A dubious rarity

Java sparrow at Mudichur on September 19, 2026. This bird spotted at Mudichur by birders is likely a captive bird that slipped out of a cage. | Photo Credit: Jithesh Babu The backdrop can sometimes cast a sombre shadow over a stage pulsating with a grand achievement. Knowing the backstory can automatically signal restraint, cutting out celebration, even justified celebration, without a twinge of regret. An extensively reported event this year would make this idea clearer. Royal Challengers Bangalore cut out the victory parade following their triumph in IPL 2026 clearly because the “backdrop” of a tragic stampede the previous year loomed large casting a long shadow over a merry moment that played out on a grand stage. Something parallel to that, sans the sombreness, happened recently in the Chennai Metropolitan Area. Over a week’s duration, the start date being September 19, Mudichur in Tambaram witnessed a parade of birders out to catch a glimpse of a rare avian, so rare that when news of its sighting hit their "auriculars," some dropped their telephoto zoom lens. It was a Java sparrow (Padda oryzivora) found in parts of Indonesia, Java being one of them, where they are meant to be found. The sad story (actually, the backstory birders out here were aware of) is that this bird is also found where it has no business poking its beak around, and it is not to be blamed for that. Aviculture and, in a larger sense, human beings’ innate ability honed by greed to interfere with Nature’s delicate but sound systems are the culprits. The birders sensed this bird could have slipped past the open shutter of some cage here, and that knowledge tempered the sense of having found something rare. They clicked away still, but there was restraint in their posts about the sighting. Birders Jithesh Babu and Saravana Manian had discovered the Java sparrow in Mudichur serendipitously while seeking to pay another bird a visit, a passage migrant in Chennai. European Roller at Mudichur on September 19, 2026. | Photo Credit: Jithhesh Babu “On September 19, we were there looking for the European roller, which was reported to have been sighted at Mudichur,” says Jithesh. The European roller (Coracias garrulus) not showing up immediately, the birders ventured a little further in than they had expected to, and there it was, a surprise in a package of red, pink, grey, black and white: a Java sparrow with, probably until recently, a local address on its calling card.If the European roller had a sense of humour and the power of speech to express it, it surely would have rasped out “and you thought I was the surprise!” The European roller breeds in Europe and winters in Africa and is known to ink in Chennai as a pit stop on its iconic long-distance migration, almost treated as a sub category in migration, being dubbed “roller migration”. Last year, European roller sighting was reported from the Broken Bridge area of the Adyar Estuary.‘ Published - September 27, 2026 08:27 am IST