One of five radio-tagged Amur falcons reach Africa

Our Correspondent
Imphal, Nov. 23 (EMN): One out of the five Amur falcons (Falcon amurensis) which were radio-tagged from Manipur, as part of continuing migratory birds study by the state Forest department in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Dehradun, have reached Africa after crossing Arabian sea.
A male Amur falcon ‘Chiulon,’ named after a village in Manipur’s Tamenglong district have already reached Somalia and moved ahead to Ethopia and then back to Somalia again, Dr. Suresh Kumar of the WII, Dehradun told Eastern Mirror.

Chiulon left from Manipur on its non-stop flight on November 14 after spending a night in north eastern Tripura. Later, the bird left western coast of India Sunday (November 17) morning along Goa-Karnataka border.

Dr. Suresh, who led a five-member WII team in satellite radio tagging programme in Manipur had radio-tagged five Amur falcons including two male falcons at Puching village on October 31 and November 1 with the support of Forest department, district administration, Rainforest Club Tamenglong and villagers.

The tagged pigeon-sized birds are named as ‘Puching’, ‘Phalong’ and ‘Chiulon’ — all village names and ‘Irang’, ‘Barak’ — names of rivers in Manipur.

Puching and Phalong are yet to give data while Barak is said to be still in and around the landscape of Tamenglong district.

The satellite radio tagging started as part of projects to study the flight route of these long-distance migratory birds and environmental patterns along the route as India signs international agreement to conserve migratory birds of prey in March 2016, in Manipur since last year.

The Amur falcon spend their summers at their breeding grounds in northern China migrate to their wintering grounds in South Africa. On the way, they stop in north-eastern states in October and leave the region in November after having enough food for their non-stop flight.

Two falcons- ‘Manipur’ and ‘Tamenglong’ named after the state of Manipur and Tamenglong district were radio-tagged on November 4,last year.But Manipur was found killed four days after the release in the NE state while the contact with Tamenglong was lost after it reached Zambia in December last year.