By the first week of October, the first scouts of the Amur Falcons will make their presence felt and seen over the Tamenglong sky. Their numbers will swell by the end of the month and peak in November. Thousands and thousands of the raptors will cloud over the sky, making people gaze up with awe at one of nature’s impressive artworks.
By Salam Rajesh
Come October, and it’s time again for the sky over Tamenglong to be darkened with the flapping wings of a hundred thousand raptors, the twirling, twisting and turning bodies of the Akhuaipuinas enchanting the natives here with awe.
It is certain for sure that the long-distance flying raptors, the Amur Falcons (Falco amurensis), will make Tamenglong their home for two months over October and November without fail, as they do every year in recent years.
The pigeon-size raptor is lovingly addressed as “Akhuaipuina” by the natives of Tamenglong, a sub-region in Manipur State located within the fairly biodiverse Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. Tamenglong district borders Assam State in the North East India sub-national geographical setup, and Manipur borders Myanmar in the east.
Manipur’s position as a biodiverse region is amplified by its location within another highly biologically sensitive biome, the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot, being generally inferred as a southern extension of the Eastern Himalayas along with the other States in the North East like Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya.
Manipur’s position in the global birdscape is heightened by the fact that two very significant international flyways traverse through the State, as is true for the region. Long-distance flying migratory birds – raptors, water birds, and other avian species – fly across the Central Asian Flyway and the East Asian-Australasian Flyway routes on their various journeys across Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and other continents like Africa, crossing over the vast Arabian Sea.
By the first week of October, the first scouts of the Amur Falcons will make their presence felt, and seen, over the Tamenglong sky. Their numbers will swell by the end of the month and will peak in November. Thousands and thousands of the raptors will cloud over the sky, making people gaze up with awe at one of nature’s impressive artwork.
The raptors feed on termites as one of their highly relished and favorite diet. They will also go for rodents, locusts and other insects, stocking up on their energy and fat in anticipation of a grueling five days and more of non-stop flight over the Arabian Sea in November, kick-starting from Tamenglong and navigating along the eastern Indian coast and across central India. Their stay in Tamenglong is certainly their re-fueling station after having started their journey from their breeding ground in East China and East Russia.
The intriguing and striking aspect of the raptors is their mind-blogging journey of an estimated or more than 22,000 kilometers across two continents and over the Arabian Sea, starting from East Asia, crossing South Asia and reaching South Africa to feed, and then return the entire length of their onward journey back to Amurland and the surroundings in East China and East Russia for breeding, till their next flight the following year. An amazing passage for the fragile birds, as unimaginable as it can be for the common man.
The Tamenglong Forest Division of the Manipur State Forest Department has continuously campaigned for the safe stay of the raptors during their two-month re-fueling process in Tamenglong. The staff of the division, enthusiastically led by its Divisional Forest Officer Kharibam Hitler Singh, a Manipur Forest Service officer, has worked tirelessly with the locals for the past several years without respite since 2015 to ensure that the falcons stay safe here.
Village community of the sites where the raptors roost while on their sojourn in Manipur tie up with the forest staff to ask people in general not to hunt, poach or harm the raptors in any way. Local environmental group Rainforest Club Tamenglong had also taken a yeomen’s role in supporting the forest staff in creating mass awareness and motivation campaigns amongst the locals every year without fail.
At one point of time, the Akhuaipuinas were the subject of mass slaughter, where locals hunted the birds in thousands for food and means of earning money. All that is, of course, history now, a sad, unrealistic memory of a horrific time when one did see roasted or smoked birds on sale publicly in the local markets, bunched together on sticks.
On the 16th of this month, Tamenglong Forest Division supported by the district administration and collaborated with Rainforest Club Tamenglong held a half day of interactive session at the UBC Hall with village community from the roosting sites, engaging in conversation over the need to welcome and protect the raptors during their two-month stay in the district.
The interaction session was graced by Lanmiyo Luikham, superintendent of police (Tamenglong), and presided over by Divisional Forest Officer (Tamenglong) Kh. Hitler Singh. IUCN member Salam Rajesh, advocate Daniel Kamsuan, Rainforest Club director Mordecai Panmei, range officer Khundrakpam Johnson and others attended the program. The deputy commissioner (Tamenglong), however, could not attend the program as he had a tight schedule.
IUCN member Salam Rajesh stressed on the transboundary conservation of the falcons in the line of international networking amongst countries sharing the feeding, roosting and breeding grounds of the falcons. Countries like China, Mongolia, (North East) India and Africa could team up for a global-level campaign for the falcons, he said.
DFO Kh. Hitler laid stress on the local community’s active participation in spreading the message of compassion and love for the fragile birds whose presence in Tamenglong could propel the district, and the State, to international heights in recognition of successful species level conservation, at the local context in global perspective.
The call of the local community in support of the campaign for the protection and conservation of the raptors is now based on the appealing nomenclature of the birds as the “harbinger of bountiful harvest”. This interestingly refer to the feeding of the falcons on termites, locusts, rodents and other insects that otherwise would be causing extensive damage to the paddy and other food crops.
Each year, a festival is organized in November to honour the arrival of the Akhuaipuinas, the harbinger of plenty. This concurrently runs along the underlining theme of garnering locals’ support to halt the meaningless slaughter of the fragile birds while in their stay at Tamenglong. The talk is now on a global scale campaign to feature the raptors as keystone species in Manipur, which would help protect other vulnerable species like hornbills, sunbirds, vulture, and further on extend to mammals, primates and ungulates.
Tamenglong Forest Division is currently contemplating carrying out surveys for wild elephants under the Project Elephant program of the Government of India, with an equal thrust on Hornbill conservation in the district. At least five species of hornbills are sighted in the district. DFO Kh. Hitler shared that his division is also pushing for implanting camera traps to understand the number of surviving and existing species of mammals, primates and ungulates, with the hope of sighting the elusive Royal Bengal Tiger one of these lucky days.