In Frames | Pink flamboyance

News in Frames | These migratory birds generally fly from Kutch in Gujarat and the Sambhar Lake in Rajasthan to Mumbai around mid-November, but due to prolonged rain and other climate factors, their arrivals can been delayed

Every winter, thousands of greater and lesser flamingos fly into Mumbai, forming a sea of pink against a backdrop of skyscrapers, bridges and oil refineries along the 26-km-long Thane Creek, the DPS lake in Nerul and Sewri.

These migratory birds generally fly from Kutch in Gujarat and the Sambhar Lake in Rajasthan to Mumbai during winter around mid-November, but due to prolonged rain and other climate factors, their arrivals can been delayed. And when they do come, they are here till May, or sometimes, even till the start of the monsoon in mid-June in Mumbai.

Last year, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) conducted a survey in which approximately 1,33,000 flamingos were observed across the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary, Sewri, Nhava and adjacent zones.

Flamingos feed on the algae that dwell in the mudflats at Navi Mumbai, Airoli and Thane Creek, and it is the carotenoid pigment in algae that gives flamingos their pretty pink colour.

Many wildlife experts feared that recent construction activities around Sewri and Thane Creek such as the Sewri-Nhava Sheva bridge and other such projects would pose a threat to the ecosystem, and that the numbers of flamingos who migrate would come down.

But surprisingly, the flamingos have adapted to the conditions much better as many of them can be seen flying past the construction projects and even be found sitting a few hundred yards from the sites.