Pied Cuckoo

Pied Cuckoo | UPSC

HEADLINES:

Nano technology enables scientists to study migrations of Pied Cuckoo

WHY IN NEWS:

The project is the first to study the species, which is closely linked to the arrival of the south west monsoon in India

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 3:Conservation of Biodiversity : Flora and Fauna

LEARNING:

For PRELIMS you have to understand the migration pattern , Stay and take a note of IUCN Status .

For MAINS do you think lot of birds migratory pattern has to be studied closely ? What conclusions can we drive out from such studies ? Well we have one here now . Let us dive in !

ISSUE:

A new project by a number of agencies is using advancements in nano technology to study migratory patterns of the Pied Cuckoo, a bird closely linked with the arrival of the south west monsoon in India.

A new project by the Wildlife Institute of India and the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing has used nano technology to track the enigmatic Pied Cuckoo.

JOINT EFFORT BY

The project is a joint effort by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), which comes under the Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO.

OBSERVATIONS

There are basically three subspecies of the Pied Cuckoo of which one is resident in Africa while another is resident in South India.

The third is a migrant moving between India and Africa. It moves to India during the summer.

PIED CUCKOO

The Pied Cuckoo is famous in North Indian folklore as ‘chatak’, a bird that quenches its thirst only with raindrops.
From Southern Africa, it comes to the Himalayan foothills stretching from Jammu to Assam to breed every year.
It is also a brood parasite in that it does not make its own nest and instead lays its egg in the nest of other birds, particularly the Jungle Babbler.
The birds come to the same localities every year.

IUCN STATUS

Pied Cuckoo

PIED CUCKOO PROJECT

Two cuckoos were named Megh, meaning cloud and Chatak.
This collaborative effort is a first of its kind and through this an online web-based geospatial dashboard will be developed for near-real-time monitoring of trends and patterns in movement of Pied Cuckoo .

AIM : Develop a analytical tool with an API for interoperability and to perform geospatial modelling.

PIED CUCKOO MIGRATION STUDY

The two cuckoos, Megh and Chatak are expected to stay in the Doon valley till the end of the monsoon season.

MIGRATION : They will start their southbound migration in late September.
FUNDING : The Pied Cuckoo migration study is part of a larger project — Indian Bioresource Information portal (IBIN) funded by the Department of Biotechnology.

IASbhai WINDUP:

The IBIN project consists of various biodiversity and environmental parameters which will help in assessing the likely impacts of projected climate change on the potential distribution of Pied Cuckoo .

SOURCES:DownToEarth | Pied Cuckoo | UPSC

DISCOVER MORE : IUCN

DONATE FOR A CAUSE

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for Daily Current Affairs , Editorial Analysis & Answer writing video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.