Rivers Of Black Birds

Ahmedabad. Just before sundown, swarms of little black birds (small, roundish and they flap their wings rapidly in short bursts) fly in from just North of West and proceed in a generally Eastward direction. Some groups of birds are just a few dozen strong. But the largest groups are immense ... they burst forth from the sunset like innumerable tiny black suspended particles swirling in a centrifuge, then sweep over like an immense and turbulent river flowing right across the sky... And this has been going on without fail everyday.

Within a group, the birds do not all fly at the same pace - they keep overtaking one-another, like runners at the start of a city marathon; maybe this competition (combined with invisible atmospheric fluctuations) causes their formations to stretch, turn and sway and flap and flutter wildly(and sometimes sweep by almost 'a quarter of a sky' in the North-South direction by the time it crosses a distance of 'one sky' from East to West) but they all maintain the same general direction. And the number of birds crossing the SG Road (the Western limit of the city) on each evening should easily run into millions. To my knowledge, most of this activity happens over a stretch just to the south of Bodakdev Gurudwara.

I don't know if these birds are returning en masse from a daily foraging mission. I dunno if there is some larger scale migration going on. I dont even know yet, what species they are. But I do know that there are others in this city who are at least as intrigued and amazed as I am; yesterday, I saw a teenaged looking couple follow the pageant on a mobike, videocamera and all.