A vagrant long-billed dowitcher sighted at Pulicat

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.

“The bird’s legs were too short to be an Asian dowitcher’s,” he remarks.

After anotheranother round of experts, the images were confirmed as those of a long-billed dowitcher. Around a week later, the two birders revisited Kanavaanthurai, and unsuccessfully scoured the area extensively for the long-billed dowitcher.

Says Subramanian: “This long-billed dowitcher is a vagrant — 100 p.c. I learn that even the Asian dowitcher is now thin on the ground.” The long-billed dowitcher’s breeding range is up there in the north in a band whose extremities are Alaska and eastern Siberia.

The dowitcher data

“Even the other dowitcher — the Asian dowitcher — is not that common. I have seen it once in Chilika Lake. I may have suspected seeing it (the Asian dowitcher) in Adyar estuary, but it is all unconfirmed. In those days, the optics were very bad and the conditions were also not favourable. The bird would have been far-off. The details would have been difficult to ascertain,” remarks ornithologist V Santharam while weighing in on the recent sighting of a long-billed dowitcher at Kanavaanthurai in Pulicat lagoon.

Santharam notes that bringing that spot under the ornithological radar would reveal whether the long-billed dowitcher was just being a vagrant on a random excursion, or if there is anything more to it.

“Somebody needs to go there and observe that section over the next few weeks, and may be the next year again, to see if this bird frequents this place. There is also the other bird — the grey-tailed tattler — which is not supposed to be here, but has been showing up at Pulicat and then at Yedaiyanthittu Estuary and further afield.”

Could it be that some “rather bold” individual birds “draw up” their own winter vacation plans and routes, going it alone year after year. Could that explain the grey-tailed tattler showing up in these parts during the migratory season?

“It could, but we still do not know that for a certainty. With very small sample sizes and no further studies, we just cannot predict the minds of the birds. It might have happened casually. It might have happened on account of a deliberate direction taken by the bird due to an adventurous nature. The fact remains that we do not know. We still have not really gained a deeper understanding into bird migration and why they suddenly turn up in places they are not supposed to be in. We absolutely have very limited knowledge about all of these things; we can only make some remarks but they may not be reflecting on the reality.”