"On 15 November evening while walking along the riverside road in the Theosophical Society at about 5.15 pm I spotted a pair of big greyish coloured long-necked birds at a distance in the Adyar Estuary. There were many other large birds there that day- at least 20 pelicans and several painted storks, but these were distinctly different. It was a hazy evening and the birds were far away beyond the small islands in the river, but through binoculars, I could identify them as Greylag geese by the bulky body, shape of the neck and bill and colouration. They were standing in shallow water and swam away after a few minutes.
Having never seen them in this location before, despite being a regular walker along the river path, and always checking the estuary for birds, I made some enquiries among MNS members and others if there are any earlier records of this species. Both V Santharam who is familiar with the Adyar estuary for the past 40 years and Dr Balachandran of BNHS who is the best bird migration expert confirmed there is no previous record here.
However, since my observation needed to be corroborated, I requested Geetha Jaikumar to also take a look when she went there. Fortunately, one the birds was still present on 17th Nov and she photographed it with her cellphone camera. Geetha's pictures confirm the sighting as the first record of Greylag Goose in the Adyar estuary.
On 18th November, a group of us again scanned the estuary with binoculars and scope from the same spot at around the same time and Geetha also looked out for them on subsequent days, but there was no further sighting. Perhaps the geese had moved away to the opposite bank where they were not visible, or had left the area.
Tara Gandhi "
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