The Day I saw 40000 Flamingos os

 Pulicat Lake:  Pulicat, is one of the largest brackish water lakes in India. Situated in Andhra Pradesh, it is about 68 kilometres away, from my house,  beyond Ennore, north of Madras.                                                                                  Members of Madras Naturalists' Society undertake regular visits to Pulicat because of its proximity and  rich bird life. We made one such trip in December 1999 and we were richly rewarded like never before.... Madras Musings, a newspaper, in its edition dated  January 1-- 15, 2000,  published my account, which is given below under the title: THE DAY THEY SAW 40,000 FLAMINGOS.....                                                                                           "  All these  developmental activities planned for Ennore island -- mentioned on several occasions in these columns -- may, if they are not curbed, result in the picture-word painted below never being seen again. Is that what the planners intend? It would be tragic, if we never had reports like this, one Chandrasekaran of Madras Naturalists' Society made a month ago:                                                                        " Amidst intermittent showers, we, 15 members of MNS, sped on the SHAR Road towards Pulicat around 11A.M, after visiting Nellapattu Bird Sanctuary. After a few kilometres of travel, we had our first sighting of flamingos, about 200 in number, 500 yards away. We saw Lesser flamingos and Greater flamingos with several juveniles. The Lesser flamingos could be easily distinguished by the brighter pink plumage and by their small size. That was the humble beginning for us, as for the next one hour, we started sighting more and more of them, mostly to our right. Next was a flock of nearly 2,000 flamingos, but even that number paled into insignificance because we started seeing them in even greater numbers as we progressed towards SHAR Gate. At one stage, we could see thousands and thousands of Flamingos. We would have seen more than 40,000 flamingos, of which nearly 15,000 were sighted near the road itself.   .                     The sighting of Pelicans and Shovellers, 75 Painted storks, 300 gulls, 1000 pintails and a few Gulbilled Terns and White-backed vultures in Pulicat Lake was was over shadowed by the presence of Flamingos which seemed to be everywhere in Pulicat that day".              Pictures: Top -- The newspaper clipping. Middle -- A flamingo  in flight. Bottom left:  Flamingos in the lake (Both the Pictures credit: Dr R. Bhanumathi).  Bottom Right. A flamigo flock  from Google ).