Corresponding author: Sujit Narwade (
Academic editor: L. Penev
The northeast region of India is one of the world’s most significant biodiversity hotspots. One of the richest bird areas in India, it is an important route for migratory birds and home to many endemic bird species. This paper describes a literature-based dataset of species occurrences of birds of northeast India. The occurrence records documented in the dataset are distributed across eleven states of India, viz.: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The geospatial scope of the dataset represents 24 to 29 degree North latitude and 78 to 94 degree East longitude, and it comprises over 2400 occurrence records. These records have been collated from scholarly literature published between1915 and 2008, especially from the
1909–2007.
The data records were entered in the MS-Excel worksheet. The offline version of the dataset maintained by the Bombay Natural History Society is developed employing the MS-Access. The key elements about which information is collated in the current version of the dataset includes, scientific name, common name, taxonomic classification, occurrence location, geo-coordinates, precision of geo-coordinates, date of observation, data collector, and primary source of the data record.
We are most thankful to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India; the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom; and the MacArthur Foundation for financial support. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Dr. Asad R. Rahmani, Director, BNHS and Principal Investigators of the aforementioned projects.
Literature-based species occurrence data of birds of North-East India. (