E-Paper
Wildbuzz | Give the partridge a gun
Birds are kept captive in farmhouses away from the eyes of law-enforcement authorities as a source of amusement, prestige and enticing peer “likes and wah wahs” on digital media
Social media is rife with confessions of wildlife crimes. Photographs and videos are brazenly posted by offenders on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and circulated widely as WhatsApp forwards. These depict acts of poaching and cruelty to wild creatures. Neither the Government of India nor the state governments have been able to devise a satisfactory response to this burden of evidence in the public domain.
Birds are kept captive in farmhouses away from the eyes of law-enforcement authorities as a source of amusement, prestige and enticing peer “likes and wah wahs” on digital media. Farmhouses near jungles serve as outposts for poaching and consuming game meats on the sly, a nefarious practice not easy to detect. If by chance, captive birds are brought to the notice of law-enforcement authorities, the offending farmhouse owners claim innocence under the pretext that the “bird fell from the sky and we were only tending to its illness/wounds!”
Two such pictures believed to be from the region portray this malaise vividly. One depicts a captive grey partridge (francolin) placed in a quirky pose on a single-barrel shotgun strung from a tree. The other, a tethered brahminy kite on a tree in another farmhouse courtyard.
The partridge was once the quintessential game bird of hunters in the north-west Indian countryside but the blood sport was outlawed in the late 20th century. The photo of the partridge perched innocently on its bete noire or slayer and calling loudly provoked some wacky WhatsApp quips: “The day will come, the partridge says, when I take up the gun in revenge against shikaris...The partridge looks quite the lordly ‘thanedar’ (SHO) with the gun beneath it”.
The kite seems to have been kept captive illegally by an ignorant fancier of falconry, who does not know that kites were never renowned for that prowess during the medieval era when, instead, hawks, falcons and eagles were preferred and trained for hunting as a sport of kings.
Sorry Alex, we can’t help you
Respecting nature’s ways requires that one must voyage into a jungle and not be a thief of even a leaf. Avoid being sentimental because nature’s integrity lies in it being red in tooth and claw (i.e., bloodthirsty). Nature wilfully abandons the defenceless, the wounded and the diseased to the fate of easy, rightful meals for predators.
While recently birding in the Siswan check-dam jungles, an avian in a spot of trouble caught my eye. It was an immature Alexandrine parakeet of grass-green hues and sporting a maroon shoulder patch. But it was not flying high in the silver skies or perched on a lofty tree. It was squatting mournfully on a small muddy mound in a shallow pool about 10 feet away.
It made no attempt to fly off or emit panicky squawks but shuffled awkwardly in the mud. The parakeet only had its watery reflection for company. There were no adult parakeets around in a show of solidarity. It was obvious that ‘Alex’ the young parakeet for some reason (disease or impaired wings or stuck in the mud) was unable to take flight and had been abandoned by its parent group.
The bird’s eyes tugged at our consciences and our protective instincts were roused. But we decided to abandon Alex to nature’s jurisprudence. The parakeet had somehow fallen afoul of nature’s maxim: ‘survival of the fittest’. It would pay the harshest penalty for the young bird (a slow starvation death to nourish mother earth with its decaying remains or become a predator’s meal) unless its survival instincts spurred it in time and Alex effected a providential flight from a lonesome deathbed.
We wished Alex, as well as Siswan’s hungry predators, the best of luck and good health, and turned our backs on the funereal fires that nature was stoking for a condemned soul.
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