The Living Air

Aasheesh Pittie takes you on a tour through bird behaviour, exploring one bird at a time.

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DISAPPEARING DABCHICKS

Some of my most delightful moments of birdwatching were spent one day in May 1984 near a small pond on the outskirts of Golconda Fort in Hyderabad, the erstwhile seat of the Qutub Shahi dynasty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was late afternoon, and the surface of the pond was touched with gold from a warming sun. I stopped beside this open sheet of water to observe the antics of some Dabchicks. As soon as one of them saw me come a little closer, it disappeared. Just like that, poof! There was not a single ripple to dimple the water.