Chetla-Forest

A true ‘urban jungle’

Situated between two important bridges of the city, New Alipore (Durgapur) and Majherhat, this green patch along the east bank of Chetla canal can truly be described as an ‘urban jungle’. This 300-400 meters stretched land belongs to the Kolkata Port Trust (KPT) and the other side of the canal is a property of Indian Railways. The canal has also separated the old and new Alipore area otherwise connected by the Baily bridge. Recently the KPT authority has put up big walls with few large iron gates in order to protect the place and I believe this would help to conserve the place which has a problem of goat and cattle grazing!

The Place: Being almost undisturbed by human encroachments and the vicinity of the canal water have helped to thrive some flora and fauna in this man-made ‘forest’. It is man-made because even few years back this place was used as a dumping ground of garbage and was also infamous for several antisocial activities! Then some people initiated a cleaning drive and also started planting different types of trees. As a result, this place now has become a permanent and quite comfortable habitat of several species, such as Black kite, Rose-ringed Parakeet, White-breasted Kingfisher, Black Drongo, Oriental Magpie Robin, Coppersmith Barbet, Red-whiskered Bulbuls and many more. I first saw Red-whiskered Bulbuls here and it is definitely a bigger habitat for them than the Rabindra Sarobar Lake. The other large habitat for this species is Chintamani Kar Bird Sanctuary (CKBS).

Besides these resident birds, some migratory birds such as Verditer Flycatchers, Brown-breasted Flycatchers warblers (Dusky, Blyth’s Reed, Yellow Browed etc.) are also regular visitor of this place in autumn through winter. Then in spring, the star attraction of this place, Asian Emerald Dove appeared and stays for a month. At least for this season, this was my observation. I’ll update later about further observations.

From my experience, I would recommend Chetla-forest for observing few species of birds which are otherwise difficult to observe or infrequent in other birding spots. These are: