“Please enable live tagging of these birds! I would prefer to offload my stress seeing these little war heroes achieving victory rather than swiping Insta reels!” one X user wrote.
The post was about three satellite-tagged Amur Falcons — Apapang, Alang and Ahu — tracked as they moved across continents.
Four months ago, these birds completed one of the most closely followed migrations in recent years, flying thousands of kilometres across India, the Arabian Sea and the Horn of Africa in under a week.
Hello again to all those glued to Amur Watch !
The Amur Falcons are rewriting the limits of endurance. From the forests of Manipur, three satellite-tagged travellers Apapang, Alang and Ahu have taken the world by storm. Here is the latest update from their epic journey. You will… https://t.co/IOZsFM0vcbpic.twitter.com/G2IfbxA1Zh
— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) November 20, 2025
As their journey unfolded, people tracked their movement online, watching dots move steadily across a map. Each bird weighed barely 150 grams, yet covered between 5,000 and 6,000 kilometres in less than a week.
The attention they receive today carries a memory of a time when this journey was far more uncertain.
A place they could not cross
Not long ago, this same sky held a different story.
In 2012, in parts of Nagaland, nets were stretched across valleys and the Falcons, exhausted from their journey, flew into them by the thousands. They were trapped in large numbers as they roosted during migration.
They were trapped, then caught, packed, and sold for meat. The scale was staggering. For a species that depends on precise stopover points along a long migration route, losing even one safe passage can break the chain.
Which place is known as the “Falcon Capital of the World ? our very own Nagaland 💪 The State hosts approximately one million Amur falcons (Falco amurensis) during their annual migration. These raptors consume around two billion termites over a fortnight, preparing for a 3,500 km… https://t.co/GIZPglzF8Bpic.twitter.com/fWJdtpEOOn
— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) November 27, 2024
From hunters to protectors
Today, Nagaland is often cited as an example where a community chose to change the outcome of a conservation crisis and stayed with that choice, but that has a long history.
For a few weeks every winter, the Doyang valley in Nagaland becomes a pause point for the Amur falcons. They gather along the Doyang River, feeding on swarms of insects, building the strength needed for an uninterrupted flight over open water. But this exact place used to be a site of interruption.
A view of the Doyang reservoir. Photograph: (Seshadri KS)
Locals started hunting the bird for its meat.
By the late 2000s, what had once been occasional hunting had turned into large-scale trapping. The valley, instead of being a stopover, had become a bottleneck.
The first clear sign of this came in 2009, when Joyce Tan, a bird enthusiast from Singapore who was visiting Nagaland in November that year, saw the butchering and posted about it with pictures online.
The images reached Bano Haralu, a journalist and conservationist from Nagaland, who decided to see the situation for herself.
In October 2012, when she arrived at the Doyang reservoir in Wokha district with a small team, the scale was unmistakable. Dead birds lay across the area. Others were being carried away in bags, sold cheaply for meat. As cheap as Rs100 for four birds.
Haralu’s conservation journey began in 2009, when she quit her career in television journalism. Photograph: (Facebook- NagaHills)
There were deeper reasons behind it.
The Doyang River had changed after the construction of a hydroelectric reservoir near Pangti village. The new water body attracted dragonflies and other insects, drawing larger flocks of falcons. For local communities, where farming and fishing were the main livelihoods, this created an opportunity.
Fish stocks had declined, and hunting had always been part of life. Naturally, the falcons, arriving in such numbers, became a source of food.
What Haralu and her team documented drew attention across the country and beyond — the scale of hunting and trade. Asad Rahmani, then with the Bombay Natural History Society, raised the issue at higher levels, urging immediate action.
The story of the Amur Falcons moved into public view.
How a village moved away from hunting falcons
Like the damage, change also came through people.
For Bano Haralu, the problem wasn’t just the birds being killed; it was how the birds were seen. Hunting was part of life here. So the shift had to begin there — with how the village saw itself.
When images of the killings went viral, the village saw itself through the world’s eyes. That moment changed the conversation. They didn’t want to come across as people who killed birds anymore.
Old bans that had gone unenforced were brought back with urgency. But Haralu and her team kept returning, talking to villagers, making one point clear, that a month of killing could not sustain a year of living. They pushed for alternatives like farming, ecotourism, and refused the idea of compensation.
Forest officials, conservationists, and local leaders also began working with communities. With these efforts coming together, the hunting began to slow.
In places that once saw mass trapping, villagers began guarding roosting sites. Children were taught to recognise the birds not as food, but as travellers. The change took time, but it stayed.
From a conservation crisis to a tracked journey
What began as a conservation emergency has become a network of observation and science now.
Satellite tagging projects, led by institutions like the Wildlife Institute of India, now track the birds across their entire migration. What started as a way to understand and prevent hunting has turned into one of the most closely followed bird movements.
Today, the falcons are monitored and mapped in real time. As they pause in places like Somalia or move towards Tanzania, their journey is followed step by step.
Nagaland hosts ~1M Amur falcons, eating 2B termites before a 3,500 km nonstop flight to Africa. Photograph: (X@supriyasahuias)
According to data shared by the Manipur Amur Falcon Tracking Project and officials monitoring the birds, three falcons — Apapang, Alang and Ahu — were tagged on 11 November in the forests of Manipur as part of an ongoing effort to study their migration.
Among them, Apapang, an adult male marked with an orange tag, recorded the longest continuous flight. Tracking data shows he covered around 6,100 kilometres in six days and eight hours without stopping, tracing a single arc from northeast India across peninsular India and over the Arabian Sea before entering Somalia and continuing towards Kenya.
Alang, the youngest bird tagged in yellow, completed a 5,600-kilometre journey in six days and 14 hours. Her route included a night halt in Telangana and a three-hour rest in Maharashtra before she left the Indian coast for the transoceanic leg.
Ahu, an adult female carrying a red tag, took a more northerly route. She travelled 5,100 kilometres in five days and 14 hours after a night’s pause in western Bangladesh.
Each year, the falcons return to the same place to pause before the long stretch ahead. This time, they are left undisturbed, and the journey carries on.
