A Pink bird with a Persona

Sitting by a wetland, I find few other waterbirds as entertaining to watch as the lofty necked
Flamingos. Do note that here one speaks quite apart from their striking colours and general visual
appeal. One also speaks apart from all the misshapen ways they manage to prop themselves up,
deserving their very own book of asanas. Kay Ryan puts it across rather succinctly in a verse

too vivid and peculiar to be pretty

and flexible to the point of oddity

On a usual day of birding, all that you may see a Sandpiper do is to routinely walk on its chosen
waterline, repetitiously thrusting its beak into the mud. More patience is required to observe the
Grey Heron, which may spend considerable lengths of time watching unwaveringly into the water.
One cant help but wonder whether the creature is inspecting for fish or contemplating over its own
reflection. Given an hour a group of Grey Herons may have managed to advance only a few feet on
their foraging sessions. And one soon grows weary of a large flock of Black winged stilts, whose
heaving flutter of activity becomes too much for a restless eye. A flock of Flamingos however have
no such aspects to them which grow on one to be monotonous. Their lives are as multifaceted as a
birds could be, and in a given flock you can see individuals involved in fighting, foraging, stretching
exercises, solitary meditation, engrossed socializing and also in all kinds of communal politics.

To start with, the foraging style adopted by a Flamingo hardly involves a patient gaze or a swift and
accurate thrust like the heron or egret clan. Unlike them, its bill is a custom made implement for
sifting through the bottom sludge for small grubs and drifting vegetation. So it goes about using it by
plunging its head upside down into the water and sieving the mud for food. Intermittently it pulls
out for a snatch of breath and then plunges again. In deeper waters it simultaneously pedals the
mud with both its feet, like on an orbitrek, to uncover its grubs. In more shallower and slushy areas,
the bird walks around briskly swinging its submerged neck back and forth in long arcs. Short
tempered social birds swinging about their heads haphazardly in search of food quite often ends in a
breach of anothers territory, or worse, Bang a collision. Either way, a brief melee ensues which
involves the two birds audibly snapping their bills and attempting to bite each others necks. They
quickly gauge one anothers strengths and most fights last barely few moments. At the end, the
frailer bird saves its dignity by a hasty retreat to more peaceful waters, before being caught by the
necked and shoved away.
Seeing these petty conflicts, I cant help but feel that the Flamingos can learn a thing or two watching
the Spoonbills, whom they often coexist with. The two have a number of common traits as in being
social creatures, having an unusual bill but most importantly a very similar haphazard swing-neck
hunting style. Infact a Spoonbill goes forth in a more frenzied fashion such that stilts, stints and
other small waders fly away from the vicinity to avoid being whacked. But when hunting in a group
their movements are fairly orchestrated so that they not only avoid banging one another but the
troop also seems to move in tactical formation.

The drab grey and black, juvenile flamingos stand like dirty blemishes in a brilliantly pink flock. Their
foraging skills too arent on par with the adults and are discernibly clumsy with their limbs. So to
make matters easier, the younger ones are stringently excluded from the feeding grounds of the rest
of the flock. Instead they are left to themselves, scattered over the wetland in less fertile waters
where they hone their skills so that they are inducted soon. Moreover, if a junior is lucky to find a
good enough spot for a meal, a bullying adult may oust it from its location by force. An under fed
adult flamingo too lack colour, and you will find many such large lack luster ones at the start of the
season.

At Chennai I usually go to the Pallikaranai marsh or the Perumbakkam wetland to watch Flamingos.
Its usually after the monsoons that they gather at these places, but these birds are more nomads
than they are migrants and their wanderings depend on water availability. After the floods of 2015
December, these birds were seen in the city during all subsequent twelve months of the year. This
year however after the rains have largely failed, the birds are already low in number by the end of
January. Wetlands are rainfed and their water levels variable. And Flamingos are very choosy about
the depth they wade in. A surplus of water too they find uninviting. They usually like the waters to
be somewhere between their ankle and knees, for only then are they able to scour for their food
with ease. Having said this, sometimes the best place to find them is in the backwaters. Along the
East coast road there are many serene locations, some quite interior from the coast, where one can
see these birds gather is considerable numbers. A senior friend and I were on a birding trip last
October along the ECR when we discovered that the Mudaliarkuppam backwaters had a high tide
and hardly a few waders were to be seen. Having driven so far and determined to find the birds we
diverted into a coastal village with the hopes of discovering a new birding site. On driving into a
bridge under construction we saw in a large inlet of the sea into a scrubland, specks of shimmering
pink in the distance. We spared not a single local for directions to the spot. We made it very clear
that we were looking for tall, pink birds with long beaks, which bought us many puzzled looks from
lungi clad men who were headed behind the bushes for the morning. Our search ended in success
albeit after navigating unnavigable mud roads through Eucalyptus plantations. Quite surprisingly
this waterbody was right adjacent to a few cents of farmland, one being ploughed while in another
women were planting fresh paddy saplings. The birds didnt seem to mind the chatter of the crowd
of ladies planting the rice. I got on all fours and crawled along the bund edge for the closer shot. The
farmer who happened to be overseeing the planting took a while to grasp what the two of us were
upto. In a very amiable voice, he then shouted out to me saying that I could walk upto the waters
edge without scaring the birds as they were very much used to the presence of people. The birds
were foraging only about forty feet away. Even then, few cared to even pull their heads out of the
water to keep an eye on us strangers. Anywhere else when I had tried creeping up so near to them,
they would all stop dead and give me a grave stare with their head held high. And then one bird ,
usually at one end of the troop will cautiously spread its wings and give a flap. That would be the
signal for the entire lot to fly. Instead here was a small but palpable phenomenon of the birds
trusting us humans when we have let them be and passively coexisted with them. A dozen Golden
plovers too, further ahead along the waterline didnt mind us too much and went about their
business undisturbed. But as it often occurs, when things were beginning to get too good, there
appeared a Marsh harrier quartering close to the water, sending every flamingo, duck and plover
fleeing away beyond our sight.

(Jan 2017)