Crab Plovers at Tanga: We Healdath

Since more than half the world's population of birders is enduring 'the freezies' I thought this as good a time as any to post a hazy digiscoped image of two adult Crab Plovers, definitely one of my all-time favourite birds. "So easy in Tanzania!". They are part of a flock of over two hundred and fifty, who roost on the cement causeway at a waste water outlet near Tanga lapped by the waters of an always warm ocean. Occurring from the Arabian Gulf and upper Red Sea right across to Myanmar and Ko Libong in Thailand they are an Indian Ocean endemic par excellence. And they are utterly ignorant of frost and all its perils. 

Despite their black and white and grey-blue tones I feel they'd be a sight to warm the hearts and minds of many of those now suffering in the cold and darkness and despair - if only they could all become bird-watchers! 

Now that man's technosphere has attempted to usurp, to (temporarily) overwhelm, the biosphere I recall an invitation first read when I was young.

Ecologically the world is now faced with two alternatives: either a return to the muddle, misery and international malice of medieval times, or an advance to new adventures in forestry, farming, food-raising and the rational exploitation of wild resources, the tender preservation of natural communities for nature's sake, a new regime of mutual aid and , through responsibility for wildlife, self-education and re-education.

So wrote James Fisher in 1970. Which route do you believe we have been taking these past forty years?

Through technology, spun from an endless preparedness for war, we are now able to watch the radar images, and the satellite pictures of climate chaos upon our flickering screens, watch them as much as we may more simply watch the sky itself. We should continue to watch the sky, and watch the birds and insects, watch their movements and visible migrations - and then we will know for sure what's up and which way we must turn! 

(q.v. James Fisher's "Wildlife Crisis" Hamish Hamilton, London page 100 and E. Clerihew Bentley)

 

CPs digiscoped by Steve Rooke of Sunbird Wildlife Holidays