A nesting site of the extremely rare white-bellied heron has been discovered in a remote part of the Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. It is estimated that there are only 250 white-bellied herons (Ardea insignis) left in the world and only about 50 left in India. “This is the first nesting site of the white- bellied heron to be discovered in India. Before the discovery of this site, Bhutan was (thought to be) the only country in the world to have a breeding population of the white-bellied heron,” Gopinathan Maheswaran, the scientist who is in charge of the bird Section of the Zoological Survey of India told The Hindu. According to Mr Maheswaran, who has spent years in the wilderness looking for rare birds, there are very few people in the country who have encountered the white-bellied heron. Declared a critically endangered species under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it is an “extremely shy” bird which feeds on fish in ...