Kite festival leads to 180 injured birds

All through Sunday, bird rescuers were busy tending to wounded birds that were left injured due to the nylon manja used by citizens celebrating Makar Sankranti. However, in some good news, several organisations claimed that the number of birds found injured this year had reduced by almost 50 per cent compared to last year despite the festival falling on a Sunday.

Harsh Shah of Bird Helpline along with other organisations put together camps across Mumbai to treat birds. He said they treated around 180 birds on Sunday, of which the most were found in western suburbs. "A majority of the birds treated were pigeons and around three were kites. Around 100 birds were reported from suburbs while around 80 from Mumbai city. Most of them had cuts and bruises caused by nylon manja clearly indicating that the ban on it was only on paper," said Shah.

However, according to rescue organisations the number of injured birds reported increases a day after the festival as loose manja left stuck on trees and wires impacts more birds. "We will keep our volunteers on alert as it's always seen that rescue calls for birds like owls, crows, kites and even kingfisher being stuck in manja is reported days after the festival," said Sunish Subramanian Secretary, PAWS, Mumbai

The Mumbai Fire Brigade's control room too kept buzzing with bird rescue calls. "On an average we receive two calls a day informing us about birds stuck in manja but on Sunday we received around 15 calls from across Mumbai related to birds being stuck," said an official.