Getting away from the mad rush and grind of the city, even it is just for a day, is helpful in unwinding and relaxing. One weekend, we really wanted a break and escaped to Kokrebellur near Maddur, Mandya, which is famous for its spot billed pelicans and the painted storks.
How did we go
Driving down from Bengaluru early one Sunday morning, my husband and I got on to the Mysore highway. Kokrebellur is 83 km from Bengaluru. After a breakfast of delicious ‘dosas’ and ‘maddur vadas’ at Maddur Tiffany’s we proceeded. Beyond Maddur, a narrow road took us through a rural environment flushed with lush green fields of sugarcane, paddy and swaying coconut palms. The nondescript hamlet had all the props of a typical rural scenario – small tiled mud houses lining narrow streets, bullock carts carrying loads of sugarcane, cows and buffaloes resting under the
shade of trees, little boys running around, and village belles tending to their chores. A whiff of cow dung and wet earth lingered in the air.
What we did
Getting out of the car, we noticed the silence and tranquility all around broken only by the chirping and clanking sounds from above. Painted storks, with their white, black and pink plumes shining in the morning sun could be seen busy feeding on the fruits of the trees, some tending to their chicks, others grooming themselves, checking their long wingspan, and a few darting to adjacent tree tops, all the while making clanking sounds with their long yellow beaks.
Some appeared to be posing for a vivid camera shot, with their huge wings stretched out and looking down at us. A few white spot-billed pelicans could be noticed perched on other trees, their yellow beaks and sagging skin bags hanging below their throats. Several large nests built out of dry twigs and leaves adorned the tree tops, holding the young and noisily chirping chicks.
This village was the natural habitat for these migratory painted ladies who visited the locale every year to feed, breed, nurture their chicks till they are ready for flight and then go back away to their distant native lands. This was the natural bird sanctuary called the Kokrebellur Pelicanry.
‘Kokre’ means stork and ‘Bellur’ means village of jaggery in Kannada, and hence the name. The uniqueness of this place is that the entire village is a borderless protected sanctuary. ‘Hejjarle Balaga’ (meaning ‘relatives of pelicans’) a naturalists’ group also works in unison with the forest department and the local villagers in providing protection to these winged visitors.
The Shimsha river along with several small tanks and ponds in the neighbourhood provides these birds with abundant supply of fish, supplemented by the fruits of the trees. A variety of common water birds are also found here. The storks and pelicans arrive from distant locations,and reach Kokrebellur soon after the monsoon season and re-migrate to their distant homelands in summer. The local village women are very sentimental about these birds and say that for them, these birds are like their own daughters coming home for delivery!
(The author can be contacted at vaskarun@gmail.com)
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