My eyes kept closing on that warm March afternoon as our skiff poled along the shallows of Mangalajodi in Odisha. The weather has got warm really fast this year, and it looked like the winter migrants have all decamped for their breeding grounds. Then we saw the Ruddy shelducks (Tadorna ferruginea). They were bathing and dabbling in pairs, bonded for life, in the channel ahead of us, giving us lovely photos. I love these winter visitors. They are usually late to depart; I’d once seen them high up on the Tibetan plateau in May (where they took the lack of oxygen better than me), on their way back to their breeding grounds in eastern China and Mongolia.
There aren’t many places on WordPress where bird watchers can share posts. If you post any photos of birds this week (starting today and up to next Monday), it would be great if you could leave a link in the comments, or a pingback, for others to follow. There is no compulsion to post a recent photo, but it would help others to know when and where you saw the bird.You might consider using the tag “Bird of the Week” in case people search for old posts using it.
And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs— All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—
Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong”; Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long.”
Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.
Locksley Hall, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove; In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Locksley Hall, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The couple in the featured photo are Ruddy Shelducks (Tadorna ferruginea). This may be the most treacly sweet photo I have of them, but my most memorable sighting of these birds was in a Himalayan lake at an altitude of slightly more than 5 Kms above sea level. The oxygen levels are so low at that height that my brain stopped functioning, and I could not get the dust cap off my camera. They are thought to pair for life. The second photo shows a pair of Grey herons (Ardea cinerea) with the elegant long black crest feathers that they sport in spring. From their behaviour it didn’t look like they were a mated pair. I took both these photos from a boat on the backwaters of the Ujani dam near Bhigwan in Maharashtra.
Within a space of about twenty minutes during a weekend outing in the creeks of Mumbai I thought we saw all three ducks that we got to see. The first that I noticed was the small Garganey (Spatula querquedula), whose male has the white band on the head that you can see in the featured photo. There were lots of these winter migrants swimming about, occasionally dipping their heads into the water to feed. They have the usual mottled brown look of most dabbling ducks, and I would have been hard put to identify them if it were not for two things. One was the conspicuous white band on the head of the male, and the other was that I had an expert birder with me who unhesitatingly identified it. I really have gotten rusty if I can’t recall the names of ducks instantly.
Amongst these Garganey were one of the most distinctive ducks which you can see in India. This is the Indian spot-billed duck (Anas poecilorhyncha). Seen from the front, its face looks extremely colourful: a red spot on the lores, and a black beak with a big tab of yellow on it. The rest of it is the common mottled brown of dabbling ducks, except for the very prominent white stripe on the wing. About twenty of them were dabbling in the water for underwater plants in the company of Garganey. Since these are non-migratory, you can bet that they are descendants of some of the original inhabitants of these islands. In the photo above you can see one of the ducks with its head down, but that’s not what it does while dabbling. It really drops its head under the water, so you only see its rump up in the air. I wished I had a GoPro under water to catch it with its neck extended looking for food.
The third was a little further out in the creek, where the mud flats began. This was the Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata). Like the Garganey it nests in the northern latitudes and prefers to winter in warm climates with more food. The thick flat bill which gives it its name is distinctive. The brown mottled female only has some white on the tail (photo above), but the male is distinctive with its iridescent green head and white neck and belly. Maybe their feeding time was over, because I saw most of them standing in the mud, well away from the water. But I was lucky to see several take off into the air. They are quick off the ground (or water): a couple of steps, and a twist and with powerful beats of their wings they are off, as you can see in the photo below. Quite a sight when it happens in front of you.
The fourth duck was quite a surprise. I saw three of them far out in the tidal mudflats walking among a flock of flamingos. We passed them at a clip, and I couldn’t take a photo. Later, when I was going through my photos of the morning, I found a lone ruddy shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea), somewhat out of focus, among flamingos in another part of the creek. Finally, just now before hitting the publish button I looked closely at three photos from that day with crowds of ducks, and found the common teal (Anas crecca) hidden in plain sight.
Don't hold your breath 