NEW DELHI — Nursed
back from near death, a skittish vulture flaps its wings and returns to
the grey skies above India's capital after weeks of tender care from two
devoted brothers.
اضافة اعلان
New Delhi is home to a magnificent array of
predatory birds, but untold numbers are maimed each week by kite strings, cars
and other grave encounters with human activity.
A fortunate few are found and cared for by
Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, siblings who run a rescue group devoted to
injured creatures at the top of the avian food chain.
Both men are fighting an uphill battle:
their patients are considered ill omens, and few donors are willing to shell
out in support of Wildlife Rescue, their shoestring operation on the city's
outskirts.
"There's a superstition in India that
birds of prey are unlucky birds," Shehzad, 44, tells AFP.
Junior veterinary doctor Rajkumar holding an injured bird at the Charity Birds Hospital in Gurugram. (Photo: AFP)
"They are not liked by many. Sometimes
people hate them."
When they were younger, the brothers found
an injured predatory bird and carted it to a "vegetarian" veterinary
hospital — one caring exclusively for herbivores — only to despair at the
staff's refusal to treat it.
Eventually, they began taking similarly hurt
birds home to help them recover.
"Some of the birds started flying back
into the wild, and that gave us much-needed confidence," Shehzad
said.
Now, on the roof of their small office, a
huge aviary hosts a colorful assortment of raptors in various states of
convalescence.
Among them are endangered
Egyptian vultures,
instantly recognizable by their bright yellow beaks and tousled cream crowns.
A colony of the species lives at a waste
dump in Delhi's east, drawn by the pungent refuse dumped there by surrounding
slaughterhouses and fish markets.
One of their flock was recently returned to
the wild by the brothers after being wounded by the taut string of a kite.
Kites are popular in the city, and Saud says
the
Wildlife Rescue clinic takes in half a dozen birds each day that are
injured after colliding with them.
In a treatment room, he carefully jostles
with one flapping patient still ensnared by a wire, a bare wing bone peeking
through a bloodied clump of feathers.
Successful treatment depends on how soon the
injured birds are brought to their attention, Saud said, pointing to another
bird in obvious pain, with discolored edges around an old wound.
New Delhi is home to a
magnificent array of predatory birds, but untold numbers are maimed each week
by kite strings, cars, and other grave encounters with human activity. (Photo:
AFP)
"He will die in a few days, his wound
is already gangrenous," he tells AFP.
'We are the destroyers'
Delhi has grown at a remarkable pace in
recent years, and the sprawling megacity is now home to about 20 million
people.
The loss of natural habitat and smog --
Delhi is consistently ranked among cities with the world's worst air pollution
-- has strained the cornucopia of bird species nesting around the capital.
As was the case for other ecosystems reeling
from human encroachment, India's strict coronavirus lockdowns were a massive
boon to the city's bird population, veterinarian Rajkumar Rajput tells
AFP.
Rajput runs another charity clinic for
injured birds in Delhi's south, largely caring for doves, pigeons and more
gentle feathered friends than the carnivores nursed by Shehzad and Saud.
He is an adherent of the Jain faith, which
maintains a strict prohibition on animal slaughter, and the few raptors he does
treat are kept on a vegetarian diet.
Rajput warns the brief respite granted by
the lockdowns is ending and the tide is beginning to turn back.
"The distance between humans and birds
has only been increasing. We are unable to bridge this distance because people
are gradually losing their love for nature," the 38-year-old said.
"These birds are the builders of
natural environment, and us humans are the destroyers."
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