– Will it ever happen?

Orange-breasted green pigeon Dark-sided flycatcher

Wildlife photographer P. Ramanan recently had two rare sightings of birds in Chennai. The first was on the morning of August 31st, when he spotted the Orange-breasted Green Pigeon at Nanmangalam RF. This hill bird is usually seen only in the evergreen forests of the Western and Eastern Ghats.

The second sighting was at around 3.30 p.m. on November 3rd in the backyard of his house in Shastri Nagar, Adyar. The arboreal bird sighted was the Dark-sided Flycatcher perched on a rain tree, busily pecking at insects. “The Dark-sided Flycatcher is a long-distance migrant; it breeds in Siberia, Mongolia and travels to the western and eastern Himalaya during winter,” says Ramanan.

Each of the sightings has been confirmed as a first-of-its-kind in Chennai.

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To birdwatcher Gnanaskandan’s surprise, ducks which were believed to be just visitors have started breeding in Chennai. He recently spotted a pair of Fulvous Whistling Ducks with 3 ducklings (3-4 weeks old) near the Sholinganallur end of Pallikaranai Marsh. The same family was spotted and photographed by John Joseph around end-November.

The whistling duck... ... and its ducklings

Due to heavy rains, the Marsh was completely flooded and the ducklings were forced into a small rainwater harvesting ditch close to the Marsh. After the water in the ditch receded, the ducklings found themselves trapped in it and the parents were helpless. Gnanaskandan was on his regular patrol and the whistling cry of the adults caught his attention. After almost an hour of running in the ditch, he carefully caught the ducklings one by one and released them in water. The re-union of the family was a great sight to watch and this turned out to be his best-ever sighting so far, he claims. “I whistled along with the Whistlers,” he muses. –(Courtesy: Madras Naturalists’ Society Bulletin.)