Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
18 January 2006

I’ve not been to Chennai (or Madras as it used to be known) in Tamil Nadu, south-eastern India, for many years. Our trips here are very short with just one free day available, and that coming after a long flight that only gets into Chennai at some horrible time of the early morning. With a handful of fairly common endemics to be seen though (Loten’s Sunbird, White-browed Bulbul, and Yellow-billed Babbler in particular - three of probably the least spectacular endemics in the whole sub-continent by the way, but I guess that’s only easy to say if you’ve been fortunate to see them in the first place) I couldn’t wait to get outside once it got light.

With so little available time - and with a long, full flight home later that same night - I decided to concentrate on two local areas highlighted in “A Birdwatcher’s Guide to India” (Krys Kazmierczak and Raj Singh, 1998) rather than going farther afield: the mouth of the Adyar River and the small Guindy National Park. It’s no slight on the book or its authors to say right away that I’m not sure now that was the best move. India is developing and concreting itself over so fast, that going to look for a place near to the river described as “waste ground…good for larks, pipits, wagtails” in 1998 (map and text page 239) was always likely to be futile - the area has now sprouted huge residential blocks and is useless for birds (the “broken bridge” referred to on the same page and highlighted in the map opposite) is still broken though, so not everything’s modern just yet).

The details for Guindy National Park, a haven in the centre of Chennai itself (page 237), have also changed incidentally: the rather charming sounding “A small fee is payable at the entrance if the ticket office is open” should now read “The Park is kept locked at all times and tickets must be bought between 09:00 and 13:00 or the full weight of India’s strangling bureaucracy will coil around you like a Boa Constrictor and squeeze the enthusiasm out of you until you want to scream etc etc” (which isn’t really Krys’s writing style, so I’m not expecting the next edition to carry these exact words - but you get my drift…)

Having said that I did manage to find some good birds - mainly by good luck and bending a few rules I suspect. By starting at (I think) Elliot’s Beach on the south side of the Adyar River and walking the 800m or so north to the rivermouth - seeing Richard’s Pipit, Brown Shrike, Yellow-billed Babblers and Blyth’s Reed Warblers on the way - I ended up by the “broken bridge” and views along the estuary and some attractive mud-flats.

Elliot’s Beach looking south

Richard’s Pipit Anthus richardi

House Crows Corvus splendens on the “broken bridge”

Black-winged Stilts, Great Egret, Greater Flamingo, Adyar River mouth

Black-winged Stilts Himantopus himantopus

Indian Pond Heron Ardeola grayii

Fisherman

Low tide (which was around 09:00am) on the estuary was excellent - with several thousand Black-winged Stilts being the highlight, small numbers of Little Ringed Plovers and a few Terek Sandpipers, plus Indian Pond Herons and my only Red-wattled Lapwing of the day: had I had a scope with me I might have picked up a wider variety of shorebirds than I did, but I don’t have one so I didn’t (if that makes sense).

By following the southern edge of the estuary I eventually found myself in the Theosophical Gardens, a peaceful area of gardens and forest and ‘religious thinker’s retreat’, which abuts the estuary. I got in through a “back entrance” (by hopping a small wall - nothing illegal I sincerely hope and hasten to add) and spent a very pleasant couple of hours wandering along narrow trails through the trees. The Gardens were full of birds, and I had brief but very clear views of my first ‘lifer’ of the year so far - a Chestnut-winged Cuckoo (quite a rare visitor this far south apparently), as well as a pair of Eurasian Golden Oriole, three or four more Blyth’s Reed Warbler’s making their way through the foliage, four or five Loten’s Sunbirds, and numerous groups of Yellow-billed Babblers amongst others.

Male Eurasian Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus

Blyth’s Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum

Yellow-billed Babbler Turdoides affinis

I’m sure I was in the Theosophical Gardens well outside visitor hours, but no-one seemed to mind (or were too polite to say anything to me). I took relatively few photographs - out of some sort of well-meaning respect to the genteel surroundings I kept my camera by my side more than usual - thinking I would spend the afternoon at Guindy and click away there to my heart’s content. Big mistake, as I’ll now explain….

The Guindy National Park is a small ‘island’ of thorny woodland in a suburb of Chennai. It’s adjacent to the Chennai Zoological Park and the Snake Park, easily reached by taxi from the city, and it would seem that the locked entrance by the little car-park for the zoo is kept, well, permanently locked. To get into Guindy you first have to go into the Zoo and get permission from there. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Guindy in the afternoon (having gone back to the hotel for a couple of hours to avoid the dead heat around midday) the National Park staff, who are probably never the fastest-moving people on planet Earth in the first place, had wound down to a nearly inert state and - frankly - just couldn’t be bothered to rouse themselves to help out a tourist trying desperately to give them some money to look at their birds. I’ve been to India enough times to recognise when the brakes are on - and perhaps I should have given up when the promised ten-minute wait for “the Superintendent” slowly stretched out to the forty minute mark - but this is the new “optimistic” me, and I wasn’t being dismissed so lightly…

Perhaps I was untidying their office, perhaps I was just in the way, but in the end - inevitably - the snail of a “superintendent” crawled out from his hiding-place, looked me over a couple of times, made a phone-call or two to the next manager up the chain, stared quizically at my passport as if it was in a foreign language (which of course it is if you don’t speak English), and finally lethargically indicated that I could have 30 minutes in the Park and that I had to be accompanied by one of the staff.

“30 minutes?” I queried politely. “But I’ve been here an hour waiting for you. Doesn’t seem quite fair” (that’s roughly how the conversation went, if not perhaps in those exact and restrained words).

I may as well have asked if I could take home a Tiger in my rucksack. There was a sharp intake of breath (as sharp as such a portly man could intake anyway) and a glazed look from the rest of the staff: this was going to necessitate another phone-call, another round of deference, more delay…

“One hour - please” I smiled through gritted teeth, “and then I’ll GO”. Ah, the magic word - “Go”. The “superintendent”, moving with the speed of an overweight and unconcerned glacier, nodded - if such an unhurried movement designed to use as little energy as possible could be described as something so usually rapid as a ‘nod’ - and I was at last allowed into the hallowed ground of Guindy.

Is it worth adding that I saw virtually no birds at all? Probably not…

I did add Grey Francolin, Yellow-wattled Lapwing, and Asian Paradise Flycatcher to the day-list, but it was extremely quiet. Whether my shattered karma was at fault, there are simply few birds in Guindy now, or whether it was more to do with the shuffling guard moving me on every few seconds I’ll never know (or a combination of all three, which would be my best guess), but at least I got to see some rather nice and fairly well-habituated Spotted Deer (or Chital) and a small tortoise before my hour was up and I was steered back into the “Children’s Park” part of the zoo - which is absolutely god-awful by the way - and out towards the entrance and my taxi back to the hotel…

Male Asian Paradise Flycatcher Terpsiphone paradisi

Spotted Deer Axis axis

Day List: English and scientific names mainly from “Birds of Southern India”, Helm 2005 :
Little Cormorant Phalacrocorax niger 3; Great Egret Egretta alba 5+; Intermediate Egret Egretta intermedia 1+; Little Egret Egretta garzetta 10+ ; Indian Pond Heron Ardeola grayii 10+; Oriental Honey Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus 1; Black Kite Milvus migrans 3; Shikra Accipiter badius 2; Grey Francolin Francolinus pondicerianus c)10; White-breasted Waterhen Amaurornis phoenicurus 2; Black-winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus 1000+; Yellow-wattled Lapwing Vanellus malabaricus c)20; Red-wattled Lapwing Vanellus indicus 1; Little Ringed Plover Charadrius dubius 4+ ; Kentish Plover Charadrius alexandrinus 1+; Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa c)60; Marsh Sandpiper Tringa stagnatilis 4+ ; Common Greenshank Tringa nebularia 1; Terek Sandpiper Xenus cinereus 2+; Common Sandpiper Actitis hypoleucos 3; Caspian Tern Sterna caspia 1; Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis 10+; Ring-necked Parakeet Psittacula krameri 20+; Chestnut-winged Cuckoo Clamator coromandus 1; Common Koel Eudynamys scolopacea 10+; White-breasted Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis 4-5; Green Bee-eater Merops orientalis c)10; Coppersmith Barbet Megalaima haemacephala 3; Black-rumped Flameback Dinopium benghalense 4; White-browed Wagtail Motacilla madaraspatensis 2; Richard’s Pipit Anthus richardi 3; Black-headed Cuckooshrike Coracina melanoptera 1f; Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer 3-4; White-browed Bulbul Pycnonotus luteolus 10+; Common Iora Aegithina tiphia 1; Blyth’s Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum 5-6; Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius 4; Asian Paradise-flycatcher Terpsiphone paradisi 2; Oriental Magpie-robin Copsychus saularis 3-4; Yellow-billed Babbler Turdoides affinis c)20; Purple-rumped Sunbird Nectarinia zeylonica 10+; Purple Sunbird Nectarinia asiatica 3-4; Loten’s/Long-billed Sunbird Nectarinia lotenia 4; Eurasian Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus 2; Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus 1; Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus 4; White-bellied Drongo Dicrurus caerulescens 2; Rufous Treepie Dendrocitta vagabunda 4; Common Myna Acridotheres tristis +; House Crow Corvus splendens 100+; Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos 4+;

Dusk over the Caucasus Mountains from 39000′

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.