The great bird chase
06 March 2017
Back in the early 1980s when I lived in Karachi, I spent my weekends wandering about the wild places of Sindh. While old ruins where a favourite haunt, my other preference was the hundreds of small lakes and canals of Thatta and Badin districts. There were birds, birds and birds that I had never seen before. If truth be told, that was when I learned that the pariah kite is not the only hawk-like bird!
Referring only to wildlife, my ten years in Sindh until December 1988 took me to the Khirthar Mountains on one side and to the lakes of lower Sindh on the other. Those wonderful years form a kaleidoscope of heart-warming images: upward of five hundred flamingos in a lake barely off a road somewhere in Badin, a golden eagle on the prowl above the Khirthar crags, a male Pallas’s fish eagle bringing food to its mate on eggs, a desert cat near Naukot Fort and leopard pug marks in the lower Khirthar Mountains. There are also memories of virtually hordes of marsh harriers, Brahminy kites, jacarandas, and migratory ducks of a dozen different species almost within arm’s length.
Read more »Labels: Birding, Birds, Sindh, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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And no birds sing ...
21 December 2015
Growing up in Lahore in the middle of the last century, any child would have taken the drone of grey hornbill wings overhead, the mocking laughter of the golden-backed woodpecker and the oh so beautifully honeyed flute of the golden oriole for granted. They may not have known the names of all these birds, but the songs, these and many more, were familiar. These songs were heard from the Mochi Gate garden through The Mall and Davies Road. Lawrence Garden and Governor’s House simply tossed them out like embers from a lively fire. Gulberg echoed with them and the cantonment was just one huge ecosystem alive as alive can ever be with birdsong of a hundred different notes. And Model Town was simply very much more of the same. Barely 10 kilometres from the city centre, villages like Bedian, Shadiwal or Bhekewal were primal forest.Labels: Birding, Birds, Ecology, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Transplant drive
08 February 2013
I was telling a relative of mine about the one dozen different species of birds that nest in my garden (and it’s a one-kanal house) and at any given time the song of twice as many species. He, a retired judge of the superior court, living in Judicial Colony near Thokar Niaz Beg was surprised that there was a total absence of birdsong in their area.
I told him that the birds were missing entirely because of the absence of indigenous species of trees in the locality. The entire colony is choc-a-bloc with all sorts of exotic trees. There is not a single peepul, neem, amaltas, to name only a few.
Read more »Labels: Birding, Birds, Ecology, Lahore, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:29,
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