Long-billed dowitcher sighted at Pulicat

Boredom drives two Chennai residents to biodiversity-rich Kanavaanthurai, and the trip finds its high point under the curious bill of a vagrant 

People are often hustled into their rare moments, even those that would leave behind a lifetime of memories. Subramanian Sankar’s rare moment with a long-billed dowitcher can be parsed into a septosecond of boredom, another of hustling, and one more septosecond of initiative.

The Nanganallur resident would not have found himself at Kanavaanthurai on the last day of January, between Pulicat and Annamalaicheri, if his friend Ramnarayan Kalyanaraman had not been overpowered by ennui and was prodding Subramanian to help him survive that emotion.

From Uttarakhand, Ramnarayan was visiting his mother in Nanganallur, and as a birder, one accustomed to birding in the heights of the Himalayas, he wanted to get outdoors and bird his way out of monotony.

With the options close at hand already exhausted over the preceding days, Subramanian had to look far to help his friend. He settled on a spot in Pulicat lagoon forever etched in his mind for a sighting of the common buzzard he had had there sometime ago. This cherished section of the Lagoon lies in Kanavaanthurai where Arani river disgorges its contents into the Pulicat lake.

“It is a fertile and beautiful place, one rich with biodiversity,” remarks Subramanian

Not too long into the birding expedition, Ramnarayan and Subramanian had a sighting of a lone long-billed dowitcher ( Limnodromus scolopaceus) parked on a bank, inches from a large flock of spotted redshanks ( Tringa erythropus). Ramnarayan’s camera had unthinkingly captured the bird and much later, when the duo was mulling over the images, they had to make sense of this bird.

Subramanaian notes that the bird had the deportment of a snipe and a godwit. After much study, they believed it was an Asian dowitcher. Subramanian notes that even eBird accepted it, but he wanted to reopen the case.