To counter the MCG’s claim, the Delhi Bird Foundation submitted data from eBird to show the extensive birdlife that has been recorded at Basai.

Gupta says that the NGT has accepted the list as submitted by them. “There was no question raised in the court regarding the birds being there or not. It was just taken on face value”, says Gupta. “NGT recognises eBird as a source of data”.

On the case front, the Foundation has received a setback. NGT has disposed the case as the rules for classifying wetlands have changed. The court asked the Haryana government to relook at the application to declare the Basai as a wetland.

Gaming bird

To improve coverage, BCI is cultivating birdwatchers through its challenges and online events. This element of competition has spurred birdwatchers to go out more often. “On one front, it is a competitive game. Who has uploaded more checklists? Who seen more species? It nudges birders to spend more time in the field; visit new destinations, improve their skills. On the other, those who have uploaded their data can access it in various formats on the eBird platform,” says Pittie.

Pittie says that seeing your bird sightings on maps, or on calendars gives a huge boost to birdwatchers. “These are tools that were not available with such easy access when I began birding, and younger birders today are plain lucky,” he says.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is held every year across the world, during which thousands of birdwatchers look for birds for four days in February. In 2018, United States led with more than 110,000 birdlists, followed by Canada with more than 14,000 birdlists. India was a close third, with 13,576 birdlists.

Sometimes, these events are localised for a particular region. The Pongal Bird Count has been running successively for five years in Tamil Nadu, for instance, where birders are encouraged to go birding and submit birdlists for four days around Pongal.

Another event is the Campus bird count, held in April every year, which targets schools, colleges, and campuses of educational and training institutions.

Besides these annual events, there are monthly challenges that BCI likes to throw at its birders. In 2015, birders were asked to upload 20 birdlists from a single location within a month. The idea was that this would provide a more complete picture of the location where the challenge was undertaken.

A more light-hearted challenge was the Last Birder Standing, which began on New Year’s Day in 2017. Birders were challenged to create at least one complete birdlist everyday, for as many days as possible. Across India, 159 signed up. At the time of the publication of this story, which is more than two years,, at least ten birders are still left standing.

To encourage birdwatchers, BCI has also conducted over 40 workshops in 28 states with local birding groups. BCI staff go over bird documentation and monitoring with these groups. Accumulating the casual observations helps develop a better understanding of the birds in the area. “So we talk to local groups about how they can monitor their own local bird life in important wetlands around them,” says Quader.

Now, BCI is toying with the idea of using geocaching — a form of a treasure hunting using GPS. Players would have to go to a location and find a tagged object that has been placed at the location.

Taking the game as an inspiration, researchers are now looking at using geocaching with virtual objects to encourage birders to go to places that they typically don’t visit. “Birders go to lakes, forests, and so on. But very few go to farmlands,” says Quader. “In order to understand what’s happening with birds of the country as a whole, we need to understand what’s happening at all habitats.”

The events are not just at the field level. There is also a series of challenges asking people to look at the massive data that is being generated. Data challenges are held regularly, but they’ve met with limited success. Quader admits that they have not managed to get the researcher community very excited. “That’s going to be a major push now for this year and the next year,” he says.

An Atlas for birds

In 2014, a team of birdwatchers from Kerala approached BCI and told them they wanted to do something meaningful and asked for ideas. “We told them that a bird atlas is a possibility,”, says Quader.

Building a bird atlas for a region can improve the quality of bird data for that region. Birders have their biases — typically, they tend to be drawn to areas that are historically well endowed with birds. And this leaves large parts of the country bereft of coverage.

One way to solve this is to prepare a bird atlas for a region.

In a bird atlas, a region is broken down into regular grids and volunteers survey these regions systematically. “You can’t choose where you go birdwatching,” says Quader. “But where you go to survey is defined by a protocol such that the entire state is covered uniformly,” he adds.

(Note: For more on Kerala’s bird atlas, read this earlier story by FactorDaily.)

Once completed, a comparison of the results of the bird atlas with that of casual birding can reveal the extent of bias among birders, and even how to correct for it. “Analytical and statistical methods can be used to correct for these sort of biases,” Quader says.

With the atlas, we today have a very fine scale understanding of which birds are found where in the state.

With the atlas, we today have a very fine scale understanding of which birds are found where in the state.

According to Nameer, who is spearheading the atlas project, eBird has the maneuverability to handle the voluminous data the atlas project is generating. “One of the best things with eBird is that it is highly user friendly. It also has several features, which enable a researcher to use that data for doing various different kinds of analysis”, he says.

Later, when a second atlas is prepared, it would let researchers and policy makers see, at a very fine scale, what has changed over time. Preparing an atlas is a big effort, involving a lot of man hours. So an atlas is repeated in a region anywhere between 10 to 25 years.

Moreover, by overlaying other information like that obtained from remote sensing over these changes, you can draw out correlations in the data. One of the big concerns in Kerala, for example, is that with paddy fields making way for residential and other construction there are rapid changes in bird populations. Quader says that this information can be used to predict what’s going to happen to bird distribution with the current rate of urbanisation.

Bird Count India is an example of how science is brought closer to the general population. “I think that the increased adoption of eBird by birders is a healthy sign of participation in a greater project than birding for oneself”, says Pittie.

“It is a wonderful citizen-science project.”

Now citizen science is a term bandied about a lot in conservation circles, but many claims ring hollow as engagement can be superficial. Quader says that citizen science can be very transactional — “I’m the scientist, and you are the volunteer. You do the volunteering, I will do the science,” he says. “But that doesn’t harness the power of what can be done by the citizen and the scientist together,” he adds.

Quader is excited by projects like the Kerala Bird Atlas, not just for the value of the data, but for its demonstration of how citizen science can be meaningful. So, BCI is now increasingly looking at citizen science as a way to enable local populations and conservation groups to take the data and work with it themselves. One project underway would enable easier access to the eBird database, so that regular people can work on it using accessible tools like Excel, without much programming.

And the spirit of Bird Count India is spreading beyond just this project. Other citizen science projects are now underway that is looking at a similar model.. Season Watch is a new project, housed under NCF, that is encouraging students to observe common trees and record cycles of flowering and fruiting.

When they do that in the weeks ahead, they just might hear the familiar Peew Piu Piu…Peew Piu Piu…Peew Piu Piu call of the Jacobin pied cuckoo. This time, they will know that the chataka heralding the arrival of the monsoon is no legend. It’s as true as the birds in the sky.