Mangalore university Campus at Mangalagangothri, is located about 20 kms away from the Mangalore City is a picturesque campus which is spread over 300 acres. It has variety of habitats which nourishes and protects a wide variety of birdlife.
Recently (February 12-15th), the Campus Bird count was conducted as part of a greater initiative called Great Backyard bird Count (GBBC) by ‘eBIRD’ and ‘Bird Count India’ to document the birdlife in the Campuses/Institutions across India.
Birdwatchers (Radhakrishna, Akhila, Deepak, Gangadhar, Chaitanyamurthy, Krithika, Milana, Nithish, Arun, Ganesh and Gopal) from the Managalagangothri actively took part in the Campus Bird Count under the leadership of Vineeth Kumar, a research scholar at Department of Applied Zoology. They were able to record 77 species of birds from different locations across the Campus during the Bird Count. Previously in 2013 team of Birders including Vineeth, Prashantha, Suhas and Rajat had recorded about 81 species of birds from the campus. Since the Bird Count was a short survey some species were missed this time.
Some of the common birds in the campus include Common Mynas, Cattle egrets, Jungle Babblers, Green bee-eaters, Rufous Treepies, Peafowls, Black Drongos, Red whiskered Bulbuls etc. Some rare and interesting finds from the campus were Indian Rollers, Orange minivets, Spotted owlets, Black-naped monarchs, Yellow wattled lapwings, Booted eagle, Common Hoopoe. Winter visitor birds like Brown Shrike and Bay-backed shrike were also recorded during the count.
Recently a rare bird named Srilankan (Ceylon) Frogmouth (Batrachostomus moniliger) was recorded from the Campus by Vineeth Kumar and Jagdish Paithankar during their night bird surveys. This is probably the first report of this bird species for Mangalore.
