Courtly and suave on the ramp. Bawdy and uncouth around the hearthstone. That is a two-line bio of the adult black-winged stilt — before and after parenthood.
The adult black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) has the air of a long-legged model with nary an inelegant step. Parenthood has a reverse-Cinderella effect on the bird, its quiet demeanour and fluid moves dissipating more quickly than acetone, and replaced by loud-mouthed cavilling and flying fits.
A nesting black-winged stint on the warpath, at Karapakkam along on August 03, 2021. Photo: Prince Frederick
The parent black-winged stilt would take off on extremely short almost-parabolic flights — more of a take-off from a trampoline — seeking to “brutalise” hangers-on around its nest. Descending on its “targets” like a parachutist, it however does not quite achieve the intended fire-and-brimstone effect. Just how terrorising can Jughead with his pencil-thin nose get? Add a pair of stalkly legs, and the ludicruity is complete.
On August 3, at a reedy-grassy and boggy patch outside the Karapakkam section of the Pallikaranai Marsh — the same patch that is consistently contributing to citizen-science data via eBird — this writer was in the gallery lapping up the flying stunts of a parent-stint.
On this day — as would have been on following days — there was a small scattering of black-winged stilts at this patch. A couple of them looked noticeably restless, cagey about the other species sharing the foraging grounds. One of them managed to frighten two greater painted snipes out of their wits. At one point, this stilt and and a snipe together seemed like a fleshy equivalent of an automobile mangle, as the latter let panic get the better of it and dissolved into a terrified clump of flesh and feathers.
- *With only minor variations in breeding timelines, the black-winged stilt’s nesting season is neatly locked within the April-August time frame, as stated by Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan (Vol. 2) by Salim Ali and S Dillon Ripley.
- *The species seems to have achieved balance in terms of parental investment with both male and female setting aside sufficient time and efforts for nesting activities.
- *Just as many ground-nesting birds, the black-winged stilt creates a nest with a little more than a scrape in the ground, carrying it out in marshy patches. As the Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan (Vol. 2) by Salim Ali and S Dillon Ripley points out, pebbles or dead vegetation may be gathered up, giving the nest a semblance of a shape.
This marauding (imagine an amused smile going with this epithet) black-winged stilt was also hollering incessantly about the loss of privacy — good form for black-winged stilts blessed with parental duties. Unyielding in its intensity and consistency, these alarm calls caused this writer to even carry out an audio recording on his mobile phone. When not raising a family, the black-winged stilt is usually a bird of few words, that notwithstanding its hugely flocking behaviour during the non-breeding season.
It seemed clear that the boggy patch had a black-winged stilt nest — or nests, as these birds usually nest in groups. Or, were chicks that needed to be protected?
On August 18, when the writer revisited the patch, the cause was out in the open. Two black-winged chicks were foraging, seeming self-assured. Contrast this with broods of birds such as the bronze-winged jacana that forage with one eye firmly fixed on the parent (in the polyandrous jacana’s case, it would be the father).
To what measure did the presence of their parents and other adult black-winged stints nearby contribute to these two chicks’ bluster?
A nesting black-winged stilt launches into two greater painted snipes at a boggy patch at Karapakkam, along Pallikaranai Marsh, on August 3, 2021. Photo: Prince Frederick
Black-winged stilt hatchlings are known to wear the bib right out of the egg and show up at the table and help themselves to the meal. They are low maintenance — in avian terms, and for the terminologically-inclined, nidifugous.
They are however probably not as quick out of the block as the chicks of many other ground-nesting birds like the red-wattled lapwing that, adding a tinge of hyperbole, arrive with a big part of their growing-up days spent as an eggling.
(“Field Notes” documents the various behaviours of the birds found in Chennai and surrounding districts, straight from their habitats.)