Delhi’s Unlikely Stopover: Finding Everything in the Middle of Nothing

Sometimes, the middle of nowhere is a real destination.

On a cold January morning — with a wicked wind taking bites out of our ears — we were in the middle of nowhere. The most contested specimen of land in North India was below our feet — the charred, blackened remains of a field, burnt to destroy its stubble. Charred fields are at the centre of air pollution debates each year, with Delhi blaming North Indian field fires for its thick, clogged air. I also hoped this is where I would find birds.

At first, there was nothing to see. The place looked sadly defeated, with silver patches of water shining like glass between the black soil. We were close to Sultanpur flats in Haryana, but there was no obvious landmark here. Things were distinguished only by their sameness — the once green field, the darkened mud, the cold and the dragging damp. But our bird sense was tingling. There had got to be something here — more than a few things.

And then, in the way that it suddenly reveals itself, a paddyfield pipit appeared. It was hunting for food in the fields, arrowing through vegetation, and doing characteristic short runs. As we saw one pipit, immediately many more became visible. It’s like you open an extra eye — the kind that picks out the exact colour, texture and movement of the specific bird you just saw. Once that eye was open and we were really looking, we could see the place was crawling with pipits. They were brown and black and streaked with their characteristic, roiling nervousness. A crested lark sunned itself on a rock, a neat morsel clasped in its beak. A greater short-toed lark found grub to eat.

Enthused, we decided that we would move ahead. The damp soil turning to mush under our feet was an old story — our jeans were caked with the stuff. We were walking on a field divider, and my eyes were on the ground, trying not to land face-first in the mud.

“There’s something there!” My friend cried.

“What? Where?” I exclaimed.

“There! Look right there!”

“There does not mean anything,” I snapped at her. “Say one o’ clock, two o’ clock from the bush or something!”

But when faced with amazing sightings, we often shut down.

“My brain isn’t working,” she laughed. “But what brilliant colours!”

I was scowling like a five-year-old. What could be so brilliantly coloured over “there” that it shut down coherent speech?

I was still scowling when I saw it. Between the straw-coloured grasses was an indescribable, picaresque bird. It had an iridescent body that reminded me of the violet-backed starling, a peacock’s neck, a film reel thrown under a blazing June sun, or many metallic colours smashed together all at once. If this wasn’t enough, the bird also had an ostentatious crest, reminding me instantly of Africa’s secretary bird. I had come looking for migratory, familiar Siberian stonechats and Isabelline wheatears, and was gobsmacked to see the northern lapwing. This bird (also called the peewit, an elegy to its call, much like tateri, another name for the yellow-wattled lapwing) breeds in the Palearctic and winters in parts of North India. It is now a bird of conservation concern in the UK, and is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN.

The peewit needs non-polluted agricultural areas to survive. For a bird that makes such a long migratory journey, that nameless crop field — in the middle of nowhere —is everything.

Along the field, we saw snails by the dozen — their bodies shriveled inside their perfect, logarithmic proportioned shells: food for birds no doubt. A little walk ahead, the unmistakable shape of cranes was visible. In the classroom of wildlife enthusiasts, cranes have pride of place. They have both size and beauty — a quintessential supermodel with exaggerated features. A long beak, a sinuous curving neck, haunting calls, and a kind of fragile, sighing grace in their careful, long-legged stride. Because cranes are so iconic, if people see egrets or storks, they feel they may have seen a crane. My friend for instance, claims to have seen hundreds of cranes, while he actually meant the ubiquitious cattle egret. That day, we were looking at a group of ten common cranes. They had come from their breeding grounds, areas like Russia. Common cranes are dirty white, with a fluffy bottom and a touch of jewel-red on their heads. They are shy. I had retired Colonel and veteran birder Pankaj Sharma with me. He suggested we do a leapfrog move to get close to the birds — moving ahead a little at a time. The cranes kept an eye out for us, never letting us get too close.

Their behaviour is quite different from resident sarus cranes, who are bold, approachable, and fight off Indian stray dogs with tenacity. It is possible that migratory birds are less accustomed to resident, local threats like stray dogs. As we “leapfrogged” towards a fierce, elegant pair of sarus cranes for example, they didn’t mind us at all.

In the same grasses and crop stubble, Isabelline wheatears — tiny, migratory insectivorous birds — flitted around for insects. Another migrant, a white wagtail, sat between inch-long kikar thorns. Closer to the Chandu Budhera water plant, a migratory western marsh harrier was terrorising resident coots. The coots took safety in their flock formations, the entire flock moving like a single sentient body. The harrier would hover above the coots, and then dive towards them. The coots would quiver and pitch their bodies away, their horror a palpable black wave across the water. The harrier would then pause, and wait — for the weakest, sickest coot to get left behind. As the sun glinted off the water, I kept watching the harrier strike repeatedly.

What we were essentially witnessing was an entire ecosystem assembling itself next to Delhi. There was the raptor in the sky, the cranes in the fields, and little birds zipping through fields and wetlands. This was a function of not just place, but also time — the fields would look very different in the summer, as if migratory wildlife had never visited it. As if this place which looked like any other field was not important.

The pieces of this picture had come from far away, and they needed the land to remain as it was for them to continue their visits. The time of the year interacted with the place in a way that completed the migratory jigsaw.

The crane, the peewit, the wheatear and stonechat thrive because of artisanal or friendly forms of agriculture. In the water that often gathers in fields, other animals come to drink. Leopards, jackal, porcupine and nilgai shelter in thicker crop fields. In the absence of grassland, savanna, and forest cover, agricultural fields are a major wildlife habitat. In understanding the new farm bills, one thing becomes immediately clear. The more we industrialise crops, the more we will lose both resident and migratory wildlife. The reasons for the decline of the peewit in UK could be mirrored in India.

So what could be the future of agricultural fields near Delhi? How much further would migratory birds — already harangued by longer migratory journeys caused by warming Arctic regions — have to go for refuge? The idea of maintaining friendly fields around the National Capital is suffused with a sense of impending loss. People don’t see migratory birds and fields in capital regions —only people and real estate.

The common cranes standing at a distance, took off, honking loudly.

I want to leapfrog into a future which has the peewit stretching its wings in little streams framed by nilgai; where common and sarus cranes come close to a city but can avoid it because of the buffer provided by suburban agricultural land; and where the indefatigable migratory harrier finds all the coots it wants. This time, this place, this nowhere, was everything — and may it always remain so.