Hyderabad: The KBR National Park in the heart of the city has become a haven for peacocks in the city. According to a recent survey on Wednesday, the park, which is popular among morning walkers and joggers, has nearly 512 peacocks and peahens.
“This is the largest concentration of peafowl in the city,” said A. Shankaran, a wildlife officer on special duty with the forest department.
Traditionally, this patch of forested area — mostly scrub and bushes — has always been home to peafowl, he said, adding that the protection offered in the park, with walls and fencing protecting the entire area, presence of water bodies and absence of any predators, has helped the peafowl numbers remain high.
Among those who took part in the peafowl survey in KBR National Park were members from Deccan Birders, WWF, and Friends of the Snakes Society, apart from some volunteers. The count began at 7 am and covered the nine-km of walking and jogging tracks in the park. While a four-km stretch of the track is open to the public, the other five-km falls in the off-limit, conservation zone of the park.
Those taking part in the survey were given sections of the track to cover and count the number of peafowl they saw on either side of the tracks, a type of line of sight transect survey that is part of all wildlife counts, Shankaran added.
