Ruddy shelduck is quite handsome is the first thought, looking at its upright stance not commonly seen with other waterfowl in its milieu… pinhole eyes that hardly reveal anything but a mild annoyance for the stalker, a neck that is slender when inquisitive and stout when suspicious… quintessentially overstrung yet surprisingly unruffled at times… the plumage echoes this paradox, the orange-brown shade neither bright nor dull, as if evolution was uncharacteristically undecided while conjuring this genealogy…
They are an intriguing lot, these waterbirds that traverse continents with nonchalance… an existence preoccupied with flying, floating and, unlike waders, many of whom take a similar trajectory to subsistence, filial imprinting… chided by predators and the seasons into a nomadic life, the pensive demeanour they exude maybe stems from these endless travails that they glide, waddle or paddle through…
‘Tis a breeder of the colder climes, the ruddy shelduck, preferring to brave the cold over predators… and a nocturnal feeder, preferring the cloak of darkness for its omnivorous saunters… mostly monogamous, a trait venerated across civilizations for millennia, finds them appreciation in middle eastern cultures, from textiles to tombs… the plumage that one finds rather basic finds a different interpretation elsewhere… from exhibiting fire and military might in the Sinosphere to matching the colour of a monk’s robes, an attribute that makes Buddhists revere and protect it…
An unassumingly hardy disposition beneath a naïve exterior, typical of those everyday superheroes whose narrative tends to go unnoticed slip beneath the razzmatazz is the conclusion one arrives at observing most duck and geese, and the ruddy shelduck is no different, the peripatetic nature of its migrant life, hopping on from one wetland ecosystem to the next, an annual health checkup that both seem to give each other… the diagnosis quite worrying in the Anthropocene… the avifauna seems unperturbed though, for civilizations are eventually pared down to their actual scale and significance from a bird’s eye view…
Musing on Ruddy shelduck, winter landscapes of Sambhar and Chambal, Rajasthan
