Over 350 species of birds have been recorded in Bengaluru over the years. At the same time, the city has seen a rapid increase in urbanization and loss of vegetation in the last few decades. Researchers from Bengaluru found an increase in built-up area and decrease of vegetation cover and water bodies.[1][2] In April 2016, Bengaluru recorded its hottest summer in 85 years with the temperatures rising to 39.2°C.
A long term monitoring of biodiversity in urban areas is essential to improve our understanding of ecological systems and their response to anthropogenic changes. As part of Project Ashoka, the long term ecological research project, Gubbi Labs started the Urban Bird Monitoring program in an attempt to systematically monitor birds in Bengaluru to understand how they are adapting to land-use and climate changes in the city.
Surveys were conducted between 6-9am in the mornings and 4-6pm in the evening. Each survey was carried out by 3 people. 13 wooded areas (parks and institutions) and 13 lakes/tanks have been selected based on bird hotspots in the city identified by surveys carried out in the past. Wooded areas were surveyed using 500 m long line transects which were covered in 15 minutes. Multiple such line transects were carried out at each site. For lakes the surveys were conducted by walking along the boundary of the lake. Each species detected (visual/audio) was noted down along with their abundance, in the datasheet.
The datasheet can be downloaded here:
Google Drive Link.
With regard to distribution of the data, we have adopted to distribute data to promote public participation, community level conservation and to develop policy changes under the Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.