When the bird was first spotted many months back by a team of bird watchers comprising P C Rajeevan, Khaleel Chovva and Jayan Thomas, they first passed it off as the Isabelline Wheatear, a similar looking bird seen once in Madayipara a few years ago.
"However, at the back of our minds we had the notion that this could be Northern Wheatear but it took almost a year for us to confirm it," said Khaleel Chovva. "Recently a grand debate in the Oriental Bird Club on Northern Wheatears, which raged over a month, confirmed that the Wheatear seen in Kannur was indeed a Northern Wheatear."
Top ornithologists including Bill Harvey and Norman Deans Vans Swelm apart from the Indian ornithologist J Praveen and the team which spotted the bird took part in the debate, he said.
Finally Praveen confirmed in Kerala Birder, a discussion forum for birdwatchers of Kerala, after discussion with Krys Kazmerczak, chairman of the Oriental Bird Club that the bird was a Northern Wheatear. The issue was also discussed with experts C Sashikumar and Roy Hargreves.
Northern Wheatear is a very rare sparrow-sized bird, warm brown above and buff pink below. It has a bold white rump and the tail shows whiter at sides as compared with the Isabelline wheatear. It feeds on insects and spiders. The male bird makes a whistling, crackly song.
This bird's migration pattern is really amazing, said Khaleel Chovva. The Northern wheatear makes one of the longest journeys of any small bird, crossing ocean, ice and desert he said. It migrates from the Northern Russia east to Alaska, crosses North West India and Pakistan en route to Eastern Africa.
These birds travel almost 15,000 km each way travelling from the Arctic to Africa travelling on an average of 290 km per day. This is the longest recorded migration for a song bird, according to experts.
In Kannur it came as a vagrant passage migrant, which stayed at Madayipara for a few days and probably made its trip to Africa, observed the bird watcher.
Though the bird's isolated sightings were recorded from Himachel Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Rajasthan, it is for the first time it was spotted in any part of south India according to the birdwatchers.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Sashikumar,Oriental Bird Club,Krys Kazmerczak chairman,Bill Harvey
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