Death of a cormorant

[Usha Rajagopalan]

Dear all, 

Several people in our locality are as deeply attached to our Puttenahalli Puttakere as we trustees are. One of them is S K Srinivas whose photos of the flora and fauna at the lake we have shared with you quite often. In his recent blog post, heartbreaking, angry, helpless narrative, he has written about the agonizing death of a great cormorant at the lake yesterday.  It died because its wing was caught in what looked like a piece of fishing net to us. Srini feels it could be from a paper kite. As he pointed out, the Chinese manja is made of the same polymer fiber as the fishing net but is coated with glass powder and abrasive metal which makes it deadly enough to slice the neck of a human being. The fishing net can wound around a bird making it immobile. If not rescued, it will die a slow death. This was what happened to the great cormorant.  

Since the cormorant sat on a perch in the middle of the water, we didn't notice its plight till Srini spotted the string in one of the photographs he had taken.

We hoped it would come close to land so that we could remove the string and set it free as we had done in the past. Shivu, one of the young men who exercise at the lake every morning noticed it too and came in the evening to see if he could catch it. He saw the exhausted and hungry bird sitting on the revetment. When he went near, however, it eluded him. Yesterday morning, he managed to catch it and we informed ARRC immediately. Sadly, it died even before the rescue team could set off from their office. 

This is not the first time that a bird has been caught in some string or fishing net at the lake. We do our very best to make the surroundings litter free and safe for avians but this is impossible as long as encroachers live in the premises. 

Shivu has kindly agreed to be on the lookout for injured birds. We appeal to all walkers and visitors to be alert and inform us or our gardeners if they even suspect any bird could be in distress. 

Thank you. 

PNLIT team

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PNLIT: Breathing Life into a Lake

Puttenahalli Lake from June 2010

PNLIT Newsletter 

[raji hari]

OMG ! pathetic. v v sad news.

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