Familiars

Once upon a time, the story goes, every part of India was teeming with birds. I’ve heard this story from my grandmother. So it is nice to spend a weekend in a place where this could almost be true. The moment we get out of the village and into the fields around Bera, we began to see birds. There were the passage migrants which we had also seen in the Rann of Kutch, and the utterly familiar endemics.

This was a varied habitat; the edge of the Thar desert, but the dammed river nearby held water. Ibises and herons, wagtails and sandpipers could be seen there. In the thorn bushes we saw francolins, bushchats, and larks, as well as doves, fork-tailed drongos, and bulbuls. The small birds of prey, black-winged kites and shikra, told us of the numerous rodents in the area. Nightjars and owls could be seen at night, flying from the headlights of the jeep. We were told this was early for the winter migrants; they arrive in November.

Bera is known only for its leopards. But it turns out to be a good place for birds too. We did not see anything we hadn’t seen before, but we did spot some passage migrants without really looking for them. I’m sure there is much to discover here.

Oliver asks for more

It was early afternoon, and the glaring sunlight was not the best suited for photography. That’s when I spotted a family group of red-naped ibis (Pseudibis papillosa). I like to take photos of these birds, because, in the right light, their glossy feathers and the red nape are wonderfully photogenic. This was not the right light, however. I watched one of the adults pecking at the ground all by itself, and then noticed what the other pair was doing. The juvenile was packing at the beak of the other adult. This was behaviour that asks to be fed; begging!

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The breeding season for these birds extends from March to October, depending on the part of the country one is in. So this young one was probably about a year old, Since it was able to walk around pretty well, I guess it must have been fledged recently, or was about to be fledged soon. It kept begging, but the adult refused to feed it. This drama went on for a long time, and was still on when we left. It looked like an avian version of Oliver Twist asking for more gruel!

Ibis Ibis and Ibis

Of the three different kinds of Ibis you can see see in India, the one I’m most familiar is the Black-headed Ibis (Threskiornis melanocephalus), which inhabits the tidal marshlands around Mumbai. That’s why it was nice to visit the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur where I could see all three kinds present in India (there are 28 different species of Ibis in the world!). This is not the breeding season for any of them, so the adult birds which you see here are in their non-breeding plumage. The Black-headed Ibis in the featured photo stood out of the marsh-land vegetation which it sat on. I watched as it groomed itself carefully. The breeding populations of this bird are mainly in India, although migrants are found in various parts of Asia, including a population as far north as Manchuria. In spite of its distribution, the worldwide population is decreasing, and the bird is now classed as near-threatened.

Nearby, a Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) poked around in the shallow waters, looking for food. These birds mainly breed over most of Africa, but are extensive migrants to India, and can be found also in parts of the Middle East, Central Asia and Southern Europe. They are unlikely to be fussy eaters, and probably feed on different molluscs and insects when they travel. A study in Spain, where a breeding colony has recently been established, found that during the non-breeding season they poke around in paddy fields and eat waste rice.

I came across this Red-naped Ibis (Pseudibis papillosa) on a visit to the nearby Chambal Bio-reserve, and took this photo from a passing boat. The curved bills of Ibis are used to feel out the mud under water to find food, so they are called tactile foragers. Red-naped Ibis breed only in India, and do not seem to be reported outside this geographical area. With constant degradation of wetlands, they are now found in all kinds of microhabitats, waste water and garbage dumps, as often as their natural habitats of fresh-water wetlands and grassland. If Ibis Ibis and Ibis were a law firm, I’m almost certain they would sue us for muscling in on their living space.