FIGHTERS IN FLIGHT

Winter migrants to India, the rosy starlings are a plague upon the locusts
IF YOU live in Delhi or in northern India, and stand beneath a peepul, banyan, neem or semul (or probably
any large flowering or fruiting tree) at the end of March or beginning of April, you may hear an incessant
sibilant chittering wafting down from the branches above. There's a restless excitement in the air, and when
you look up, you'll see the leaves flicker and tremble: there's something up there, actually multitudes of
somethings up there!
At last you spot them: restless mynah-like birds, but in strawberry pink and glistening black, some
displaying wispy "shendi" crests, trembling their wings and chattering non-stop. They're rosy starlings, or rosy
pastors, on their way back to their breeding grounds in eastern Europe or the temperate regions of southern
Asia. They've spent the winter in India and you may have met them in fields and pastures and grasslands all
the way down to the Deccan. They had snuck through northern India (and Delhi) probably sometime in
September the previous year and spread over the sub continent for six months of R & R, and raiding fields of
jowar and bajra as well as orchards.
And yes, they look like mynahs and for long were thought to belong to that garrulous clan, though now
scientists are saying that's not exactly right and no one still knows who they descended from. Hmm ... it
kind of figures... I did a bit of checking up on them ("research" the intellectually pompous would say) and
boy do they have some interesting characteristics and USPs.
Most migrants to India fly north-south and back again. Rosy-starlings like to be different they're east-west
migrants: they fly in from eastern Europe or south-west Asia. They don't have much of a worldwide reputation
having been deemed a species of "least concern" (I guess we could update even that status!). But they have
one huge redeeming feature, which ought to make them a species of immense value. They really go after locusts
and grasshoppers big time and farmers can't be more grateful to them than for that. Normally, they breed
between May and July, but if there's a plague of locusts about which they get wind of, they'll produce an
explosive baby boom in the blink of an eye. Eggs are laid pha-phat incubated for, perhaps, 10 days, and the
babies are out guzzling locusts in less than three weeks. The Chinese, canny as ever, even built artificial
nests to inveigle them to stay and breed and clean up the locusts in their fields, which otherwise would need
destruction by expensive pesticide. The pastors cleaned up the locusts to the extent that many of their babies got
none at all and starved! Even the tough Afghans are known to revere the species for their pest-controlling
abilities, though idiots in north-west India and Pakistan shoot them in large numbers, because they're
considered a juicy delicacy.
As for attitude (and belligerence), they have it in spades. When a flock and they like to move around
in large, intimidating numbers descends on a tree, they'll clear it of all other species. Even amongst
themselves, there'll be constant jostling and shoving and tu-tu-main-main. Males with love and lust on their
brains will erect their gelled crests, throw back their heads, shiver their wings and sing. When a few dive
down onto the grass, and hop, skip and jump after insects, others will promptly follow and they'll be
scrimmaging and hop-scotching all over one another in their haste to get the tidbits before each other like
people trying to climb over each other to get to the top of a queue. But what really is spectacular is when they
take to the sky...
If the chattering in a tree suddenly stops, like a switch has been thrown, look up quickly. The flock maybe
500-strong will have taken to the air, flying tightly bunched together, swift, direct and banking and swirling
like coiling swathes of dark smoke. All in pin-drop silence. (They're supposed to have flight calls too, but so
far I haven't heard them). When they zoom directly overhead, they'll remind you of a squadron of miniature
Spitfires, except that all you hear is the whirring of their wings. They'll circle around and land back on the
tree, and the chattering starts up.
By the third week of April, you might see squadron after squadron flying swiftly and intently overhead like
warplanes on a bombing mission. The locust-eaters are on their way home.
And if you are a locust or a grasshopper dreaming greedily of laying waste vast fields of grain, be very
afraid indeed....