Bird watching in the Sundarbans: Crouching tigers, chasing kingfishers

Wearing boxers and nothing else, I step warily down the steps into the murky waters of a large tank, shivering on this crisp January evening. Satyan, toweling off, tells me the murkiness is actually nothing to worry about, but I should be careful of one step, underwater, that is broken. I find that one with my toes and gingerly inch forward ...

... suddenly I am slipping and falling and I land heavily on my butt, in the water, on the broken step. Takes a few seconds to realise nothing more than my ego is bruised. No, there is this sharp pain in my left pinky finger, and when I look I wish I hadn’t. The nail has a crack down the middle, and under it is a layer of black dirt, forced in there when my hand went out to break the fall.

And I think: here’s a nice coda to two days of birdwatching.

They have been a largely silent two days, the long but lovely hours punctuated only by shouts of “kingfisher!” or “Greater, ekta!”, or “Lesser, ekta!” and the like. Well, not quite only those sounds, for following them came the whirring shutter clicks of five or six cameras, and following them...

Read more