Kite Flying: Impact on birds
I was taking my morning walk in the park when I saw a group of people excitedly crowding around. When I came closer I could see that there was a kite string on two trees and a crow is hanging upside down on the string. The crow’s wings had got entangled on the string. Two of them were trying to pick up a stick and hit at the string to break it. Finally the string was broken and the entangled crow and string fell on the ground. The people were not sure how to rescue the crow.
I moved in to help. one person gently held the crow and I slowly removed the knotted string. The string had got entangled in its wings and pulling it would have further damaged the wings. It took me several minutes to carefully remove the string.
All this while the crow was quiet. It didn’t even get scared and peck at us. Intelligent bird that it is, the crow simply waited for us to remove the string. However, not all was well with the crow. When we threw the crow up hoping that it will fly, it flapped its wings and landed on the ground and hopped on and hid below the hedge. Clearly the crow had some internal damage to either the nerves or wings and it was not capable of flying.
The people were happy that the crow got extricated and they left. I stood there for a while to watch it. I knew that it won’t be easy for the crow as there are feral dogs around. However, the crow was well hidden in the hedge.
Next day while I was on my walk, I found black feathers of the crow nearby. The crow had met its end. One of the dogs had got an easy meal.
Since I was on my morning walk, I could not click an image. However, the sight of an intelligent bird like the crow hanging on the kite string was disturbing. It reminded me of my childhood days when I used to fly kites and painstakingly do maanja by grinding tube light glass, use gum and then use it to cut other kites. It was an elaborate procedure with five kids involved in the entire process. Little did I realise the impact on birds.
These white kite strings are very fine and it is difficult for the birds to see and avoid it. Even if they don’t get hit when the kite is flying, it has a long lasting impact as seen in the entangled crow. The strings of kites get entangled in trees and it impacts many birds.
The common house crow is an intelligent bird and can make many fine acrobatic moves. If such a bird gets entangled in the thread, then one can imagine the impact on other birds, especially endangered birds like vultures etc.
There has been no systematic study to quantify the impact of bird kills due to kite flying. However, every year we get some sporadic reporting of impacts on birds, especially during the kite flying festivals in Gujarat during Uttarayan in the month of January. It is estimated that every year about 2500 birds get impacted In Gujarat alone. There are reports of bird deaths from many other states as well.
One easy way to reduce the problem is not to fly kites in early mornings and late evenings so that direct bird hits don’t happen during kite flying. However, birds will continue to get killed and maimed by strings entangled in trees.
Asking people not to use maanja (broken glass and gum) in their threads will also help. However, even a normal thread rubbing on your body is sufficient to cut your skin.Like catapult, which is a seemingly harmless toy but is used by many to kill lot of birds, the impact of kite flying on birds is not yet properly acknowledged. Limiting the kite flying only to designated open spaces will help so that the chances of kites and strings getting entangled in trees decrease.
When our population was small these festivals had negligible impact. However, with millions of people flying kites, the impact on our avian population is huge. I hope all of you can share this with others so that we can spread the awareness among people and save our winged friends.
If you have any suggestions and comments on Kite flying: Impact on birds, then please use the comments section below.
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Deliberate cruelty or damaging unknowingly .. there is enough in the world to feel sick! Unfortunately.
Unfortunately this is true. We justify cruelty either on the pretext of ignorance or due to some greater necessity.
I remember seeing a sparrow terminally mutilated by manjha, few years back. I have a more alarming tale to tell you though. Once, while I was driving a scooter, the killer string got entangled in my neck. It left a deep gash on my Adam’s apple. My pillion was a black belt and he had an refreshing chat with the kite master! 😉
I believe use of manjha should be banned by law.
Ohh My God! I remember I used to cut paper using a thread. Hitting a kite string sharpened by manja at a speed can be deadly. Good that you are here to tell the tale. Some one can also fall from the scooter or motorcycle and get serious injuries apart from a cut neck. I agree that manja should be banned by law.
That is quiet dangerous, using gum on the manja, totally not acceptable.
Its quiet dangerous for every body. As Umashankar has mentioned in his comment, manja thread can be deadly for bikers as well.
Oh! this is sad. I have no suggestions to make, barring that kids should be more careful and make sure they collect the thread if they know where they have dropped it. But having said that it is not possible. I can’t expect our Govt to tell the makers to make bird friendly manjhas or ban it. Sigh!
Saru,
Kids will not understand unless they are explained. I hope some of use during our interactions with school students can propagate the message.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
Sabyasachi,
Such a sad thing to happen. .. I guess, the immediate step that can be taken is to create awareness to use simple thread instead of manjhaa or fly kites in open grounds so that the birds can be saved. It’s an harrowing experience, I know , since we have also gone through this drill once in Mumbai…
Panchali,
I agree that we need to spend lot of effort in raising awareness. When we watch colourful kites in the sky it looks good. The Gujarat Government even encourages the kite festival for tourism purposes. Unfortunately, the impact is huge. If people don’t care for birds, atleast, the impact on people should force the authorities to take some action.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
Long after the kite flying season is over the manza threads continue to kill. I witnessed this in Hyderabad. Most kites that get cut in the kite flying game settle on trees and cables for months and have similar impact on birds.
The corrective measures should begin right now right here. Let all of us who read this endeavour to inform and educate children at our own homes and those at the neighbours. A small beginning but a big one for the poor birds.
Good post Sabyasachi
A lot of people stay in housing societies. One good way is to put up a note in the notice boards. Also, doing a small skit by kids during one of the festivals would be easy and help a lot. We all can put in our efforts in lot of different ways.
Kids may be managed. But what about grown ups. There are many adults involve in kite flying who use these threads more than any kids.
Debopam,
It is always tough to deal with grown ups. Several times when I tell people driving through forests not to feed animals, they get really annoyed. I hope that we educate all the kids so that they teach their unreasonable parents. We need to create some kind of social pressure as well on the grownups, else, it won’t be easy.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
Oops! I was always fascinated by kites! They can do so much harm is news to me. It was good to see someone refer to the crow as an intelligent bird. Its usually referred to with a lot of disgust 🙂
Jaish,
Though they are not known for their beauty, their intelligence is not to be discounted. During my childhood days I have tried to break their nests and done all naughty things and have got enough experience of their intelligence. 🙂
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
That is so sad! I guess short of banning kites, there is not much that can be done. Perhaps education helps, but that is easier said than done :(.
Rachna,
I agree that though we say education helps, the results don’t come easily. Perhaps like Singapore, if there is a strong deterrent interms of legislation as well as instantaneous implementation and punishment, then the education becomes full proof. 🙂
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
Hi Sabyasachi… this is a very informative post… diwali coming I was thinking about crackers…but kites are almost for many months in many parts of country. …this definitely needs more thought and action from us….
Great post! People need to be made aware of the side effects of a sport like this! Poor birds..:(
Amit,
Frankly speaking I had no idea till I saw the impact myself.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
So sad!
This happened last year in our compound. A crow was caught on top of the coconut tree and we all tried our best to rescue. So many other cows were hanging around looking at our efforts. The bird was making sound for almost two days and finally gave up. The crows were surrounding the tree and making so much noise, we all felt very bad about it.
Why cant we have fun without causing so much misery to those innocent creatures?
Ohh My God! Sad to hear that the crow was stuck for two days. It is traumatic watching someone struggle with life and death for such a long time. I think if people really understand the impact of their actions, then many of them will stop doing it. However, there will always be a lot of people who don’t care and are not concerned. It also doesn’t help that in some of the popular Hindi cinema, kite flying is shown. We need to raise awareness levels significantly so that there is pressure on people.
So sad… It happens every year around the country… People fly kites for their fun forgetting about the dangers happening to the birds.. Hope this post makes an awareness among the people… Nice one…
This is not only a threat to Birds but to humans as well. Inspite of Tamilnadu government banning the use of Maanja for flying kites people still use them and today once incident was reported which could have become a fatal incident.
There have been many fatal incidents in Marina beach
The problem is that culprits are left free or the penalty\punishment that they get is very minimal. We need to impose severe punishments for such cases so that such incident such does not happen in future
The Link about the incident
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/kite-thread-slashes-bike-riders-throat/article4091395.ece
Ohh My God! I checked the link to read the story in Hindu. The person’s neck is deeply slashed and it says it could have been life threatening if the thread had cut another millimeter. Scary.
The Hindu story says that Maanja is banned in Chennai. It should be banned everywhere. A few people might be disappointed, however this has to be stopped.
Knowingly or otherwise, we have been degrading our environment for decades. I hope the authority see this and ban the maanja in their respective states.
I am bit late to be replying on this but I just came across this today ! I briefly went through the comments. Nearly 2000 birds are injured in Ahmedabad alone during this festival leave alone the rest of the state. Being actively involved in this field I can say that injuries to birds don’t stop for months. We sometimes have kite string injury cases as late as June or July. As many people would be knowing Ahmedabad is home to the Endangered White backed Vulture and other Vultures and sadly every year some of them die due to kite strings while others are grounded for life – a big problem for the already declining population of Vultures.
This year as opposed to our normal activities in the city area, I and a group of other village students started the first ever program in the villages in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat to rescue and rehabilitate the birds injured in villages and also to create awareness about manja. I was surprised to see that many children when told about the horrific injuries to birds due to glass strings took a pledge not to fly with glass strings and many even said they will stop flying kites all together.
Children, if taught properly can actually be the change this country needs in terms of saving its wildlife and natural resources but unfortunately our school curriculums and minds of the parents have still not changed in this regard !
Divyaraj,
Nice to know that you along with other students are making an effort to educate people. The challenge is huge, so it is important for everybody to take up this cause. Change doesn’t happen in a day. So we should not lose heart. We need to continue to explain it to people.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
This article explains how thread smeared with manja has adverse impact to avian fauna as well as human in some extent. Unless we itself have practical utility & broad understanding Law alone can’t bane manja on thread. Why not we being a responsible citizen make aware to the mass not to use manja on thread is dangerous to all concern..animals, birds & human.
Never hurt animal’s…..
Does government takes any step to remove manjha from trees ?
No. Manjha strings remain stuck on trees and no one notices.
Can’t u organise a same kind of group of yours to held camps in Gujarat because Gujarat is the only city where more than 1000 to 2000 kites are being fled at one and the same time and also India is only having this kind of habit because the people does not understand that why not to fly kites and just for their sake of joy they do all sorts of this things. I will be waiting for ur answer u can Sent ur reply on my email address.
I am from ahmedabad, the kite festival( makarsankranti ) is over. But till now there is kites in all the trees. Due to which I saw every day a bird hang in that string by tangaling. Now one even care enough to atleast take out the dead bird.
Seeing this ugly truth of Kite festival make me really sick. I also want to help. But can’t able to help.
Waiting for your reply or any solution on how I can help.