The long hop: a one-legged bird returns to its winter home
By Meghna Krishnadas

The hero of our story is a courageous Grey Wagtail that was first spotted in the temple township of Biligiri Ranganaswamy Betta within the BRT (Biligiri Ranganaswamy Temple) Wildlife Sanctuary, some 200 km south of Bangalore.

It was noticed by TS Ganesh, a resident at BR Hills for twenty years. Ganesh lives on his farm and coffee estate, where he has been observing and photographing the birds that visit his home. One particular individual caught his attention in 2007, when migratory birds first began to arrive for the winter. Among the birds in his backyard, he noticed a Grey Wagtail with just one leg! Surprised, Ganesh photographed the bird. It was one of a pair of Grey Wagtails that remained in his garden until the following May when both went missing, presumably having headed back northwards to Central Asia (C&NE Afghanistan and NW Pakistan) to their summer home to breed.

This appeared to be the end of the story. Migration is a difficult business for any bird, let alone one with as serious a handicap as a missing leg! Birds migrate back and forth from their breeding to their non-breeding lands, tracking warm weather and food supplies. Some birds are champion migrants, like the Bar-headed Geese that travel at astoundingly high elevations over the Himalayas, under conditions of very low oxygen. However, these arduous journeys are very energy-intensive and the weak often do not survive. Migration requires the bird to be at its fittest in order to undertake the long voyage, so Ganesh didn’t expect to ever see his one-legged wagtail again.

Imagine his surprise and awe, then, when the one-legged wagtail reappeared in Ganesh’s garden in October 2008!

When Ganesh heard of the MigrantWatch project he wrote to them about this remarkable individual. MigrantWatch encourages birdwatchers, naturalists and any interested person to document the arrival and departure dates of migratory bird species that visit India during the winter. The idea is that citizens’ contributions will help evaluate the effects that global warming might have on the timing of bird migration.

This little episode illustrates how fascinating it can be to observe the natural world. The resilience of this little one-legged bird, which weighs just above 15 grams, but still managed to make at least two migration journeys of 1500-2000 km each is something we can only wonder at.

Will our hero survive yet another year and two more long journeys to return to Ganesh’s farm at BR Hills? We shall know the answer in a few months, and all of us, Ganesh included are keeping our fingers crossed!