Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a popular citizen science event which collects valuable information pertaining to distribution and abundance of birds across the globe. Events like these demonstrate the power of engaging citizens in learning about the natural world and monitoring how it is changing.

The Campus Bird Count (CBC) was organized as a sub event of the GBBC-2016 and WII along with other 210 campuses (including research stations, government institutions, schools, colleges, universities and corporate offices etc.) across India participated in the count that was carried out for 4 days from 12 -15 February, 2016. As part of the count, birders in WII were grouped into 4 teams and they surveyed in and around the WII campus.

In order to increase the efficiency of the coverage area the campus was divided into subareas like Hostel & Nature trail, Admin Block and Faculty Residential colony, Sal patch near WII and IIIrd block residential colony covering the following habitats: Moist-deciduous Siwalik sal forest, Open wooded compounds / gardens / parks, Shrub jungle with thickets of Lantana and young sal, Open scrubland with fallow / barren crop-fields and Wetlands. The results of the count has been very encouraging, with the Wildlife Institute of India topping the list of number of species recorded in any hotspot in the country during the count days. A total of 159 species were recorded and a total of 189 checklists were uploaded to the global listing website (http://ebird.org/). Overall, 2,670 individual birds were counted in the WII campus. 67 avifauna species were recorded only once and 12 recorded in the subsequently large numbers. The GBBC at WII was coordinated by Dr. Gopi G V, Sh. Manoj V Nair and Sh. Ashutosh Singh.

Apart from the Campus Bird Count, a field day was organized on 14 Feb 2016 to introduce birds and bird watching to the kids in WII campus. Around 25 kids participated enthusiastically and they were taken for guided birding around the campus. A checklist of 8 birds was prepared at the end of the count by the kids.

Contributors to the count: Pratap Singh, Manoj V Nair, Gopi G V, J. A. Johnson, S.K. Gupta, Ashutosh Singh, Vandana Rajput, Ankita Sinha, Keshav Gogai, Harsh Rathore, Priyamvada Bagaria, Deepti Gupta, Vivek Sarkar, Rupa, Persis Farooqy, Dhruv Verma, Deb Ranjan Laha, Anurag Vishwakarma, M. Naveen, Amit Haryanvi, Upma, N.GokulakkKanan, Shuvendu Das, A. Mohan D. S. Pundir, Madhanraj, Ashok Kumar, Akanksha Saxena, Pritha Dey.

More information about the GBBC, Campus Bird Count, and other associated events can be found at http://gbbc.birdcount.org, http://www.birdcount.in, and http://ebird.or. The global GBBC event is organized by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society and this is the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time.

Checklist of birds documented during the GBBC & CBC - 2016 at WII  (188 kb)

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