Mumbai’s flamingos stamped!

Flamingos, the visitors to the financial capital of Mumbai have got a postal cover!

Coinciding with the International Day of Forests, the India Post has released a special cover - “Flamingos - Mumbai’s flagship winter visitors’.

Chief Postmaster General, Maharashtra Circle, Veena R. Srinivas released a special cover in presence of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Mangrove Cell, Mumbai, Virendra Tiwari, Postmaster General, Mumbai Region, Swati Pandey, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit, Adarsh Reddy and Director, Sanjay Gandhi National Park, G Mallikarjuna.

More than one lakh Lesser Flamingos and Greater Flamingos migrate to Mumbai during winters.

The Greater Flamingo is around 5 feet tall and whitish-pink in colour while the Lesser Flamingo is around 3 feet tall and rose-pinkish in colour.

In fact, the Thane Creek includes the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary (TCFC), spread across 1,690.5 hectares, and will be the first Ramsar Wetland in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

Flamingos were first spotted in Mumbai in 1994.

In fact, the two types of birds of this species Greater flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus) and Lesser flamingos (Phoenicopterus minor) are seen here and this prompted the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) to join hands with Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS-India) to protect the environs and help in promoting wildlife tourism in this megapolis.

They start arriving in October, nesting in mud-flats and leave before the onset of monsoon.

Most of these birds, which are found here, arrive from the Great Rann of Kutch in neighbouring Gujarat. Some palaeontologists and ornithologists believe that they are the birds, which is a link between the family of birds comprising storks, herons, ibises, spoonbills and cranes and the group that comprises ducks, swans and geese.

While Greater flamingos are one of the tallest birds found in India (average height of nearly four feet), the Lesser flamingos compensate for their shorter stature with their colour's richness. While the bigger ones have light pink legs and a few streaks of pink on their feathers, the smaller ones have deep pink feathers and almost red legs and a black bill. In the twilight, they look like flames and hence the name has been derived.

Besides Great Rann of Kutch, they are also found in Point Calimere in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, Chilka in Orissa and Sambhar in Rajasthan. In Maharashtra, a few are also seen in Solapur and Aurangabad.

But what has attracted them to Mumbai - they like saline and alkaline water. Soda lakes, salt lagoons and mud-flats form the habitat of flamingos for their food which chiefly comprises crustaceans, worms and blue-green algae, which are abundant in alkaline waters.

Also, a special pack of 10 Picture Postcards on ‘Avian Diversity in Maharashtra and Goa’, another pack of five Picture Postcards on Leopard with Special Cancellations and AV reality were released on the occasion. These are available for sale at the Philatelic bureaux of Mumbai General Post Office (GPO), Panaji HO (Goa), Nashik HO, Aurangabad HO, Pune HO and Nagpur GPO.

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