Indian spotted creeper sighted near Gurugram
BIRD AND THE CITY
GURUGRAM : The Indian spotted creeper, a small bird native to Rajasthan, has recently been sighted near Haryana’s Madhogarh Fort, just two hours from Gurugram.
This is the closest to Delhi that the bird has been spotted since the 1960s, when a sighting was reported from the Delhi Golf Club, said birdwatchers. Identifiable by its black and white plumage, the bird was first spotted in the forests surrounding Madhogarh Fort on August 5, by three birders scouting a relatively unexplored territory in the Mahendragarh area.
“We were on top of the fort looking below when we eyed a patch of dense kejri forest. It seemed like a promising area, and that’s where we found the creeper,” said M Ramgopal, one among the group.
The birders returned two weeks later, making another successful attempt at sighting the bird, which is highly camouflaged and not easy to spot.
Abhishek Gulshan, a Delhibased birder and nature educator, said that birdwatchers have been exploring acacia patches in the Delhi-ncr for years in search of the Indian spotted creeper.
“A historical sighting at the The Indian spotted creeper, a small bird native to Rajasthan, has recently been sighted near Madhogarh Fort in Haryana Identifiable by its black and white plumage, the bird was first spotted on August 5 by three birders
This is the closest to Delhi that
Delhi Golf Club, from sometime in the 1960s, has been recorded by Usha Ganguli in her book, A Guide to the Birds of the Delhi Area, which is what has kept the search alive,” he said.
The Indian spotted creeper is most commonly found in an area called Goshala, adjacent to the Tal Chappar Sanctuary in Rajasthan, as well as within the sanctuary itself.
According to the records of Rakesh Ahlawat, one of the
three birders who sighted the creeper on August 5, the species has been seen outside of Tal Chappar on six other occasions since 2016, including one sighting in Maharashtra and one in Gujarat(in 2016), three in Jaipur(in 2012, 2014 and 2016), and one in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district on May 16 this year. Gulshan said that there have probably been more, given that the bird is “quite common in and around Jaipur”.