Premium

In Mumbai, the birds are winging it

There is, in fact, so much we don’t know about the way nature works, a trillion puzzles and unanswered questions, in spite of the enormous body of work and inquiry done towards solving some of these mysteries

It will be interesting to see when the Millennium City’s waders will be up and off and when they return this winter.

4 min readJun 25, 2026 03:47 PM IST First published on: Jun 25, 2026 at 03:47 PM IST

Birders in Mumbai are puzzled over why thousands of migratory waders that flock to the city’s coastline have not yet left for their vast breeding grounds that stretch from the Himalayas through Tibet, China, Mongolia and beyond, including up to the Arctic Circle. The journey is perilous and often takes weeks, and the birds are known to set off by March. By now, they ought to have courted and been in the thick of bringing up families, not hanging around all dressed to kill in the Mumbai wetlands.

What might be the reason, then, for the delay? Is it the prolonged summer? Is it something to do with wind patterns? Is it climate change? Or, are we simply reading and thinking too much into and about the issue? Now that the rains have broken, we have to wait and see what happens. Normally, day length (photoperiodism) and the availability of food provide the triggers for departures. But if they leave too late, it’ll give their chicks less time to be ready for the great winter migration, from their icy homelands bereft of insects to the warm climes down south. Unless, of course, the onset of late winters in the northern latitudes due to global warming and climate change allows them to stay on longer than they normally would.

Also Read | India’s tigers are losing their privacy — and it could turn dangerous

The bottom line seems to be that we really don’t know. We are told we don’t have enough data, that there haven’t been enough long-term studies to arrive at any conclusion. Besides, who really knows what goes on in those little bird brains?

Here in Delhi, birders have been going round the bend trying to figure out why an oriental pied hornbill has shanghaied the babies of two grey hornbill families and is feeding the chicks — and aggressively driving away the legit biological parents — from the hollows. She is not a bona fide bird-citizen of the capital (and you wouldn’t need an avian SIR to tell you that), so what is she doing here in the first place?

There is, in fact, so much we don’t know about the way nature works, a trillion puzzles and unanswered questions, in spite of the enormous body of work and inquiry done towards solving some of these mysteries. We still don’t know exactly how migratory birds find their way to and fro from their breeding grounds to their winter homestays and back. We don’t know how a mango tree produces its luscious fruit. We may have figured out the ingredients — what the flesh and juice are made of — even synthesised the recipe in our labs, but how the heck does a mere tree, standing in the mud, do this? How does it know how much flavour, sugar, water, etc. is needed and how to package it all in a safe, sustainable container? Can we acquire all the ingredients from the mud, and with the help of air, sunlight and water only, replicate the recipe?

Sadly, there is only one thing we are excellent at: Destroying as much of nature as we can by gouging the earth, poisoning the air, fouling the water, damming rivers, mining in the mountains and felling the forests (in spite of knowing how valuable they are).

It will be interesting to see when the Millennium City’s waders will be up and off and when they return this winter. Perhaps they are just taking a gap year, which again will leave us scratching our heads. Well, everyone does, so why not them?

The writer is an author, environmentalist and birdwatcher