Andhra Pradesh - Khammam   

Royal guests are here again

Photo: G.N. Rao

Welcome visitors: The arrival of painted storks is seen as a good omen by people of Chintapalli village in Khammam district. —

KHAMMAM: Flocks of ‘Errabolu Konga’, the painted storks, have begun to descend on Chintapalli, a village nestling on the banks of the Akeru.

People are out to welcome the winged visitors, as they seldom miss them for the celebration of Sankranti – the harvest festival. The arrival of the water fowl, people in the village believe, is an indication of the good times ahead.

The village is humming with the crackle of the migratory birds. They are coming in droves, adding to their numbers by hundreds every day. Many of the early birds are busy building new nests for a long stay. The population would be at its peak by the middle of January, when the village youths team up in separate groups shouldering the task of protecting the birds form the eye of the poachers.

With almost every tree top occupied by pairs of birds, avid bird watchers have been making a beeline. The colourful congregation of the royal guests has been attracting photographers as well. The birds are so much attached to Chintapalli and its people that they are seldom seen finding shelter away from the habitation.

The majestic birds walking tall on the tree tops will be spending the whole month in building large nests putting together the hay and twigs collected from the nearby fields.

And once they are settled down comfortably, they begin laying eggs and hatching them. By the end of March, almost every tamarind tree in the village would bristle with a breeding colony of the birds. They feed the fledglings with fish collected from the Palair reservoir or the Wyra project flying long distances.

The baby birds venturing to fly with the flock often land on roof tops and even fall prey to stray dogs. A much more serious problem they face is the felling of tamarind trees, whose number has come down from 80 to 30 in the past five years in the village. The surroundings of the village turn nasty with the acrid stench of their dropping once the monsoon sets in. It would be difficult to stay in houses which are in the vicinity of the trees and hence some farmers have been felling the trees. It is time to stop the practice. The farmers should be provided with some kind of incentive for sparing their trees from the axe and there by protecting the habitat of the birds. The gram panchayat, which is in doldrums, cannot be expected do so, says Krishna Rao, a youth. He wants the administration develop the village tank into a primary source of feed for the birds. The youths are keen on taking the initiative for growing more trees around the village. Pagilla Verabhadram, former mandal parishad president, says that the birds have been visiting the village from time immemorial. If the birds fail to turn up by the New Year day, or at least before Sankranti festival, it bodes ill for the village as well as the region. He says the entire flock of birds would leave the place by the end of July.

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