The vanishing joy

In travelling the stretch between Lucknow and Raebareli, an hour and a half car ride, you do not come across anything dramatic scenically. No Wordsworthian dales and fens. No verdant greenery of Kerala or lush farmlands of Terai. It is a plain stretch with some arid and some wet patches and a level railway crossing that is often closed and invariably so if I have some appointment to keep.

May and June are the worst months to travel. Countryside assumes a monochromatic pallour of anaemia. And as the day progresses the sun burnt tarmac begins mirroring the dust drenched languid landscape. Sunrise hour is the prime time to travel in summer. The air is bracing. Birds on their wings. Every contour of the landscape accentuated by the ground level rays of emerging sun. Scenes of such summer morning drive roused my interest in birdwatching. I distinctly remember that on a good day sitting on the back seat being driven at seventy kilometre per hour I could spot upto thirty different bird species. The count came down sharply on the return trip in late afternoon.

House sparrows, common mynah, crows and the odd red vented bulbul greeted me even before I was out of city limits. By the time the outskirts turned to countryside I would have encountered eurasian hoopoe, pied mynah, bank mynah, brahminy mynah, yellow-billed babblers, shikra, eagle and pond herons. Once into the countryside little and medium egrets, white-breasted waterhen, wagtails, rockchats, Indian roller, drongo, tree pie, white-breasted kingfisher, crow pheasant and green bee-eaters could be spotted foraging.

There were certain birds, which were spotted at only some specific places. Near one stretch of open semi arid grassland I always saw crested larks, rufous backed shrikes and white-eyed buzzard. White rumped vultures and scavenger vultures could often be spotted in hordes near settlements.

To day, ten years later my drive to Rae Bareli no longer yields the same rich crop of birds as before. A few of the species have almost vanished like the white rumped vultures and crested larks. The waterbodies are fast shrinking yielding to population pressure giving way to cultivation or settlements. Some of the babool patches have almost vanished and have been replaced by boards of proposed industrial estates, which never seem to materialise. I some times wonder if I were to start doing this stretch today rather than twenty years back would it still rouse my interest in bird watching. I doubt very much.