Overview
Bird-watching, the observation of live birds in their natural habitat, a popular pastime and scientific sport that developed almost entirely in the 20th century. A great surge of interest in wild birds occurred from about the 1880s onward. Bird-watching first became popular in Great Britain, with the United States not far behind. Eventually, it became almost equally popular in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the older countries of the British Commonwealth and India.
India is probably the only country in the world that can boast as varied and rich a birdlife as it does. Home to well over a thousand species, of which about 100 are to be found only in India, there is a wealth of avifauna to see. The best time to visit India from an ornithological standpoint is no doubt the months between October and April as, in addition to the variety of resident species, migratory waterfowl, raptors, starlings & other passerines and a host of other species are also to be seen all around the Indian countryside. Roads can be western style motorways, decaying mettled roads of dirt tracks. Some areas seem empty but most places teem with people.
Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and winter monsoons. The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes. The Thar Desert plays a crucial role in attracting the moisture-laden south-west summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide the majority of India’s rainfall. Four major climatic groupings predominate in India: tropical wet, tropical dry, subtropical humid, and montane.
The main birding habitats in India can be broadly classified into forests, scrub, grassland & farmland, deserts and wetlands, each of these is home to a characteristic population of bird species, quite different from those found in other habitats. As at Aril 2024, Number of bird species are 1377. Number of endemics are 77. In India Bird watching destinations states are as follows -Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh Assam , Bihar, Chhattisgarh , Delhi, Goa , Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu&Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala , Lakshadweep, Maharashtra, Manipur ,Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha , Punjab , Rajasthan , Sikkim , Tamil Nadu , Madhya Pradesh, Telangana ,Tripura , Uttar Pradesh , Uttarakhand and West Bengal .Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh are also exciting destinations for Bird Watchers.