“The cyclone is a treat for any birdwatcher,” says Gnanaskandan Kesavabharathi, an avid birdwatcher and member of Madras Naturalists’ Society. “Many rare birds, especially the pelagic or deep-sea birds, are now showing up in and around the city. To spot them, usually we go on pelagic birdwatching trips on boats, around 30 km into the sea. But due to the strong winds, many birds such as the brown noddy (spotted in Valasaravakkam), bridled tern (spotted in Pallikaranai) and shearwater have flown into the mainland.
This morning, I saw around 25 shearwater birds following a fisherman’s boat at Adyar estuary, just 300 metres from the shore. That apart, many people in the city have also spotted barn swallows, red-rumped swallows and little swifts in great numbers. There has also been a flurry of activity on the shoreline, with quite a number of terns picking from the garbage that has gathered,” he says.
Over the past few days, these birds have sought refuge inside houses, balconies, and on fans and lamps. Shravan Krishnan, who runs an animal rescue centre in the city, received over 80 frantic calls, from people who found birds and squirrels that had entered their apartments.
“I would tell the callers to leave them as such if they were not injured. These birds just need a little time for their wings to dry and continue flying. Or, I tell them to take the birds in a box and leave them on their terrace,” he says.
Only the injured birds were attended to by Shravan and his team. Many birds, which were probably trying to fly against the direction of the strong wind, were found dead on the roads. Aerial feeding birds (which catch insects in mid air), like swallows, were probably the worst affected; they were disoriented by the wind, and forced to fly into the city, according to P. Jeganathan, scientist, Nature Conservation Foundation.
But even before the cyclone hit Chennai, while the rest of us were glued to updates on social media, outside, the cawing of crows had hit a peak. “They foresaw the disaster; birds and animals usually do. And the event just gave us the opportunity to study this foreseeing capacity of the birds even better,” says KVRK Thirunaranan, founder of The Nature Trust, which has been working with the Forest Department to keep a count on the number of birds at Pallikaranai marshlands for the last six years.
He elaborates, “On December 7, 8 and 9, I saw spot-billed pelicans which had just started nesting at Pallikaranai marshlands. There were around 450 of them… The nesting area is not visible from outside, and the public isn’t allowed in. I saw them through a broken compound wall on the stretch towards Thoraipakkam from Kamakshi Hospital. On December 10 and 11, I saw that all the birds had vacated to a safer area, even before the cyclone struck on December 12,” he says.
While the count of birds was around 15,000 last month, the numbers have now reduced. “Most of the birds here are waders, who prefer shallow water. They are migratory birds from the Northern latitude. They have just moved to a safer place, and would come back as soon as the water recedes; and we are expecting around 25,000 this month,” he says.
