Flamingos and Garbage Bags

Man, the Great Polluter

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The Gulmohur Tree
We visited Sirpur Lake before sunrise this morning. The Delonix Regia (the Royal Poinciana) commonly known as gulmohur trees are in full bloom. They remind me of my home city - Bangalore. These ornamental trees were probably imported by Tipu Sultan from Madagascar. Now they brighten up the avenues of Bangalore, thanks to the efforts of Dr. M Visveswaraiya and Sir Mirza Ismail, and are a wonderful sight from the air.

Many flamingos (also spelt flamingoes), along with a horde of other tropical migratory birds have, again this year, made the mistake of landing in Indore. The Portuguese word flamengo (meaning flame-red) is the root of this word, for these birds have pink to red plumage, a pink beak that turns downward at the tip.

They ought to really keep on coming here, nest and breed to their heart's content and fly back to wherever they came from. A neighbour tells me that some of them come all the way from central Africa too. Large numbers of flamingos nest and breed in the Great Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, just south of Pakistan. Some migrate to the lakes and water bodies of Maharashtra and even to the marshes around Sewri, Mumbai (Bombay).

But I think it is an awful mistake - their coming to Indore - because Indoreans do not treat these very beautiful birds as guests. Those who live around Sirpur Lake need to be educated to be more hospitable to them!

Plastic bags filled with kitchen waste litter the banks of the lake; people wash clothes and bathe in the water; we even see them relieving themselves on these banks. Newspapers (Hindustan Times and Free Press and some others) carried pictures of some of the birds, but they did not indicate the depths of degradation to which Indoreans are taking this sort of pollution.

The first thing one notices in Sirpur so early in the morning is that the sun scheduled to rise at about 0545 over Indore becomes visible only twenty minutes later as its rays have to climb a few degrees above the horizon to be able to peep out to us over the thick grey miasma, a soup of corrupt air, that hangs over us, thanks to the factories as well as the Municipal conservancy staff burning garbage on street sides everywhere.

THE PICTURE TO THE RIGHT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

The sun appears only half an hour after scheduled sunrise!

CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE THEM. In the picture below, you will see a few flamingos on a mound - a tiny island - in the water]

SMOKE RISES ON THE WESTERN BANK OF THE LAKE - THE BURNING OF GARBAGE IS A COMMON SIGHT IN INDORE

Temperatures have been at a scorching 40 C and above for quite a few days now, and so the thousands of birds that are swimming (or flying around) so gracefully must be tropical birds. Other red beaked wild fowl foraging near the marshy banks make a beautiful sight too. I must take an ornithologist along the next time I visit Sirpur Lake.