In search of Flamingoes

I am writing this post as I cruise 35000 feet above sea level flying to Kolkata to see my wife bring in our little bundle of joy to this world. I find it quite an amazing coincidence that yesterday I was on a small country boat powered by a rickety diesel engine, searching for flamingos.
I knew that flamingos come to the marshy lands of Mumbai every year during the winters but in the past four and half years of our stay here, we never felt like exploring this wonderful sight. However, last Sunday, I had a sudden rush of ideas of going to see this wonderful family of avian and try to capture them on my camera. The restless guy that I am, I was planning to go the very next day itself. But luckily things didn’t fall in place!! The logical move was to plan my exploratory visit on Thursday, our weekly off day. The next step was to find out where to go and if possible a companion. The ‘where to go’ was easy with Commander Parijat Sinha, a fantastic Naval Officer, a very close ‘senior’ and adventurous to the core. Parijat Da, I know, used to visit Sewri Mudflats every year when he was in Mumbai and it was logical to give him a call. As usual he was a treasure house of information and gave me rock solid impetus that not only should I visit, I should also do “something worthwhile” with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). The next step was to get in touch with BNHS and I was pleasantly surprised to get a reply to my email within 24 hours. The next target was to convince a “good” friend to accompany me. My close cronies and partners in all sundry crime shooed me off from my attempt to cut short their holiday sleep. But the good old mariner ties worked well and Shishir, a marine engineer (rather an ex marine engineer) agreed to come along with me on the trip.

On Thursday morning (11th), we started off at 0545 hrs to catch the train to Sewri, a point of the city on the dockyard stretch. On reaching Sewri, we got into a taxi and confidently asked the cabbie to take us to the Sewri jetty. And wham! The driver told us “iss bar abhi tak koi pakshi aaya hi nahi” (This time no birds have come). My next poser was, “Where are the birds then?” and I was told it is Nhava Sheva, the port south of Mumbai and more than a 3 hr journey away. This was a big downer but we still decided to have a check ourselves. And unfortunately, Doc Murphy ruled the roost. Shishir was fortunately very enterprising and retorted “as we have already embarked on the trip, lets go to where the birds are”. We rushed to Sewri station once again to now catch the train to Panvel, the last rail head on the Harbour line and nearest to Nhava Sheva port. On the way we started discussing how we go about finding the birds as we were clueless. I recollected that the previous night I had come across a website where two enthusiasts had taken a boat from under the Vashi and cruised along the mangrove swamps of Ghatkopar upto Thane. So we decided to get down at Vashi and explore. Reached Vashi creek makeshift jetty and found all the fishing boats floating around on anchor but no boatman. Luckily we got a boatman, Sashikant, whom was quite helpful and finally got a guy who had a motor powered boat and was ready to take us. As usual, the guy asked for a hefty sum and after lot of ‘die-hard’ haggling, the guy settled for a comfortable price and we finally cast off at 0945!! And then on, it was an amazing feast for the eyes. Right from little chicks to fully grown up adults with their wide span wings - what a fantastic experience. I had my SLR camera and a small digital camera (courtesy my good friend, Vidya) clicking away to capture the beauties.

These beauties comes from Siberia during the winter months every year, lays their eggs and once the chicks hatch and grow up enough to fly, go back to their homeland. Some plain snaps are attached. And to watch a clip on youtube click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVisRqeCVD4

Waiting for the boatman

The flock on the bank

Taking flight

Formation Flying

The little one