"I just heard the call of an Oriental Shama.”
Micah Rai is excited. He describes its call as a melodious series of chirps.
But his excitement is tinged with worry about the tiny black, white and yellow winged creature. “It's usually found below [900 metres], but recently, I've been hearing it up here [2,000 metres]," says the 30-year-old field staffer who has been observing birds for the last decade at the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh.
A local, Micah is part of a team of scientists, researchers and field staff who have been studying avian species in the tropical montane (mountain) forests of Arunachal Pradesh's West Kameng district for the last 10 years.
Holding a striking dark blue and black bird with white lines on its tail, Dr. Umesh Srinivasan says, "this is the White-tailed Robin. Its upper limit used to be 1,800 metres, but over the last three to four years, it has been found at 2,000 metres."
An ornithologist, Srinivasan is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore and heads the team working in Arunachal Pradesh. "Over the last 12 years, bird species in the eastern Himalayas have been shifting their ranges," adds Srinivasan.
