Kite flying is as much a Makar Sakranti tradition in states like Gujarat and Maharashtra as much as a fond memory from childhood. Sadly, it has an ugly side.
Reportedly, this year more than 150 birds were killed by sharp kite strings (manja) during the annual religious festival.?Volunteers tried to rescue pigeons, starlings and storks but they died before they could be saved.?
Hundreds of other birds were injured in Gujarat and Maharashtra after getting entangled in strings coated with a paste of powdered glass and glue to make them sharp in order to sever the strings of rival kites.
News18 reports that Harshil Shah, a volunteer from a bird rescue group, claimed that their centres in Maharashtra and Gujarat had received some 750 distress calls on Jan 14 and Jan 15.?
"We try to lessen response time during an emergency call to save as many birds as possible but 20 percent of the birds have succumbed to their injuries after getting entangled in the strings," AFP quoted him as saying.?
On the other hand, a village in Odisha has stopped the using kite strings in order to save birds. According to Odisha Bytes, almost every house in the village, Gunthabandha, on the outskirts of Odisha¡¯s Berhampur, has artificial nests hung in the courtyard for sparrow families.?
Dwindling sparrow population in the country is a matter of grave concern and we need more people like from this village to do whatever they can to stop the population from decreasing further. The village has collectively discarded the use of abrasive manja thread for kite flying to save sparrows and other birds of their area
The thread, because of its coating of glass and glue does not break easily, hence a large number of birds get fatally injured, or die.
Because of this initiative, the number of sparrows and other birds in the area have grown in number in the last one year!?
Youth organisation, Anchalika Vikash Parishad (AVP) had a huge role to play in this.?¡°We realised the danger when we found young sparrow hatchlings injured by the manja kept in our homes. Then we found other birds getting killed by manja,¡± Odisha Bytes quoted AVP¡¯s president Sagar Kumar Patra as saying.
¡°Like most youths and children of Gunthabandha, I have not stopped flying kites. But we use plain thread instead of manja so that we don¡¯t harm sparrows and other birds, whom we consider members of our village,¡± a villager said.?
Even though use of Chinese strings is banned in places like New Delhi, we need more initiatives on part of the people to work towards saving our birds.?