Painting the sky pink

The most beautiful birds that I have come across are the Flamingos. Their graceful flight makes one wonder in awe. That one moment of a day made my day recently when we spotted them in Sewree in Bombay. This is a belated post, it was in the month of June that we got to visit them.

Flamingos come to Sewree in Bombay every year during the winters and stay till April end. This year, they arrived late and were still there till second week of June when we visited them. I am sure they would have left by now, because we got to see very few this time. Two years back, they were huge in numbers.

Watching Flamingos in the Natural Geographic Channel, in the most pristine settings; I had never imagined that in the crowded city of Mumbai, we will get to see these most beautiful birds. That too, in a place where nothing else is worth a visit. Sewree in on harbour line of the Mumbai.

We planned to be there few hours after the high tide. This is the the time one can spot the birds hunting for the food in the shallow waters. One can get to know the tide timings at this page.

Finding this place is not easy, that is the reason many people are not aware of this I guess. Many people from Mumbai I asked were really surprised to find that indeed flamingos are spending few months in their city. And you will find them in the most unimaginable place where one would otherwise not imagine any reason to go.

Net came to our rescue and someone has put up a nice page on the directions to Jetty where one can easily spot flamingos. It is here.

We spotted few flamingos around a factory on the way to jetty. So we got down there and to our surprise, they were very close. They were lesser flamingos. There are lot of petroleum based industries in this area and so the water was not that clean and surprisingly, usually beautiful looking flamingos were not looking that beautiful this time. But they were in a big group and we spotted them so easily and by chance was itself a big luck. As we were wondering where are the beautiful ones gone, we saw a small flock of pink flamingos taking the flight. And those few seconds made our day !! They were much farther away.

We went to the jetty but there were no flamingos there. I know we were late. By this time of the year, many of them have already migrated. Only few were remaining so naturally we could not get to see them in huge flocks.

Coincidentally, someone has made a very interesting documentary on the Flamingos that come to this place and we happened to see it some few weeks back only. Ashima Narain from Mumbai has done this excellent work and she and her sister took some six months to make this. They have covered the different phases of their stay here, their famous dance, the breeding season and other different aspects of these migrating birds. It is a very well made documentary.

Though we did not get to see flamingos this time, I remember coming here 2 years back and at that time they were there in thousands. I still cannot forget that scene when suddenly out of nowhere, as the tide was lowering, they appeared at a distance and the whole area was full of them. At that time, we did not have good binoculars and also a good optical zoom camera to capture them. But they are definitely captured forever in the memory.

So, next time we need to make sure to be there in time.