Rama Krishna Sangem
BRS Rajya Sabha MP J Santosh Kumar this Sunday, January 22, captured in his camera a colourful scarlet macaw, a kind of beautiful parrot in a location around Hyderabad city. This is part of his weekly dose of nature photography for the last few months. Santosh, founder of Green India Challenge (GIC), has been promoting nature and ecological awareness among people, especially the youngsters.
In spite of his busy scheduled in the party and government, Santosh makes it a point to click some nature and wildlife related objects in his Nikon 850 camera. For the last few months, he has been shooting by his camera the birds, both commonly sighted and rare ones and tweeting them in social media. His pics of this Sunday got 1,103 views, 144 likes and 37 retweets by 11.20 am.
Scarlet macaw or Gouldian Finch
When I shared these pics with some of my friends with knowledge in zoology and ornithology, they said these birds could be either scarlet macaw or gouldian finch. They belong to a family of beautiful and colourful birds, a subset of parrots family. Some of them sighted in Hyderabad and surrounding forests are known as sun parakeet, colourful sparrows or humming birds etc.
Most of them are in endangered list of species. Some of these birds are of origin of Australia or Burmese or even from African jungles. They are endangered due to two reasons – one, common cause of deforestation and second is humans trading with them. Though these birds are suited for open trees and bushes or jungles, people prefer to keep them in cages because of their colourful looks.
“MP Santosh has been doing a great awareness campaign through his weekend photography. The birds of last few weeks are a sight to behold, not to be kept in cages. School children and youngsters too should take to photography and learn methods to save these rare birds,” said Vijay Kumar, a bird watcher from Gachibowli, Hyderabad. These rare birds are a sigh of rich flora in our areas.
