Airoli Creek

The Skyline on the banks of Airoli Creek
Located in the suburbs of Mumbai, Airoli Creek is a wide tidal creek, flanked by mangroves teeming with life, but the concrete march threatens to annihilate the mangroves and with them all that is attracted to these mangroves. 

 

Sunrise at Bhandup Pumping Station
BPS is a perennial waterbody surrounded by scrub, bushes and mangroves, thus one sees a wide variety of birds. There is a small waterway that leads from here to the main Airoli Creek which is flanked by mangroves.

An inquisitive cormorant
There are waterbirds and scrubland birds, particularly in winter when migratory birds come in, passing through or destination. On one morning recently we saw 46 types of birds, some resident and many migratory.

A Pair of White Cheeked Bulbuls
Residents here, there are many bulbuls around BPS.  The marshes around are always wet, being tidally fed and a walk through them is messy and difficult but always interesting. The high humidity here is evident in the water droplets on the plants all the time.

Flamingos of Airoli Creek
A destination for flamingos for long, Airoli Creek has many flocks, each in their hundreds. These huge and lovely birds feed on the rich nutrients in the soft mud of the tidal creek. When disturbed they get airborne, initially ungainly as they have to literally "walk on water" to get their huge bodies up into the air..... 

...But once in the air
they are graceful, perfectly aerodynamic flying fast and purposefully.  I wonder how long they will keep coming to Airoli considering the concrete onslaught. Buildings have  come up to the water's edge and the mangroves are always threatened

The mangroves
survive only because naturalists raise their collective voices when the builders suggest razing the mangroves in the interests of "progress".   Though mangrove is a collective term, there are many species of plants that constitute the dense marshy forest and a study of these is interesting in itself

A black headed Ibis
offers a silhouette on the little creek leading from BPS to Airoli, this is a threatened species. In this waterway one sees many different types of birds, varieties of ducks, ibis and many other water birds.

Mumbai's effluence
This is the creek that leads from BPS to Airoli Creek, I wonder how long it will be before even the birds wrinkle their noses in disgust at the garbage in the water, each of those white spots in the picture above is a plastic bottle or thermocole plate. BPS has become a 'tourist' destination where each morning on weekends droves of people descend to the jetty for a boat ride to see the flamingos. These boatmen make the flamingos fly for the entertainment of their passengers, these lovely birds are disturbed from their feeding every few minutes. It will be little wonder if they stop coming.

Idyllic waterway
It is not too late, never too late, we need to get our act together to preserve this little corner of Eden.  It doesn't take much, some regulation to prevent boatmen and tourists from constantly disturbing birds, control garbage and save the mangroves. Mumbai needs its lungs and this is one of them.