Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India
08 April 2005

The island city of Mumbai lies off the west coast of India just south of the tropic of Cancer. Because of its harbour, a wide bay between the city and the mainland, facing Africa and East

Asia, Mumbai has been a natural shipping and trading center through all of its short history. It has grown in spite of lying in a seismically active zone.

The position of the city ensures a uniform warm temperature throughout the year. The main climatic variation is provided by rainfall. Lying windward of the Western Ghats, Mumbai receives most of its rain from the South Asian Monsoon, between June and September every year.

The seven islands of Mumbai were joined together into one landmass through three centuries of reclamation. This one island is now 436 square kilometres in area (approximately 170 square miles), and is connected to the mainland by several bridges. As a new millennium begins, the city is spreading over these bridges into the mainland.

Local time: GMT +5h 30m
Approx noon temp: 30C
Weather: Sunny

Just yesterday I was shaking off the remnants of a cold that saw me grounded for a week, today I’m wandering around the gardens of a hotel in India looking at Indian Robins and a cracking Long-tailed Shrike in 30 degrees of heat. Life is certainly interesting…

To be very honest, I’m not sure how I really feel about coming here. Mumbai (Bombay was the old colonial spelling of the city) is hot, dusty, very dirty, crowded, a world where the very poor have to move very fast or they’ll end up under the limo wheels of the very rich…It’s fascinating, unlike any other place I’ve ever been… It’s an environmental disaster area…a city where a vast middle-class is striving to better themselves and a vast under-class is just striving to survive…

The people are almost without exception courteous and very friendly, and like most Brits I love the food (”curry” is now the UK’s favourite dish apparently), but trying to see any birds is very DIFFICULT…there are people everywhere, the habitat in the city is hugely degraded, and being asked to take photos of every ten-year old boy you pass quickly loses its initial charm…

On this occasion I had no time at all to plan anything - I only knew 15 hours before the flight that I was coming here - and we didn’t reach the rather spectacular hotel until 01:00am local time. I’d also figured that the superb views I’d had from the plane window of the controversy-inducing Mount Ararat - the supposed last resting place of the world’s most talked about driftwood: Noah’s Ark (being bundled into a giant floating zoo and pitching up on a 19.000′ volcano in Eastern Turkey while the world drowned was the best plan for the world’s wildlife…? I’ve never been entirely sure, but given what’s going on in the 21st Century it may well be time for history to repeat itself…) were likely to be the best I was going to get, and by the time I woke up and had had something to eat it was too late to go anywhere.

It was about then I looked out of the window and saw a Grey Wagtail tiptoeing along a ledge by an ornamental flower bed…there were Mynahs flying around, a male Common Koel giving its ‘barking mad’ calls from a tree off to my left, and a few Black Kites spiralling overhead. It would be rude to stay indoors and not at least check out the garden…

Hence, the limited selection of photos below: they may not be representative of Mumbai’s birdlife, but at least I didn’t have too far to go to get them - and who could not be interested in seeing what that potential scourge of the world’s ports - the House Crow - looks like…

 

 

  
House Crows

 

Long-tailed Shrike

 

Male (upper) and female (lower) Common Koel

 

Coppersmith (Crimson-fronted) Barbet

 

Female Indian Robin

 

  
Pied Mynah and Red-vented Bulbul

 

  
White-breasted Kingfisher and Coppersmith Barbet