Monsoon

I noticed that the wind had changed last Sunday, when I went for my walk at the Theosophical Society. Until three days before, the wind had been blowing from the south. On Sunday, when I got to the beach, it was blowing from the east, strong and steady. Walking towards the Adyar river mouth, I noticed a couple of flocks of what looked like Kentish plovers. They hadn’t been there before, and had probably just arrived from their summer homes far to the North, perhaps beyond India’s borders. Each flock was about 50 strong and they were superbly camouflaged against the sand. In fact I only first noticed them when they took off. I could get to within ten metres of them, but any closer, and they would take off, wheel around and settle on the sand a little distance away. Unfortunately, the beach is littered with paper and plastic bits, and each time one of these pieces flew towards the birds, they would take fright. It was sad that they couldn’t rest in peace even when there were no humans to disturb them. The next day the wind changed again, this time blowing from the north. It was clear that the northeast monsoon had set it. The plovers were gone. They had probably stopped over on their way further south, to Point Calimere or Sri Lanka. There were other migrants in the estuary though; a small flock of black winged stilts. Twenty years ago, flocks of two to three thousand stilts were a common sight here in winter. Today the flocks have dwindled to the low hundreds. The toxins in the estuary will perhaps do these in too, not very far in the future.