Hakki Habba: Much awaited three-day long bird festival begins

Bengaluru: The three day ‘Hakki Habba’, a birding program, kick-started on Tuesday, January 5 at the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve.

Biligiri Ranganathaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve (BRT)is hosting seventh edition of bird festival ‘Hakki Habba’ to promote ethical birding. As many as 50 persons from different states will attend the festival that concludes on January 7.

This festival’s aim not only to showcase the birds but to also create a new checklist of additional birds in the region and to find birds that are endemic to BRT.

Such an exercise, of creating the check list, was done back in 2011 when the bird festival was proposed to be held in Bengaluru. Over 270 bird species were recorded that year.

BRT is meeting point of Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats. It has very unique biodiversity and home for number of birds and also popular for birding. In previous, ‘Hakki Habba’ the volunteers had identified 250 plus bird species in BRT.