"I've Been Coming Here for 12 Years — I've Never Seen It Like This"

 

Thane Creek regulars say this flamingo season feels different. Some are already heading to Mulund Hills to find out why.

Ramesh Nair has been waking up at 5:30 every March morning for twelve years. The routine is always the same — a flask of chai, his old Nikon, and a forty-minute drive to the Thane Creek flamingo viewing point. This year, for the first time, he came back without a single usable photograph.

"There were some birds," he says. "But nothing like before. On a good day I used to count over a thousand in one frame. This time I counted maybe sixty. I stood there for two hours thinking I'd arrived too early. I hadn't."

He is not alone.

Across Mumbai's birdwatching community — a loose, passionate network of early risers spread across WhatsApp groups and Instagram pages — the mood this season is a mixture of confusion and curiosity. Thane Creek and Vashi, the two locations that have defined Mumbai's flamingo season for as long as most residents can remember, are reporting significantly lower footfall from the birds.

But the story does not end with absence. It continues somewhere else.

Over the past few weeks, a handful of birdwatchers have begun reporting something unexpected — flamingo sightings near Mulund Hills. Not dozens. Hundreds. Moving in formation, settling near water sources, behaving in every way like a flock that has found what it was looking for.

"Mulund Hills was never on my radar," admits Priya Desai, a wildlife photographer from Powai. "But I got a tip in one of my groups, drove there on a Sunday morning, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was like Thane Creek — but quieter. More peaceful. The birds looked... settled."

The science behind the shift points to El Niño — the climate cycle that has disrupted shallow water ecosystems across the subcontinent this year, reducing the food availability at traditional flamingo habitats. But for the people who have watched these birds year after year, the explanation almost feels secondary to the simple strangeness of the moment.

"Flamingos know things," says Nair, half-joking, scrolling through the disappointing shots on his camera. "I don't know what Mulund Hills has. But I'm going to find out."