A Visit to Santragachi Jheel: The Winter Home of Migratory Birds

             

We tumbled out of the cozy cocoon of our blankets and enveloped ourselves in jackets and shawls to set out for the 40 min long trip to Santragachi by car. The sky was flecked with dark clouds and we were afraid that the rain might pour, creating a silver curtain between us and the eagerly-anticipated view. Being imprisoned at home most of the times by Covid and work pressure, it was a pleasure to breeze through the streets of Kolkata on the early Sunday morning and cross the Second Hoogly bridge, with the mist wrapped river mingling into the sky.

After quite a bit of laboring, Subha, my husband found a place to park the car. We walked up to the Santragachi Railway Station, crossed the over-bridge and trooped to the Toto stand. The Toto would take us around the lake, halting wherever we wanted. Carpeted with water hyacinth, the water revealed itself only in patches that reflected the cloudy sky. I read in an article that the birds roosted in the weeds and they had shunned the lake the year the hyacinths had been cleared out in a miscalculated step to attract them. 

My gaze raked the dense bunches of hyacinths, hoping to catch the flutter of wings. Finally, it chanced upon the birds frolicking in the clear water that gleamed through a rip in the green cover. Other bird-watchers informed us they were Brown Whistling Ducks. I looked up at the sky and saw a flock of these brown birds flapping across the clouds before swooping down to the lake to join the others. Challenging the dominance of the ducks, some crane, too, glided down from tree-tops. Securing their feet firmly in the shallow part of the lake, they dipped their long necks, their white feathers a contrast to the brown birds' plumage. From another spot, we saw more Brown Whistling Ducks, not swimming in the water, but hidden among the weeds, their brown bodies camouflaged by the dark gap between hyacinths.

There are many other species of birds which congregate at this lake every winter to escape the harsh weather of their homelands. According to the articles I have read on this lake, there are birds which come all the way from China and Russia, when their usual habitats lay buried under layers of snow. The foreign guests eluded our gaze this time, but maybe we would meet some other day.     

Once the Toto had circumscribed the entire lake, it was time to bid goodbye to the winter abode of birds, with memory of this Sunday morning fluttering in my mind, to fly off at times with seeds of other thoughts.