Redstarts are, like most flycatchers, restive to the core, flitting about the ground or shrubbery incessantly… black redstarts are no exception, always hopping, seldom gliding, trying to make a quick work of the infinite little chores that recapitulate their existence lasting an average election cycle but getting tangled in them forever… there’s a vigour to their existence that gives away their migrant status in the high mountains… for long periods of torpor are the convention for those looking to survive the merciless winters in cold deserts…
They are old world – there must be a geological guffaw somewhere at this rather naïve attribution of ‘old’ to Afro-Eurasia just because some humans learnt how to sail before others – these passerines, plying their trade in a rather large across Eurasia and North Africa, like many of their brethren undertaking long and arduous journeys across continents just to find a small, safe nook to breed… the enormity of the tiny is just one of the countless ways one is reminded of their insignificance in this tapestry that teems with myriad life….
‘Twas, first and foremost, an escape from the dust… was what one felt arriving at grassy meadows of Nimaling in Markha Valley, finally gaining altitude after three days of following the contours of Markha River in these ocean bed thrust into the sky by landmasses at odds with one another… black redstarts had been ubiquitous throughout the hike… their high pitched calls bouncing off the shrubbery into days gleaming in the thin air and feeling sultry even in these arid climes…
With the clock striking four in the afternoon, one duly made for the riverside, the time being nigh for avifaunal activity… twixt the choughs, rosefinches and warblers, this pair of black redstarts caught the eye, the male, perched alone on a rock, pontificating upon the ways of the world, or so it seemed from the brooding look its rictal bristles enunciated, before being chided into parental duties and going about it rather begrudgingly…
The female was the quintessential busy bee too… for the breeding season is one of frantic activity, and the exasperations that go with it… it felt initially that ‘twas flaunting the bright berries and the bugs to the camera before one tracked its movement along the rocky riverside and discovered a wailing offspring in the wait, looking very similar to its mother that patiently pandered to its idiosyncrasies, the father looking to drop some food and then flee to find some solitude…
‘Tis only two or three weeks before it fledges and leaves an empty nest in its wake, charting its own journey through land, water and air… the parents would pack up too and move on to milder climes, hoping to return for another sojourn, navigating currents, evading raptors… for a migrant, the grass has to be greener on the other side…
Musing on black redstarts, Markha valley, Ladakh
