Birding on the Sirocco Plateau: North Goa’s ancient laterite wilderness and migratory raptors

It is a wonderful place for birding and dog-walking and there are already a few cars scattered about that morning, with the odd birder and photographer trudging through the golden grass. On a low tree nearby, a splendid magpie robin sits in silent contemplation, and from a nearby transmission line, a white-throated kingfisher grins wickedly as it watches out for the incautious move of a lizard or grasshopper. You leave the car and trundle ahead on foot, scanning the low belt of trees near the horizon. There is a small, slim raptor, keeping watch from a low branch: it has a rich russet breast, its face is marked out in white around its eyes and dark brown where its ears would be. A harrier, you know and one of the local birders in the area confirms it as a young Montagu’s harrier. It is happily sunning itself and keeping an eye on the ground at the same time.

Harriers have an easy-going manner, and in India turn up to spend the winters here, having bred in Central Asia. The one I am most familiar with is the marsh harrier, often found to be literally harrying waterfowl off waterbodies in places like the Keoladeo National Park (Bharatpur) and the Sultanpur National Park in Haryana, looking out for a weakling in the water.

You look at the bird — it kind of looks like it is rusting, merging so beautifully into the background — and wonder: it has flown some 5000 km for the pleasure of spending the winter in this place, skirting the mighty Himalayas, and returning here, year after year, displaying admirable site fidelity.

The one I am gazing at so avidly is a juvenile – females are larger and similarly plumaged but the gentlemen are ash grey with black wingtips. The females are very similar to their cousins, the pallid and hen harriers.

A view of the Sirocco Plateau (Photo by Ranjit Lal)

They are fairly eclectic in their tastes, picking up rodents, lizards and large insects, having spotted them while quartering the ground, and when this one finally decided to take off, it also took my breath away.

It flew lightly and buoyantly as a feather floating on the breeze, each wingbeat airy and easy. No hurry, no flurry nothing, just as easy-going as a cyclist free-wheeling downhill. Its wings are pearl grey with darker flight feathers, so this must have been a juvenile gentleman. All too soon, keeping its eye on the ground below, it floats away behind a bank of low trees and disappears. Then in front of you a hoopoe, salmon pink and zebra striped, butterflies in, perfectly color coded for the landscape. It vanishes in the golden grass. Up in the heavens, Brahminy kites circle – they are the commonest raptor around and always a delight to behold even if they do have rather peevish and whiny calls.

And then came the kicker. As you drive back you glimpse – and then ignore – the silhouettes of three small swallow-shaped birds sitting on the transmission wires in the distance. Hmm…no big deal, probably young wire-tailed swallows that still have to acquire their tail antennae. Later, while chatting with a friend you briefly met at the plateau that morning you learn that an Amur falcon had been spotted there that very morning, perched on a transmission wire.

The smallest of their clan, Amur falcons, bluish-grey, have small round heads, tapering bodies and are very like swallows in silhouette, even if a little smaller. They have a remarkable story to tell: they breed in South Eastern Siberia and Northern China and thousands migrate westwards in winter, flying across the subcontinent and over the Arabian sea to the coasts of Eastern and Southern Africa. Vast numbers were shot and killed by hunters en route, and Pangti village in Nagaland, one of their rest-stops, was one very happy hunting ground for the locals.

The massacre and mass-trapping here back in 2012 got extensive media coverage and prompted a conservation movement in which the local community, encouraged by NGOs took a major part, quickly turning from hunters to protectors when they realized the potential these birds had in promoting tourism in the area. Various conservation groups are now vying for the funds made available for the protection of these birds, showing that this perhaps is the only and best way a species can be protected – rather than the imposition of bans, fines and potential imprisonment.

I’m still kicking myself for having ignored one of the basic rules of birding: use your binoculars to check every bird (or silhouette of a bird) that you spot. I will never know if those three small silhouettes were those of Amur falcons or were indeed just swallows, but I do know that I will be back at the plateau someday soon, hopefully a little wiser and less lackadaisical. Birders are supposed to develop what’s called ‘jizz’, the uncanny ability to identify a bird with just a fleeting glimpse. That morning, jizz was obviously AWOL.