Bhadi Duck

The disappearance of the white winged wood duck from the Chittagong hill tracts forests is just another story of how destruction of habitat takes toll on our wildlife.

It was winter in 1974. I was bird watching in and around Amtali forest village that housed the headquarter of the local, Pablakhali forest range under Chittagong Hill Tracts District and a tiny bazaar with a few grocery shops, a primary school, a makeshift mosque, a maktab and a police outpost with less than a dozen policemen.

A Chkma man was my guide and another one carried my rations. At one point we reached a hillside ethnic village and took a break. Suddenly I heard the typical calls of ducklings from under a stilt house.

Unique duck:- This unique duck lived in our mixed evergreen forest of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It preferred wetlands, slow moving waters of the Hill Rivers, marshes and water filled paddy fields in the Sangu Matamuhuri and Kassalong valley reserves. From 1978 and up to 1981 I used to see at least two pairs of the duck close to Amtali of the Pablakhali wildlife sanctuary. Nobody could visit the area since then because of shantie Bahini insurgency. A year after the peace accord was signed with the ethnic people in 1997, I went to pablakhali again to look for the duck.
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DUCK
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BHADI DUCK