Wildbuzz | It is time to say goodbye
Walking along the Sukhna Lake yields us many a natural spectacle to behold along the waters lapping at the stones. There are pretty flowers, some wild, others escapees from those imprisoned in the Sukhna flower beds. An occasional checkered keelback or a rarer python or viper can be spotted with a sharp eye and some natural good luck! Then there are birds: lapwings, wagtails, crows, kites, sandpipers loitering and examining the ‘come and go’ ripples.
In spring, by striking a measured pace and keeping a hawk’s eye, the walker can secure glorious observations of our feathered friends. Waders are birds that feed at wetland shores. They are currently in transit flight to breeding grounds in northern latitudes. These species stay for a brief time before they are gone till the next migratory season commences July onwards. In 2018, this writer photographed four lesser sand plovers — a first record for the species in the Chandigarh region — along the Sukhna.
On Tuesday morning, Lalit Mohan Bansal spotted three common redshanks. Though not a rare or threatened species globally, they are uncommon at the Sukhna and dazzle the eye with their elegant, lissome and bright orange-red legs. Redshanks typically feed at the edges by “picking and probing” with their straight, pointed bills that are again touched with a glorious orange-red at the base. As HS Sangha evocatively pens it in ‘Waders of the Indian Subcontinent’: “Moves erratically while pecking at prey, or runs synchronously in one direction, ploughing or scything the bill through water.”
The redshank feeds on molluscs, crustaceans, worms, aquatic insects and larvae. A counterpart to the Ruddy shelduck (Surkhab) in terms of an ‘airborne early warning system’, the redshank is an alert and excitable bird, and the first to take flight and issue an alarm call while in a mixed flock. Shikaris of yore will swear of the shelduck’s “annoying” clairvoyance in alerting large flocks of waterfowl when the guns were just about homing in!
A vivid glimpse of the male redshank’s courtship displays in the forthcoming breeding season will expound, as Salim Ali put it: “in a beautiful nuptial song delivered as he circles in a dipping flight…the white tail fully expanded and the white rump fluffed out and flaunted prominently.”
The evil that men do & speak
Wild species often serve as sinister metaphors and scapegoats for human misdeeds. These reprehensible usages came into play during the course of the three killings by suspected Pakistani terrorists of a 12-year-old boy and his two uncles in the forested mountains of Kathua (Jammu & Kashmir).
On March 5, the civilians went missing as part of the ‘baraat’ of a Grenadiers’ soldier. They were enroute to the marriage venue at remote Suraag village. The three bodies were found at the Ichhu waterfall’s pool on March 8 after a search, involving locals, sniffer dogs, drones and security forces. The magnificent waterfall lies in pristine forest and is difficult to access. But after the bodies were mysteriously found there, the natural feature (actually worthy of a Liril soap commercial!) came to national light and unwittingly acquired a touch of notoriety. The waterfall will hence be associated with the haunting image of a lifeless child flanked by his helpless uncles, and all lying forlorn in its fair, crystalline pool fed by milky, tumbling torrents.
The Lashkar-e-Toiba’s shadowy front, Kashmir Tigers (KT), released statements employing falcon imagery. After the bodies were found, the KT owning up the killings, albeit obliquely, stated: “Strong winds are blowing and the results are evident. Therefore, avoid venturing into the forests. Falcons are circling in the sky, hunting for prey.” On March 7 when search was still underway, KT stated: “We’re monitoring every move. The falcons have captured their prey.”
Not the ones to be left behind, a section of visual media attempted to attribute the deaths to the attacks of black bears and leopards. One YouTuber slyly suggested that the civilians had fallen off the gorge into the pool after being chased by wild animals!
When a mainstream TV channel reporter suggested in the same vein to villagers, he was ticked off by an old man who told him that creatures had never attacked them. The wise villager added that animals tend to be apprehensive of approaching humans and flee, rather than being the imagined ‘wicked wolves of fairy tales, forever smacking their lips at the approach of a tasty human snack’.
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