In Search Of The Forest Owlet

The deciduous forests of the North Western Ghats prove to be a natural habitat for the extremely rare Forest Owlet in Dang, Gujarat.

- Kaushal Patel

In August 2015, after receiving sufficient funding from Mohammad bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund IdeaWild, I was at my hometown Bilimora in Gujarat’s Navsari district. While I was preparing and checking my field gear before leaving for the Dang forests of Gujarat

I played a bird call through a portable speaker. Construction work was going on near my building and Vikas, a young boy, came up to me and asked, “Are you playing a call of Barik Thorpiya Duda?” I was highly surprised that a young boy came up with such an interesting name. “Where did you hear this bird call before?” I asked. “This bird is very common in my village in the Dang forests,” he replied.

To deliberately confuse the young man, I showed him photographs of India’s most common owlet species, the Spotted Owlet. He refused saying that the call that I was playing was not of Barik Chirbiliya Duda (in the Dangi language). “Thorpiya Duda looks similar to Chirbiliya Duda but they are slightly different from each other. Thorpiya Duda has a square head with very few spots on it, and its eyebrow and lower breast is white in colour almost without any marks,” Vikas added. I was amazed by his knowledge. I, then, showed him photographs of a Forest Owlet and Vikas immediately recognised it as a ‘Thorpiya Duda’ and said that it is active during the day while others are active during the dusk or night. He went on to explain the etymology of the local names. ‘Duda’ means owl in Dangi (Ghuwad in Gujarati), while ‘barik’ refers to its small size. ‘Thorpiya’ comes from the call and behaviour of the Forest Owlet.