If only I had known what my friends would sight that evening I wouldn’t have said no to that birding trip. For, it was a species that I had last sighted over a decade ago in the wetland close to the Alambara Fort ruins. It was a Short-eared Owl, Asio flammeus, which my friends had sighted in the wetlands of Siruthavur. I had been looking out for this species for so many years. So when I learned of the presence of this species, I decided to go to the spot the next day. However, I was also certain that the probability of sighting the bird was almost nil.

The next day, along with my friends, I reached the spot around half past three. To my surprise, I found three other friends of mine already there. They were also in search of the bird, but they couldn’t locate it. We joined them and scanned the landscape. We could see several other birds, like skylarks, pipits and plovers, but not the owl. We then decided to split and search in two groups. Patient search yielded results. My friends were lucky enough to sight it. The owl was on the ground, close to the high, brown grass tufts, well camouflaged, its pale fawn colour with heavy dark brown streaked underbody blended perfectly with the background. Its blackish-brown erect ear tufts were short, and black bristles dominated its pale white facial disc. It did not bother much about us, but it kept looking at us with its beautiful, bright, lemon yellow eyes, following our movements.

As we watched the owl, a few crows landed close to it and it was obvious that the owl didn’t like their presence; it took off, escaping from the mobbing birds. Followed by the crows, the owl flew with its ­deliberate flap of wings, going in circles, and it went up high, ­until the crows stopped their chase. After a brief stay in the air, the owl landed several metres away. There again, it settled in the safety of the grass. We ­observed the bird through our scopes for some time and, as the sun started sinking, we left the place with a lot of satisfaction of sharing some precious moments with a magnificent bird.

Back home, I referred to Salim Ali’s Compact Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan (Volume 3, page 315) and was amazed by Ali’s keen observation and accurate documentation. His description of the owl’s flight pattern, especially when mobbed by crows, is an exact portrayal of what we had ­observed: “…flight irregular, rather rolling and wandering, punctuated with glides. Either flops into the herbage again after a hundred metres or so, or covers long distance before alighting, sometimes very high up in the air, and flying in wide circles, especially when mobbed by crows and other birds…” I then called Dr. Santharam, the  ornithologist, and mentioned the sighting. He said he had sighted this species way back in the 1980s in the Adyar Estuary.

This news really surprised me, considering the present status of the estuary, which has lost its grasslands to tall buildings. I couldn’t stop worrying about protection of the wetland we visited, as almost all the land around the lake was marked for sale and small huts had been raised. It is disturbing to note that quite a few projects, like power plants and ports, are proposed along the coast. It is common sense that these so-called ‘developmental projects’ will wipe off the biodiversity of this fragile ecosystem. It is up to us to think sensibly and minimise our interference with our ­environment so that local as well as migratory birds can ­sojourn in peace.