Being a resident of Delta, BC, Canada, i live in the coastal region bordering the pacific ocean. Consequently, I have seen my share of plovers, particularly the black bellied plover, and, occasionally, a golden plover. These are shore birds with a difference. To start with, they are not always at the shore line and can be seen further inland, much like many other shorebirds. But unlike the usual group of peeps – sandpipers – these are slightly more bulky and less streamlined, with a recognizably thicker and robust beak. Clearly, they are designed to digest a different range of food from your usual dunlin or pectoral sandpiper.
I have always found it difficult to see plovers up close, no matter where I sit or stand, Open shorelines offer little camouflage for someone like me and I have never taken the trouble of carrying my own blind.
Lastly, I see far more black bellied plovers than I see American or Pacific golden plover.
But all that changed when I came to Manitoba, and went north to Churchill by the Hudson Bay in October 2022, in the hope of seeing some polar bears in the wild. Apart from polar bears, I ended p seeing a lot of plovers up close. And voila, they were golden plovers, and with no confusion on the species because the “gold” in the golden plover was so brilliant and so close to me.
All I had to do was stay still, hold the camera to my eye, and wait for the wary bird to step out of the bush, in the open, without scaring it off.
The world may be entering the twilight zone. I myself, at my age, may never be able to return to Manitoba to see the diminishing groups of polar bears again. I may never again see the beautiful golden plover so close in the bush again.
But for now, I was thankful for the planet offering me another glimpse of how life should’ve been.
এত কথা আছে, এত গান আছে
এত প্রাণ আছে মোর,
এত সুখ আছে, এত সাধ আছে
প্রাণ হয়ে আছে ভোর।
Translation – I have so much to say, so many words, music, so much pleasure, and desire still left in me. It still fills my life to the brim.
– Part of a poem by Tagore, written in Bengali, over a century ago, explaining how frozen ice in the mountains breaks free and releases itself climbing down into torrential cascades in spring rivers, spanning through the land, offering life sustaining catalysts, breaking the chain of immovable frozen silence of the iceberg, and exploding into colourful music of life and till it reaches the ocean.