Across the Terai—the marshy lowlands that straddle the border of northern India and southern Nepal—a silent extinction is taking place. It does not concern megafauna like tigers or leopards, but a small yellow-coloured bird.
In 2024, not a single female Finn’s Baya was seen at the Haripura Dam in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar and the surrounding Terai. This area is the last bastion of the bird. Cut to this year and neither male nor female birds have been spotted, something which has ornithologists alarmed.
The Finn’s Baya (Ploceus megarhynchus) is known by many names. Due to its yellow colour, it is called Finn’s Weaver, Yellow Weaver and Himalayan Weaver. In Uttarakhand, it is called Pahari (hill) Baya.
These birds are found in the Terai of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal. Here, they live close to dams and reservoirs. Water, marshy soil, tall grasses, Semal (silk cotton) and Shisham (rosewood) trees make up its natural habitat. These birds build their nests on tall grass and these trees.
Tanuja, a research associate at the Uttarakhand Forest Department’s research unit, has been studying the Haripura Dam area since 2021. “I have seen their numbers decline during my study. As soon as the breeding season started in May, these birds would start nesting near the Haripura Dam and leave the nest by August. In 2021, the highest number of 17 male and 10 female Finn’s Weavers were seen. This number has been decreasing every year. In 2024, not a single female Finn’s Weaver was seen and in 2025, no individual was seen. I searched for their nests from Haripura to the Baur Dam and also in the forests of that area. But I could not find a single bird or nest,” she said.
Tanuja is also disappointed due to the fact that in these five years of her study, she has seen birds, their nests and colonies, but not a single egg or chick.
She also recorded seasonal irregularities in her notes. In 2021, Haripura was completely dry till the first week of June due to a lack of rain. The Finn’s Weaver needs marshy soil and water.
Then, two years later in June 2023, there was a flood-like situation around Haripura. “All their nests were washed away in the floods. In 2023, I noticed that they were constantly building new nests and leaving old ones, as if they were not getting the habitat they wanted or feeling a threat.”
These circumstances also reflect the decisions taken by water management authorities for the Haripura Dam, which is meant for irrigation.
Rajesh Panwar is a bird watcher from Udham Singh Nagar. He is associated with eBird, an international online bird monitoring platform. “People are bringing increasing areas of the Terai’s grasslands in and around Rudrapur under cultivation, often destroying them in the process. Wheat is grown when the water in the dam lake is low. The trees present there for cultivation are also dried and cut.”
These birds have already disappeared from Sitarganj, Kichcha, Bajpur and many other areas of Udham Singh Nagar. The Finn’s Weaver was also found once in the grasslands of Nainital and Haridwar. But slowly, it vanished from there.
The bird’s absence in Uttarakhand this year vindicates the apprehensions raised in the 2017 Status of Finn’s Weavers in India: Past and Present report.
Rajat Bhargava, a senior ornithologist who has been assistant director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), had prepared the report after studying Finn’s Weaver presence across India from the 1990s to 2017. According to the report, human activities including expansion of agriculture, grass cutting, construction work, residential buildings, and increase in industrial units across the Terai has affected and disrupted the natural habitat of these birds. Consequently, their population has decreased rapidly.
The report recorded an 84-96 per cent decline in the population of the Finn’s Weaver in Udham Singh Nagar between 2012 and 2017. The number of these birds in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh is estimated to be only 200.
Bhargava warned that time to save the species was running out. “When you do not take immediate action to save a species, you allow it to become extinct. Unless the government acts, this bird will not survive. And the time to save a species is only when they are present in good numbers.”
A subspecies of the Finn’s Weaver (Ploceus megarhynchus salimalii) is present in the Kaziranga and Manas National Parks of Assam. They were also once present in West Bengal. In the 2017 status report, their number was estimated to be around 300. Including this subspecies, it was estimated that about 500 Finn’s Weavers were found across India.
Asad Rahmani, who has been the director of BHNS and has done extensive research on the Finn’s Weaver, said Finn’s Weavers were also recorded in the grasslands of the Terai in Nepal’s Shuklaphanta, about 100 km from Udham Singh Nagar, in the 1990s. “We believe that this bird may have migrated locally to Nepal from the Terai of India. But even there, their population is not increasing.”
He is critical of government measures. “You don’t think of anything other than tigers, elephants and rhinos. Why don’t you have information about the endangered Finn’s Weavers? In 2017, BHNS had proposed a study of Finn’s Weavers and their conservation breeding. But it was not accepted. It didn’t even need a big budget. The governments of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh should work together to save the Finn’s Weaver. If its habitat is secured, only then will this bird survive. In 2016, BirdLife International placed it in the ‘Vulnerable’ category for the first time due to their declining population. In 2021, its protection category was raised to ‘Endangered’.
A study by Uttarakhand Forest Research Institute shows the absence of Finn’s Weavers from the Haripura Dam indicates an increased level of threat.
The Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board has also signed an agreement with the Nature Science Initiative, a state-level organisation, on this bird. The Chairman of the Board is S P Subudhi, Member Secretary, State Wetland Authority and Director of the State Directorate of Environment Protection and Climate Change. “It is a given that the habitat of the Finn’s Weaver is under threat,” he said. “This is affecting their reproduction. There is also a need to work closely with the irrigation department to manage water from Haripura Dam. After the study report is out, we will take a decision related to its conservation.”
Vivek Pandey, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Wildlife, Uttarakhand Forest Department, also shared information received from the divisional forest officer of the Terai Central Forest Division on this matter. Several attempts were made to find the bird. But they were not successful. The bird can be identified by its dark yellow colour only during the breeding season which coincides with the monsoon. Therefore, the presence or absence of this species cannot be confirmed only on the basis of rainy weather.
The Terai Central Forest Division has been continuously monitoring the birds’ activities in the wetlands of the Haripura Dam with the help of local people, institutions and bird watchers. But to this day, no evidence of successful reproduction has been found here, nor is there any evidence of this bird migrating from the breeding grounds. “This can be interpreted to mean that they are nesting in this area. But we are not able to locate those places,” said Pandey.
The bird, which the Uttarakhand Forest Department had been unable to locate, caught the attention of eminent ornithologists because of its distinctive yellow plumage, prompting them to trace its presence across the country.
They were first identified in 1866 by A O Hume, who is called the father of Indian ornithology. The weaver bird was named Finn’s Weaver after Frank Finn, the British officer who identified the bright yellow colour during the breeding season. Salim Ali, known as the ‘Birdman of India’, conducted a survey of this bird and found its presence across the country, including Udham Singh Nagar.
In the 1990s, Rajat Bhargava once again surveyed the locations pointed out by Ali and also discovered some new haunts. In his reports, apart from habitat, attacks by common crows emerged as a major threat to this bird. Due to their small population, these birds were unable to protect their eggs and chicks from crows.
“I saw an entire colony being attacked by some wild crows, which ate at least 8-10 eggs and four chicks. None of the birds returned to the colony in the next two days,” recalled Bhargava.
Deepak Apte, who was the director of BNHS during the study of the Finn’s Weaver, considers the present to be the last chance to save this bird.
Citing the instances of the Great Indian Bustard and vultures, he said, “There are only two options to save the Finn’s Weaver: One is protecting their nests from predators such as crows while making natural habitats safe. The second is captive breeding, i.e., breeding outside their natural habitat, in a controlled environment so that their numbers can be increased. Since it is a grassland species, the local community will also have to be taken along. All this requires political and administrative will. ”
The bird is disappearing from the Terai of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, which is the best natural habitat of the Finn’s Weaver. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Senior Red List Officer Alex Berryman visited the Haripura Dam area in August this year. In an emailed reply, he said, “I did not see Finn’s Weavers in Haripura. Clearly, this is a matter of concern and indicative of the deteriorating status of the species locally. ”
He added, “The IUCN last listed it in 2021. There is a possibility that its status may have deteriorated, at least locally. There is a need for constant monitoring to know about their population in other areas of their range, including Nepal. If these data also show a decline in their population and the species meets the critically endangered threshold, I am prepared to expedite the reassessment of its conservation status.”