A Sunday morning watching the ghost crabs around the Adyar estuary do their sideways dance, back and forth, in and out of their burrows.
The beaches are a mess but the crabs are delightful. They teach me to focus, be still and observe. I overlook the poop and the poopers, the trash and the trashers and just watch.
It is nearing high tide and the waves are crashing around and making quite a racket.
The crabs are sizing me up and keeping a watch on each other, it seemed.
When a group of young people walk by they vanish into their burrows and emerge when ‘the coast is clear’. First I see the telescope eyes and then I see their bodies.
Our dear Yuvan has written a lovely piece Sand Scavengers: Ghost Crabs in the Intertidal Zone of Chennai’s Elliot’s Beach and I was reminded of it as I watched them.
Suddenly a flock of sand plovers whizzed by and my focus shifted, the ghost crab spell was broken and I delighted in the sand plovers as they moved up and down the sand.
I still need to figure out if they are greater or lesser sand plovers or maybe I don’t need to figure out at all. That’s what the tern seemed to be telling me as it gracefully flew overhead unhurriedly, quite the opposite of the darting barn swallows and swifts.
I reached the mouth of the estuary where a sandpiper poked amidst the trash, cormorants sat around and egrets and pelicans fished.
A huge herd of sunbathing buffaloes blocked my return path and I discreetly and wisely choose to take the longer route around them.
As I came to the TS wall, the calls of the white-browed bulbuls and Tailorbirds increased in volume and the sound of the waves receded, muffled by the sands. I watched the bee eaters and sunbirds dart and call as I made my way back home, watching the Tawny Coster butterflies among the Cuban Buttercup and Ipomea flowers. A huge flock of cattle egret chose to pick their way through the undergrowth rather than pick ticks off that large herd of cattle. They took off in a hurry with indignant calls as the cricket match volume grew!
As I came close to Urur kuppam, the fish seller ladies were busy with customers, cleaning the fish as the cats waited patiently for the scraps (The dogs wait by the boats and the cats follow the ladies.)
More tomorrow.
