Wonder Birds Chasing the wonder at yonder

The author takes us along on her regular pilgrimmage into the Himalayan mountains, for a glimpse of the ever elusive Ibisbill.

- ANKITA SINHA

“Mysterious and little-known organisms live within walking distance of where we sit. Splendour awaits in minute proportions.”

~ E.O. Wilson

The month of April; a fulgent morning in Harsil, a quaint hamlet en route the celebrated pilgrimage of Gangotri. I was walking the banks of the Bhagirathi, a major headwater to the Ganges, to get estimates of the number of dippers, wagtails and river chats that breed here. I sat on a boulder with my eyes glued to my binoculars, the rays of the sun warming my back, my cheeks flushed by the chilly breeze. As my ears struggled to pick up the whisper of the mountain breeze over the burbling water, a pair of sandpipers from the north flew in with a tu-tu-tee. These creatures, which are found across a huge range of temperate Europe and Asia, breed along the fast-flowing streams in the Western Indian Himalayas. A little far away was an assiduous parent Brown Dipper, diving, dipping and hurriedly flying back to its chick, while the hungry brat waited for fare.