Sorrow of the Sarus: Maggi-loving, Dal-chawal eating crane trains to be a bird again

Keeping an eye on the live feed beamed into his office from a “secret location inside the zoo hospital”, zoo director Krishna Kumar Singh says that the year it spent in the care of humans had turned this omnivore into an avian that looked forward to its daal-chawal and Maggi. “The bird had got used to eating only cooked food. But now, it has started eating ‘superworm’ feed and varieties of dhaan (rice), pulses, coriander and green vegetables like spinach. It has also started pecking at the food on the floor instead of being fed by hand.”

The Sarus had hit headlines in February, thanks to its friendship with 35-year-old Arif, who says he found the bird in the wild, wounded and with a broken limb, in February 2022. Arif, who has a dozen hens, a dog, cows and goats, says he applied “turmeric and mustard oil paste on the bird’s wound” and tied a stick on its limb for support, “like we do for our hens”.

After the bird recovered, videos of Arif riding his bike as the Sarus flew alongside started going viral on social media. Soon, their “friendship” took wings and was the talk of the town and beyond. International news organisations flew into Amethi to record this rare human-avian friendship.

On March 5, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav met Arif and the bird at Mandhka village. The meeting and the photo-op led to a political flutter. Remarking that the bird paid the price for fame, a zoo official says, “After a neta (politician) went to see it in Amethi, the friendship between the bird and Arif took a political turn.”

About 20 days after Akhilesh’s visit, the Sarus was taken away from its human family — first to Raebareli’s Samaspur Bird Sanctuary and then Kanpur zoo. Quick to lash out at the ruling government over the separation, the former chief minister had alleged “vendetta” by the BJP. Retorting that Akhilesh was “immature”, the BJP said the Sarus was shifted for “legal reasons” since the state bird cannot be domesticated and is protected under Schedule 3 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

On March 25, Arif was booked under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 (offences related to hunting, etc). However, the farmer maintains the bird stayed with him “because of their bond” and not because it was held “captive”.

On the status of the case, Ranveer Mishra, Assistant Forest Conservator and Sub-Divisional Forest Officer (Gauriganj), Amethi, told The Indian Express, “Some statements have to be recorded and some evidence has to be collected. The case is ongoing.”

Barely days after it was shifted to Samaspur Bird Sanctuary, around 60 km from Mandhka village, the bird reportedly fled its coop. On March 22, Dileep Kumar, a 23-year-old farmer, found it nearly 0.5 km from the gargantuan sanctuary. He claims to have saved the bird from a pack of dogs. “Some dogs had surrounded the bird. I chased them away and brought the bird home. It was extremely friendly,” says Kumar, who was hailed as a hero in his village in Raebareli district.

Since the bird failed to fly away even after it was surrounded by dogs, forest officials realized the Sarus had lost its survival instincts. They also felt that an open sanctuary was not the right place for the bird. Kanpur zoo, which is about 145 km from the sanctuary and nearly 200 km from Mandhka village, was chosen as its next home. When it first arrived in Kanpur, it was the job of Sahab Lal, the keeper at the one-storey designated veterinary facility located on the periphery of the zoo, to feed the Sarus — it was then used to being fed by hand by Arif and his family. Since then, the Sarus has been receiving special treatment at the zoo. Besides the solitary enclosure and the CCTVs — no other bird is monitored round the clock — it eats branded bird food.

Veterinarian Dr Anurag Singh adds, “One of the biggest challenges for us was that Sarus had become extremely comfortable around humans. Whenever it sees people, it goes near them and expects to be pet by them. In fact, it treats us as if it belongs to the same species as us, which is alarming if we have to release it in the wild.”

So the officials started training the Sarus to be more “independent” and adapt to the wild. Talking about the need to keep the bird in solitary confinement, the zoo director adds, “We are trying to keep the Sarus away from people so that it gets accustomed to its natural habitat. It has undergone human imprinting, which needs to be undone so that it has a chance of surviving in the wild.”

The officials sent a DNA sample of the bird to a Secunderabad-based laboratory. The results revealed the bird is female. Officials say it is nearly impossible to ascertain the gender of Sarus cranes, unlike other birds, without a test due to lack of reliable studies on this species.

On April 10, when the bird’s most beloved human was finally allowed to see it at the zoo, the Sarus put on a show: it jumped up and down, flapped its wing and tried to exit its enclosure.

Estimating that the Sarus is approximately three years old, the director says, “Birds usually don’t forget the ones they see from a young age, like this one did.”

Young precocial birds (baby birds that are capable of moving around on their own soon after hatching) learn to follow real or foster parents. Called imprinting, the process kick-starts as soon as the chicks hatch so that they follow a safe adult.

Krishna Kumar Singh says they allowed Arif to see the bird just once to test if the bond between them was still strong. He adds, “We brought Arif to the zoo to see if the bond still existed or if it had waned over time. But it seems the bond between them is still strong. If the Sarus had not danced in front of Arif, we would have considered releasing it in the wild.”

Another official adds, “We brought a man who resembles Arif near the cage but the bird’s reaction was less ecstatic.”

To a question on the possibility of reuniting the bird with its friend, the zoo director explains, “We don’t want to do that because it will set a bad precedent. It will lead to the belief that the Sarus can be domesticated, which can lead to its extinction.”

So zoo officials are now trying their best to get the bird to interact with other cranes. “We are making it interact with other Sarus cranes but we are doing it slowly because we are scared that it might attack them. It won’t attack a human, but it may attack its own species. If and when we release it in the wild, we will do it with a Sarus it becomes friendly with,” says Krishna Kumar Singh.

Kanpur zoo has four other Sarus cranes. “We have sent the DNA samples of all the Sarus cranes we have. If we release them in the wild, we will do it with a flock. But it seems like an uphill task for now because the Sarus imprinted on Arif,” says an official.

Speaking to The Indian Express earlier, K S Gopi Sundar, editor-in-chief of Waterbirds Society, and co-chair of the IUCN Stork, Ibis and Spoonbill Specialist Group, who has worked on Sarus cranes since 1998, had observed that the window for imprinting could remain open until the Sarus pairs with another crane.

“In many zoos around the world, cranes have bonded with their caretakers. Once that happens, the bird is usually not ‘fit’ for release in the wild because the chances of it bonding with another crane reduce substantially,” he said.

Explaining the reason for denial of requests to see the Sarus, an official said Arif’s visit to the zoo had upset top officials.

Thanks to this “cautious approach”, Arif has managed to meet his friend only once since it arrived at the zoo. He says he has been denied permission to see the bird again. “I have sent several requests to see my friend, but they keep denying my requests,” rues Arif, adding that his children and other family members, including him, “miss” the bird.

Despite the bond between the bird and farmer, the zoo officials are cautiously optimistic that the Sarus will one day “forget Arif” and “befriend” another crane.

“When it met Arif in April, it still seemed to have a strong bond with him. Let’s see what happens. We have no choice but to keep the Sarus in a cage for now. We can’t release the bird in the wild yet because it will not survive. We can only hope that the imprinting reduces with time. We are not sure what we will do. We will decide as per the situation,” says director Singh.

Asked how many birds the Sarus had interacted with, the director says, “All information regarding that bird is confidential. But I can assure you the bird is healthy, happy and has no issues with living under our supervision.”

‘Arif ka Sarus’

Meanwhile at the zoo’s walk-in aviary on a sweltering May afternoon, 12-year-old Anas Suhail is determined to see “Arif ka Sarus”. His hapless parents tell him the bird must be around somewhere in the 10,000-square-foot enclosure, where night herons, comb ducks, muscovy ducks, grey and white pelicans and bar-headed geese use the shrubs and plants to play hide-and-seek with visitors.

As soon as the boy spots a Saru crane, he asks his parents if it is the same bird he saw on Facebook. Nodding in the affirmative, his parents turn to a zoo worker, who is wearing a pair of camouflage trousers, to confirm if it is indeed the celebrity Sarus.

The zoo worker, who is busy mixing pulses and grains for the birds, shrugs without looking up, “Haan, wahi hai yeh (Yes, it is the same bird).”

Once the boy and his parents are out of earshot, the zoo worker, who is called ‘Colonel’ at the zoo, whispers conspiratorially, “That bird wasn’t Arif ka Sarus.”

Seconds before he melts into a crowd of people, Colonel quips, “Every visitor here wants to see ‘Arif ka Sarus’. We just point to the first Sarus crane we see to appease them.”