08/10/2022
Bangladesh is said to have about 712 species of birds although the IUCN Red List of Bangladesh confirmed about 570 species.
Out of these 712 bird species, about 320 are migratory birds as the country falls on two major bird migratory flyways – the East-Asian Australasian Flyway and the Central Asian Flyway.
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In Bangladesh, when we talk of migratory birds, we immediately conjure up images of hunting ducks, geese, waders, egrets, storks, and ibises. These are the birds known to us as migratory, and often wrongly branded as guest birds. Hunters and bird poachers usually prefer the species that are halal or edible to the majority Muslim population in the country. But that's no more than 50 species and we have nearly five times more migratory species than that.
By and large, most people do not know of most charismatic and tiny migratory birds such as wagtails (Khojon), pipits (Tulika), leaf warblers (PataFutki), Warblers (Futki), Buntings (Bagheri or Bhuruipakhi), shrikes (KoshaiPakhi), Swallows (Ababils) etc -- ranging from 10 to 20 cm in length and 8 to 25g in weight that come to the country in the tens of thousands. Their total number could be over several millions.
Meanwhile, larger species of ducks, geese and waders could be present numbering in the several hundred thousand only.
These tiny birds live in bushes anywhere in a private house or office compound, public parks, roadside hedges, shrubs and trees in a busy city to a remote hamlet in the countryside or forests and are usually not noticed by people.
