Patch birding puts obscure lake in Chennai on a citizen science map

Puzhuthivakkam lake was hidden in plain sight.

From Velachery Main Road, this waterbody is easily get-at-able. From this arterial road, roll into Madipakkam Main Road (also known as Bazaar Main Road) and before long, the lake heaves into view.

Despite its door being always open, the mat lying in front of it remained undisturbed except by residents of houses ringing it. The lake was not having visitors scuffing their shoes on that mat. Even for a majority of those residents, the interest in the lake was hardly connected with the lake. The neatly-raised bund providing an ideal ramp to walk on, the space enabled them to limber up for the day. On hindsight, that was an opportunity missed, an opportunity to record natural history. There was some birding interest from time to time, but it was desultory.

The tide begin to turn in 2017-2018 when a resident not of Puzhuthivakkam, but of a nearby area began to work the lake into his morning walking route — at first, once a week which would evolve into an everyday engagement. Fortunately for natural history, he was a binoculars-carrying and telephoto lens-lugging fitness walker.

Under the doting gaze of someone genuinely interested in the lake for the lake’s sake, it began to reveal its charms.

That gaze belongs to birder A.M. Aravind and it has only become more intense. The results of the sustained gaze has ensured other pairs of eyes were drawn towards the lake and what it offered.

“From 27 species in 2017 to 93 species now on eBird, Puzhithivakkam lake has come a long way,” says Aravind, clarifying a great number of feathers had been there all along, but not enough pair of human eyes to acknowledge their presence. The lake had been “underbirded”. The Puzuthivakkam lake and the Pallikaranai marshland are separated by eight kilometres or thereabouts, and was bound to mirror avian movements associated with the marsh, but this data was waiting tediously long to be mined for want of keen and interested pairs of human eyes.

“Initially, I was going to the Ram Nagar Swamps and I would head to the Puzhuthivakkam lake once in a week. In the last three to three-and-a-half years, it has become a daily thing. I had also moved house and I was closer to the Puzhuthivakkam lake than Ram Nagar Swamps,” explains Aravind.

(For the benefit of Martians unfamiliar with the Madipakkam region, Ram Nagar Swamps is essentially water-logged plots where birds moved in before their human, legally-entitled owners did. With the humans “reclaiming” their land by building houses, the Ram Nagar Swamps in now almost dead in terms of avian activity.) Back to Puzhuthivakkam lake, Aravind notes that during the last wintering season, birders could see the Indian Pitta every single day.

Last season, garganey showed up. This season, the whiskered terns having been doing mad sorties over the lake, dipping into it to fuel up. Aravind further remarks that the Asian pied starling’s nesting activity at the lake has been intense this season.

“The crested winged cuckoo also showed up; it sojourned for a week,” says Aravind. The presence of trees around the lake draw such avian life. Among his greatest finds at the lake, Aravind counts the mottled wood owl, which he heard hoot. He also has a few non-Avian records that are worth a mention.

He explains: “I had a clear sighting of a Southern Birdwing butterfly. But, the bigger news is that Indian Flapshell turtle (which is “vulnerable” on IUCN scale) nested this year and I saw nestlings and have some terrible photos of the young ones. But, reasonably good photos of the adult.”

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