Two lone, abandoned boats docked between thick mangroves, a cool breeze from the nearby creek, the shade of wild trees, and a refreshing silence. For a moment, it didn’t feel like Mumbai.
As I reached the meeting point for the flamingo boat safari, I couldn’t help but notice that I was just a few kilometres away from the noisy highway and yet it felt like a completely different world.
The flamingos visit Mumbai every year but somehow, I have missed it for so many years that this year I finally decided to do it and it was completely worthwhile.
When the group arrived, we all got on to a boat, wore our safety jackets, got binoculars and then we headed to see the pink beauties.
“We are on the Thane Creek and it’s one of the largest creeks in Asia.” That first sentence by our naturalist Satyam Gupta who has studied Wildlife & Conservation Management, came as a surprise to me. I have lived close to this creek for so many years and yet I was unaware of this simple fact. As the ride progressed, there was a lot more that would surprise and shock me.
At first as the boat cuts through the water, you encounter a stench, and I almost questioned myself if signing up for this was the right decision. The stench is due to the Pumping Station where sewage water is collected and treated. But soon you get distracted as Satyam starts pointing out to the different kinds of big and small birds cosily sitting in the mangroves.
Then as the creek widens, you feel like you are in a deep river, the boat noisily wading its way through it. In the distance, you can see towering buildings turned into hazy, Lego pieces, a quiet reminder that you are still in the city limits. And then finally you get to see a pink line across the water line. As we get closer, I fix my eyes into the binoculars to try and get a greedy first glimpse.
The boat stops at a comfortable distance from them so as not to disturb them. The pink bodies with long slender legs moving across the slushy water with grace, leaves you in awe of nature. The flamingos seem like busy birds, constantly pecking food from the shallow water, that’s why they come to this part of Mumbai.
The pollution in the water due to sewage and industrial waste promotes the growth of algae which is food for the flamingos – when Satyam shared this, my jaw dropped in utter shock. It’s a strange paradox that because the water is not clean it produces food for these beautiful pink birds, and they visit us every year. It’s a clear case of one being’s waste is food for another.
Now I looked at them with grateful eyes.
These flamingos first started visiting Mumbai in the 1980s, a clear indication of when the pollution levels in the city started seeping into the water. According to Satyam, these birds are known as pollution indicators.
Of the six flamingo species found worldwide, only two – the greater and the lesser flamingo – are found in India. What we were seeing at the Thane Creek were the lesser flamingos. The difference is very much there in their name itself, the lesser flamingos are shorter compared to the greater ones. And the lesser flamingos are much deeper pink, almost bordering on the reddish side, that’s why they paint the wetlands in a can’t-look-away sort of pink.
The fascinating fact about their pink colour is that they literally become what they eat. Their diet consists of algae, plankton and other things which contain carotenoids, which is the same pigment that makes carrots orange. When flamingos eat it, these pigments get broken down and then get absorbed into their feathers, skin and beaks. When they are born, they are grey in colour and slowly over time they turn from pink to a reddish colour. Flamingos are true testament to the interesting ways in which nature works.
As we sat there in the boat, alternately admiring them through the binoculars, camera lens and naked eyes, a group of them rose to the sky, slowly getting into a V-formation. They moved against the sky in an ebb and flow dance. Their black flight feathers visible only when they were fully open and against the evening sun, they looked a ravishing colour of red splattered across the sky, staying true to their name which means flame-coloured.
If you’ve never seen this spectacle, then it’s a must-see one.
They usually arrive from Gujarat when the land begins to dry there. They feed in Mumbai’s tidal wetlands through winter and then leave before the monsoons hit and go back to Gujarat to breed. So, in that sense, Mumbai is not home for them, but a temporary spot for food.
They follow a cycle of water more than geography. That’s why they arrived late in Mumbai this year as the monsoon cycle was good in Gujarat last year and they had enough water there. Now as it’s getting warmer in Gujarat, they have finally arrived in Mumbai for feeding. This is the second time in a decade that they are arriving this late due to extended monsoon.
But the delay is not shaped by climate alone. Another reason, as environmentalist Nandkumar Pawar points out, is the steady loss of wetlands across the MMR. Pollution and landfilling are choking these habitats, leaving behind stagnant waters thick with moss and algae. From above, when mudflats lose their clarity, flamingos simply do not land. And therein lies the constant tug of war between development and protecting the environment.
As we sat there in the boat, all of this lingered. Everything we got to know about them, just made us more curious about them. Maybe they were also observing us with similar curious eyes.
Even though the flamingos just come for a few months, they make Mumbaikars happy with their pink touch. But the question remains, how long will we be able to witness them as the city steadily alters its landscape?
