In the borderless world of the Great crested grebe

I dig my face into my jacket, trying to erase the cold biting at me. In front of me is the silvery Gandak river, behind which lie the gentle slopes of Nepal. The water ripples and laughs, the clear, cutglass air making its colours a little brighter. The river must be freezing, I think. 

- NEHA SINHA

Just then, a single head pops out of it. A bird with a white head ending in a brown-orange face, and a lovely crest on top. It is solitary; tiny in front of the large river; brave in the face of a swift current. It dives deeply into the water and is completely gone. There is no tail visible, no leg raking through the water. It re-emerges a few minutes later, looking neither soaked nor ruffled-like it had never left. There's something oddly plucky about it being there by itself, near the border of India and Nepal, in the shadow of a dam. I wonder how it feels about the cold water, and then I remember the Great crested grebe (GCG) has come from the Palearctic, a much colder place. The sighting of a single bird-my first migratory GCG of the season-is testimony that the river provides habitat for wildlife; that the borders created by us don't hold for our wilder friends.

This spirited grebe has shaped history in many ways. Once, its lovely feathers crested women's hats. The hats were so much in vogue (birds were hunted for them) that the Royal Society for Protection of Birds was formed in the UK to stop their hunting and exploitation. Over a century later, the bird made headlines this year again, as a subspecies of the GCG, the Australasian crested grebe, was voted the "bird of the century" in New Zealand. No less than the British-American comedian John Oliver had campaigned for it.

On its migration, the grebe I was looking at has crossed more than a few international borders. While we know borders as signifying different time zones and nationalities, for a wild animal, crossing borders often means finding habitat to duck wings or a head in.