Red-billed tropicbirds show up on Chennai coast

Birders could put in an absurd number of hours at a habitat, one next to their own “burrow”. Every dawn, they could be sleepwalking to the patch, trussed up in camouflage rags, bent under the weight of expectations and gear, shutter sack on the shoulders and binoculars around the neck. And yet, that one rarity could defiantly stay out of their radar. Counter to this, someone strolls in from another city, strays on to the patch, as all other options for the day got crossed out. And lo and behold, there it is! The bird directs a red-billed smile at them.

Anu Parthasarathy probably would have preferred sighting a Red-billed tropicbird after waiting for it for years, to the way she actually sighted it — just like that. A Banglorean who manages once-a-month visits to Chennai to bond with close relatives, she decided to bird around the Broken Bridge area of the Adyar Estuary on December 14, as all other plans for the day had peeled off like paint flakes. How one big plan fell, in her own words — “I ended up at the Broken Bridge because I could not get online tickets to the renovated Tholkappia Poonga.”

A birder through-and-through, Anu’s mind instantly associates leisure with bird walks. Social visits to Chennai are always a package tour with time for extemporaneous birding trips thrown into it. But prior to this visit, she had ambled down what is unofficially called the Broken Bridge Road only a couple of times. Her parents living in Velachery, a peek at the Pallikaranai marsh and Sholinganallur marshland is more common.

“This Sunday was pure joy and thrill — I was almost wrapping up around 8 a.m. after birding from 6:30 a.m. photographing the egrets and storks. I met Bharath there. He along with Sagarika excitedly pointed me to what initially looked like Caspian terns to me, till I noticed the long tails. They told me they were sure they were tropicbirds and asked me to click and document,” Anu recalls. Those two birders are Bharath Ravikumar and Sagarika Gupta, names recognisable to those swinging by the Chennai section of eBird.

“The tropicbirds were a sight — beautiful with long streamer tails. They came around a few times closer and were circling. I did not see them land anywhere. There were four birds — all of them as far as I could tell were Red-billed tropicbirds. After about 10 to 15 minutes I did not sight them again and I had to leave by 8:30 a.m. There were some other birders too that might have sighted these birds again,” Anu recounts. She has posted the record of the sighting with photos on eBird. Sagarika Gupta has also posted the sighting on the platform. Rummaging through eBird records, this could be the first documented sighting of red-billed tropicbirds in Chennai.

Anu used to live in Chennai in the 1990s. In Bangalore where she has been living for 15 years following her return to India from the United States, she is domiciled in a community called Eagle Ridge, near Bannerghatta. She is something of a change maker in her neck of the woods.

Anu Parthasarathy (in the foreground) with some of the members of the birding community she is part of.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

‘It is a small green and wooded community. I work on trying my best to conserve the trees and habitats we have, but it has not been easy with the new residents cutting out a lot of the trees and undergrowth. It has been documenting birds in the community for almost 10 years now. I created a small safe garden area for migratory and residents birds to access water by placing a bunch of water bowls. I have been maintaining this for many years now and many bird enthusiasts visit to sight the birds as well. A few other residents also have been doing this and helping sustain the bird life. We have a small group of birders here now. We have recorded over 125 species in the community over the years.”

So, Anu is not Fortune’s favourite child, as one assumed at first, seeing her being gifted a rare sighting on a golden platter. She worked for it, showing up for trees, birds and Nature in her “gated habitat” back in Bangalore, and the award ceremony for this perseverance took place at the Broken Bridge in Chennai on December 14.

Another sighting on December 20

On December 20, when this edition was going to print, another sighting of a Red-billed tropicbird close to the Broken Bridge area of the Adyar Estuary was reported. Sundaravel Palanivel spotted the bird in the skies just as he had hit the path to the Broken Bridge area. The bird was hovering over the fishing hamlet, says Sundaravel. He was going to bird at Adyar Estuary with a bunch of the other birders, who had arrived at the spot before he did. “I was ten minutes late, and so, was behind them.” And that made all the difference. Punctuality is overrated, going by Sundaravel’s experience.