Earlier this year, I was visiting East Sikkim. Staying at a homestay in the tiny settlement of Khimseeka, not far from Pakyong, I was treated to a wide variety of bird sightings, including both old friends and many new species. One morning, I woke up to a familiar trill and thought I must be dreaming: the effect of drinking too much chhang. In fact, the chhang was dilute, not so much was drunk after all, and this was the call of the Tickell’s Thrush, though I did not remember it at the time. I walked up the narrow forest road leading to the homes of the local Gurung family of Parkha. And there it was, a small, myna-sized blue-black bird, hopping along the road, calling as it went. 

I was delighted to remember the bird from past sightings. In my dreams, and in the wilds. A month earlier, I saw a male sitting on the top of a deodar tree at my home in Landour in distant Uttarakhand. And in the dead of winter, two months afore, I saw it skulking in the bushes at the wildlife camp that shelters me in Panna, even further away, in central India. And here it was, now in spring in East Sikkim. 

What a remarkable triangulation of my favourite places, of the best of my life in nature. Finally, I am at home in Khimseeka and in my memories, merging past and present, winter and summer, the Himalayas west and east, the Himalayas and Vindhyas, the hills and the plains of Hindustan. The small bird reminds me of the oneness of life. 

If the Tickell’s Thrush can survive in pockets in Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Bundelkhand, this surely speaks for the health of its food chain. The varied ecologies of the lower Himalayas in summer and down to peninsular India in winter nourish the Tickell’s Thrush in a vast and varied landscape. In the absence of specific studies, we can only assume the same set of perils undermines this fragile web of life, as elsewhere in mountain areas: deforestation, roads, and dam construction. 

I can’t be sure of the message of the Tickell’s Thrush; perhaps there is none. Other than the personal blessing that I read into its identification. To accept the gifts of nature, whilst at home in such wonderful places, now even linked by the Thrush. A message of reassurance.

After this sighting, I started stringing the linkages that should have been evident from the sightings of other birds in sublime places in my life. While finishing school in Darjeeling, I recall first seeing the Black-necked Crane in eastern Bhutan, at a location called Chutenkora, beyond the Trashigang Dzong. Years passed by. I grew up (it can be argued). Important people in my life have gone away. Others came. The world changed. I saw other countries, studied, and worked far away. 

And then, two years ago, I took my daughters to see the stars at Hanle in eastern Ladakh. The entire latter half of the journey, from the Indus River at Nyoma to the Hanle River at Loma and beyond, we saw the magnificent thung-thung-karmo Cranes. Even beside the ribo tents of the Changpas, they strutted around without any care. I learnt the Ladakhi cranes do migrate in winter, not across the plateau to lakes and marshes in Tibet, where they abound, but eastwards across the Himalayas, to lower altitudes and more plentiful food. To Chutenkora in Bhutan, where I saw them, and to the Zemithang valley drained by the Nyamjang Chu in Arunachal. Another bead in this rosary of avian connections.

Ladakh hosts many unique migrants during the short summer. Coming up in summer from the Himalayan region to the trans-Himalaya, the western edge of the Tibetan plateau, we have the Golden Oriole. Fortuitously, I just heard the bird in Delhi, back on its way southwards for the winter. At Hanle, I was surprised to see the resident Eurasian Eagle Owl (hemachalana), hiding among the rocks of the Digpa-Ratsa ri in the daytime. This was again a redemptive sight, since in winter I migrate to the Ken River in Panna, Madhya Pradesh, seeing the bird’s distant relative, the Indian or the Rock Eagle Owl (bengalensis), which nests in katjamun trees (Syzygium fruticosum) in islands midriver. 

I have always been impressed with the singing of the Grey-winged Blackbird, seen and heard regularly in Landour, but had no idea that this bird also connects Dharamsala to Lhasa, in the memory of Dharamsala’s most famous resident, who used to hear it in his childhood at the Potala Palace, and calls it ‘Jolmo.’

Similarly, it is another friend of old, the equally large Brown Fish Owl, seen fishing along the Ken River, that I was also pleased to see at the edge of the Gulma Tea Estate, near the Mahananda River, off the winding Hill Cart road from Sukna to Rongtong, not a half hour from Siliguri in the Darjeeling district.

Across the Himalayan range, along the southern fringes, among the Shiwaliks, the Duns, the Churias, the Mahabharat Lekh, and the Duars, we have the farmers of the forest, the gentle giants, the Hornbills, linking up and helping spread the seeds of native trees (upto 12,000 seeds per sq. km. in a day at Namdapha, and as far away as 10km) in the remaining fragments of the vast sub-Himalayan forests of old. While we still see the awe-inspiring Giant Pied Hornbill, and its smaller cousins, the Oriental Pied and Grey Hornbills, among fruiting Fig trees, as we travel east, there are yet other Hornbills. And Barbets, no less devoted to the consumption of ripe figs. 

At Latpanchar, on Tarsing trees (Beischimedia roxburgii), besides the old cinchona plantations, above the Tista River at Kalijhora, and north of the Mahananda Sanctuary, I was fortunate to see the Rufous-necked Hornbill. No longer found westwards in East Nepal, the bird’s range extends eastwards to Arunachal. A Rufous-necked Hornbill even visited my favourite birding homestay in Kewzing in South Sikkim. Occasionally, another visitor from Bhutan and Arunachal crosses the Tista to Latpanchar, the Wreathed Hornbill, but I am yet to be granted an audience. 

Thinking of these landscapes that the birds link up, whether as residents or migrants, has left me in awe. This is the essential unity north and south across India, east and west across the Shiwaliks and the Himalayas, of South Asia, of our links to Tibet and Central Asia, even to farther Europe and Siberia.

Why should the distribution of the Jolmo be a surprise when the entire trans-Himalayan landscape is populated by resident birds overlapping with Tibet? Having seen the White-winged Redstart on ice floes in the Gurdongmar Tso in North Sikkim, I should not have been surprised to find it at the twin lakes of the Tigu Tso below the base camp of Kang Yatse in the upper Markha Valley in Ladakh. Crossing the Kongmaru La to leave this valley, I was fortunate to find other old friends from Sikkim: the Hume’s Ground Pecker, the unique Horned Lark, and a bouquet of snow finches (Tibetan, White-rumped, Plain-backed).

Nothing can be more impressive than the trans-Asian migration of ducks from Siberia via Tibet and Ladakh to the plains in Hindustan, even as far as the tanks and jheels of the far South. While the Geese are reducing in number, the Pochards and Gadwalls, Pintails and Shovelers, are still coming across the Himalayas, and I see them in the Hauz Khas jheel at the Deer Park in Delhi. Flights of cranes are regularly seen silhouetted against the night sky in Jabbarkhet in October, as they have just crossed the Great Himalayas in one high hop, without stop or rest. 

Other Himalayan migrations are local. Our high mountain birds come down to the middle altitudes. The middle-altitude birds migrate down to the foothills and the Shiwaliks. There is a short period when the middle hills have yet to receive their winter migrants, while the summer migrants have descended. This must surely be timed to perfection to help the insect population recover. 

And so, I am now waiting in Landour for the arrival of the Pink-browed Rosefinch, the Brown Bullfinch, the Altai Accentor, two intermingled grosbeaks (Black-and-yellow and Collared), two Bush Robins (Orange-flanked and Golden), temperate Thrushes (Scaly, Mistle, and Chestnut), and a clutch of Titmice (Rufous-vented, Spot-winged, Grey-crested, and Coal) from higher up, maybe my old haunts at Harsil, Lambidhar, Sukhi, and Dayara. Having said farewell, till the next spring, to the Maroon Oriole, assorted Minivets, the Long-tailed Broadbill, the Rusty-cheeked Scimitar Babbler, the Red-winged Shrike-Babbler, Barbets (Himalayan, Blue-throated), and Flycatchers (Tickell’s, Little Pied), all going down to their beleaguered haunts in Dehra Dun; I can imagine them in Thano, at Chanderbani, and along the Suswa River in Phandowala. 

Some high-altitude birds will bypass this last Himalayan range from Bhadraj to Rani Chauri, including the heights of Benog, Deo-ki-tibba, Beli-ka-danda, Dhanaulti, and Surkanda Devi, and meet us directly in the plains of Hindustan this coming winter (including the Hoopoe, assorted Wagtails, Thrushes (Orange-headed and Blue Rock), Warblers (Greenish, Hume’s, Common Chiffchaff), the European Blackbird, the Common Rosefinch, the Great Tit, the Olive-backed Pipit, and the ubiquitous Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher). 

Even as bird populations plummet (half of all bird species worldwide are in decline and one in eight is threatened with extinction), what a relief to still have old friends at all altitudes, in all seasons, and in beloved geographies. And also connecting these landscapes, connecting the past and the present, into a single, joyous tapestry woven with the wonders of life.

Himraj Dang writes on environmental issues.

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