With the early beginning of winter season this year, migratory birds have started arriving at the India’s second largest wetland Harike, also known as “Hari-ke-Pattan”, where Satluj and Beas rivers merge.
The wetland and the lake were formed by constructing the headworks across the Sutlej river, in 1953. Since then, the wetland spreading over 100 square miles, and the lake have become a home to rare varieties of avifauna which arrives here from different parts of Europe and northern Asia.
Every year, lakhs of winged guests from Siberia, Russia, Kazakhstan and other low temperature regions start arriving at the world famous bird sanctuary in the first week of November as lakes of those regions freeze in winter season. They are expected to stay here till the month of March.
On Saturday, number of clusters of migratory birds was seen enjoying in different zones of the lake setting a beautiful scenes.
The forest and wildlife department, which oversee the wetland, were also keen to welcome the migratory birds and has completed the arrangements for them, keeping in view of threat of poaching incidents here.
District forest officer (DFO) Charanjit Singh said, “Thousands of birds, including Spoon, Bills, Sybarian Gills, Rudi, Shell duck, Pantel, Shawler vision, common koot, etc. have arrived on the lake and hundreds of other species of the birds are expected to reach in coming days. Majority of the birds are seen sitting or flying in lake’s Ryasat and Khaitan zones, atmosphere of which is calm in comparison to others.”
“Adequate security arrangements have been made at the lake for the winged guests and the entire region of the lake is under surveillance around the clock of the department’s special team which has been deployed here,” he added.
He also expressed concern over air and water pollution and rising harmful electromagnetic rays in the air which have caused the death of certain species of the birds.
The officials believed that it was the early arrival of the birds on the lake and main reason for their arrival was the sudden decrease in the temperature due to which the weather has changed. In view of this, they hoped that number of migratory birds coming here could increase this year compared to last year.
