The Winged Whisperers

Winged Whisperer:
(Part 3 - The Growth) 

A large part of my fascination with forests has centred around the big cats, especially the tiger. With subsequent visits to forests I developed a fondness for leopards, one of the most agile and resilient cats, and the Himalayan Black Bear – a royal and elegant species. Unknown to the wider world, tiger stripes are like fingerprints and no two stripes are same. Same is the case of spots on a leopard. Every leopard has different spots called rosettes, and a black panther is nothing but a regular melanistic leopard whose dark or black coloration hides the spots. The stripes and rosettes on cats’ act as a camouflage and serve a dual purpose, as a defence mechanism and / or as a stalking tool. In my jungle safaris, I met fellow wild-lifers who were fascinated by different species, like birds, macro animals, etc. though I had been content being a cat person. I occasionally clicked birds, but only in action, and only while waiting for a cat to appear, as cat sighting is a patient affair. 

And then one day an animated birder introduced me to the truly amazing world of birds. He was surprised that I was not interested in birds and went on to explain bird habits of a baya weaver, a smallish 3-inch yellow bird. The male baya weaver builds 5-6 nests at a time to attract a female, the female comes to inspect them and then if she accepts to co-habit, she will stay in one of the nests. However, life is never easy. In this picture that I took in mid-2017 I witnessed how a competitor tried to steal the best piece of straw, before the arrival of the female, so that the male’s efforts were not successful.   

This introduction to birding opened up a completely new vista and I joined a birders group in Delhi in the beginning of 2018. With them I explored some amazing birding spots around Delhi, and developed beautiful meaningful friendships for life with fellow birders. 

I was lucky that the first time that I ever saw the sarus crane, one of my most favourite birds, was in a courtship dance at Dhanauri wetlands, which was ethereal. 

The sarus dance was followed by an egret courtship ritual, on a foggy winter morning, and it further left me spellbound.  It felt as if there was music in the air that the birds could hear and that I was blessed to be a witness to the amazing moment.

Post the introduction to this heavenly magic, I travelled to Kaziranga in Eastern India, to the land of great hornbills, and to Chiplun a coastal town in Western India, in search of the Oriental Dwarf King Fisher (ODKF), a migratory visitor to our coastal areas.

The great hornbill and its courtship to me felt special because the bird is huge between 3-4 feet with a wingspan of 5 feet. However, during courtship, as is seen in this picture the male hornbill offers the choicest and juiciest of the tiny berries to his female. Many a times the female would reject the overture, and the male had to go find another berry for her. Being selective about a trustworthy, patient male is important for the female because once the female goes into nesting, she seals herself inside a tree-hole for almost 2 months during which she lays their eggs, incubates and hatches them, and the chicks fledge. During this time, she also loses her feathers and becomes very vulnerable, so a dependable male is most important. Breeding usually occurs between February – May every year.

Monsoon heralds the arrival of ODKF, one of the tiniest and most colourful bird of the coastal areas.  This bird too births and nurtures its new born with an unimaginable dedication.

Since then I have been blessed to see birds in all shapes and sizes, having beautiful patterns and colours (just the Indian Pita has 9 colours!) without one dot or line being out of place, and even a tiny bird like the red munia becomes bright red during breeding season and duller in non-breeding season. Then there are migratory birds that come to India during winters, escaping harsher climates in their own region, and are a delight to birdwatchers in India. The birds prefer unique habitats, some having preference for marshes, yet other to wetlands and quite a few water birds. And each of these birds display unique behaviours of mating, breeding, killing / safeguarding depending on whether they are prey or predator, every parent being protective of their offspring. All of this has added to the awe factor that I already had for wildlife and biodiversity. Every sighting has seemed like unfolding of a new mystery and grace that surrounds us.

It is while watching birds that I also started noticing communities in which these birds bred and the community involvement and buy-in that is most essential to conservation. I have seen villages that are proud of their heritage of sarus cranes (Delhi NCR) and pelicans (Mysore), even though these birds may destroy crops or dirty the place; a village in Gujarat that went from being scared of crocodiles, and considering it to be a danger, to living amicably with them. These efforts inspired awe and a desire to participate, to contribute, to get involved in conservation.

I am new to this field of conservation, I do not have the technical expertise required for dialogue and / or design intervention, but that is compensated by the selfless burning drive to spearhead a change. And as Paulo Coelho says, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”