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Giridhar Gopal in Bhubaneswar
Thousands of migratory birds have descended on Orissa's Chilika Lake, spread over the districts of Puri, Khurda and Ganjam.
More good news for animal lovers came in the form of hundreds of Olive Ridley turtles arriving on the Gahirmatha beach in Kendrapara district
Chilika is the largest lagoon in the east coast of India and has marine, brackish and fresh water ecosystems.
It is one of the hotspots of biodiversity and shelters a number of endangered species listed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) red list of threatened species, and also is a designated 'Ramsar site' [wetland of international importance].
It is also a wintering ground for more than one million migratory birds.
"We have spotted about six thousand birds on the lake," Chief Executive of Chilika Development Authority Ajit Pattnaik told rediff.com.
But he did not have the details about the name of the birds and the country of their origin. "It would be known in the next few days," he said.
Birds flying in from as far as Iraq, Iran, central Europe and even Siberia make the lake their home in winter, he said.
Last year about 1.5 million birds had come to this lake and this year we hope the number would increase, he added.
Elsewhere in Orissa hundreds of Olive Ridley turtles have made the Gahirmatha beach their home for breeding, secretary of Operation Kachhapa, Biswajit Mohanty, said.
Operation Kachhapa is a turtle conservation group, which has deployed a large boat for patrolling the Bay of Bengal to check mass killing of turtles by mechanised trawlers.
The Gahirmatha beach is considered as the second largest mass nesting site of the giant Olive Ridley turtles in the world, after the Mexico coast. "The turtles have now come for breeding. After that they will come to the beach for nesting and their number is gradually increasing," Mohanty said.
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