Chasing the flamingos

What do Mahul creek in Chembur, Nalsarovar lake near Ahmedabad, and Naivasha lake in Kenya have in common? Their pink-feathered guests, writes DNA, after visiting all three flamingo habitats.

It was through a small newspaper report that I came to know about the landing of the flamingos in Mumbai for the very first time. The year was 1994, and the place was a fishing village called Mahul, near Chembur.

In order to witness this spectacle, we took a bus to Mahul and got down at the last stop. The local fishermen knew the exact location, and one of them ventured to take us there in his boat. His name was Rajaram Mahulkar, and he remains a dear friend.

As it was low tide, we had to walk to the boat through knee-deep silt that was sticky and black. We later sat dangling our feet over the edge of the boat to wash our legs in the sea water.

Our first sighting of the flamingos was a dampener. As we entered the canal leading to the Arabian Sea, on our right we came across a large group of flamingos, dull grey in colour and ungainly in their gait. Before I could express my disappointment, Rajaram told me that this indeed was only the nursery of fledgling flamingos, where they start their life with dull, grey plumage. It’s only when they become adults and start feeding on the blue-green algae that their feathers start getting the shocking pink hue.

The sight of a kilometre long stretch of a pink, animated line of flamingos, that we encountered a little further down, remains as fresh in my mind as the pink and white feather I picked up that day and preserved as a bookmark in Salim Ali’s Book of
Indian Birds.

A lake of pink
My next encounter with these winged wonders was outside India, and it was out of the world. In Lake Naivasha in Kenya, we saw a congregation of over one lakh flamingos completely covering the lake, shore to shore.

Back home, I met them again at a beautiful water body near Ahmedabad called Nalsarovar Lake. The vast stretches of water had a host of species including Pelicans, but the sheer number of flamingos made it a Flamingo Lake. And how I wished I knew whether even one of those flamingos was the same one that I had seen in Lake Naivasha, and had now migrated all the way from Kenya

To visit us.
The major difference between the flamingos in Mahul and the ones in Nalsarovar was their behaviour. Those in Mahul tended to stay at one place, feeding on the blue-green algae for hours as the tide kept rising. And once their feet got submerged in the rising waters, they took off into the sky, forming gigantic pink clouds. The way they take off is a sight in itself. First they start walking on water, and once they gather enough momentum in their feet, and enough wind in their wings, they take off into the horizon - just like an aeroplane. Their next stop is the coastline of faraway Uran, from where they return only the next morning.

In contrast, the flamingos of Nalsarovar take off and land at the slightest pretext. So, even as you watch them feeding, on some mysterious clue, they would take off in waves of pink, circle around in the sky, and land at a different spot. Only to repeat it after
a while.

The take-off of these birds is very akin in pattern to the call of the cicadas. You don’t know what prompts the cicadas to start. But invariably one of them starts, and all of a sudden, inexplicably, the others join in chorus, and then the sound spreads like the
Mexican wave.

Bird brains
What the flamingos in Mahul and Nalsarovar have in common is their uncanny ability to spot outsiders. When the local fishermen take their boats close to the group they don’t even bat an eyelid; but whenever a group of outsiders try and do the same, they quietly retreat. And you realise that however close you may seem to go, the distance between you and them remains exactly the same!

When we made our second attempt to visit the creeks of Mahul, things had got difficult. What was once an unguarded jetty was now fortified with policemen, post the Mumbai terror attacks. We had to get special permission from the Mumbai Port Trust and the RCF Police Station to visit the place, and it took a lot of convincing.
This time around Rajaram tied his rowing boat to his motor boat and tagged it along. At one point, we anchored the big noisy motor boat, and transferred ourselves to the small quiet one.

And we could go real close without disturbing the birds. Rajaram had looked at the tide when we left the jetty early in the morning, and had predicted that they would fly back to Uran at 9. Sure enough, at the appointed time, there began a single flutter that became a hundred flutters. And lo and behold, these beautiful birds took off in waves, with the morning sun enhancing the colour in their glistening pink feathers.

When I returned from the rejuvenating trip, I saw a newspaper report that oil had spilled into the Mahul creek. It left me with a question: These flamingos could have migrated to any part of the world, but they have chosen to visit us year after year, for the past 15 years. Isn’t it time we returned the favour by preserving their habitat?