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We studied the diversity, abundance and population trends in three flourishing wetlands of southern Bengal over 16 years.  These wetlands constituted a major shift from the present scenario of overall wetland deterioration, including monotonous declines in important winter visitors prevailing in surrounding wetlands, especially in Tilpara Reservoir and Purulia Saheb Bandh Lake.  All the three wetlands support rich waterbird diversity and almost all of them tend to exhibit consistently stable or increasing trends in their populations during the course of the study.  The waterbird communities did not differ greatly during the study period and were tending to arrive at their equilibria.  These wetlands consistently support strong waterbird food-bases, which may support rich diversity.  Since, they have already been supporting increasing or stable populations of a majority of the important waterbird species they are expected to emerge as important waterbird abodes in northeastern India very soon, provided we keep them undisturbed and allow them to follow their own course.

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Sea kraits forage in water and return to land to digest their prey, mate, slough, and lay their eggs.  The temporal terrestrial patterns in encounter rate and behaviour of two species of sea kraits Laticauda colubrina and L. laticaudata were studied over four years at the New Wandoor beach in the southern Andaman Islands.  The encounter rate of L. colubrina was found to be 20 times higher than L. laticaudata, and sea kraits were observed to prefer the natural refuge that the microhabitat of uprooted trees provide.  Additionally, nesting observations are presented that emphasize the need to promote the conservation of these crucial terrestrial habitats.