Munias of the Marsh

A short morning at a small wetland an hour from Delhi — Red Avadavats and Scaly-breasted Munias on bare reedstalks against a pale winter sky.

Sultanpur is the ten-minute counter-argument to anyone who tells you that wildlife photography requires a flight. Forty minutes from south Delhi, a small wetland sits patiently between two arterial roads, and in winter it fills, quietly and without fanfare, with bird life that you would otherwise drive a thousand kilometres for.

The munias on the reeds

We arrived at first light. The plan was modest — three hours, no equipment fuss, a picnic flask of coffee. The first hour gave us absolutely nothing except cold ears and a Eurasian Coot complaining about the world. Then, at perhaps eight, the reedbed at the western margin lit up — a small mixed party of Red Avadavats and Scaly-breasted Munias, working the bare reedstalks in the way only finch-family birds can: small, bouncy, almost weightless.

The Red Avadavat (sometimes called Red Munia) — the male in breeding-edge plumage is the colour of an old fire-engine — is one of those species that you photograph with a quiet kind of disbelief. He is improbably small; he is improbably red; he sits on a single bare reedstalk against a pale winter sky and you think: this is the only photograph I needed today.

Sultanpur is small. You can do it in a morning. But it is one of the great small wetlands of north India, and a December morning here is one of the cheapest, calmest gifts a Delhi-based photographer can give themselves.

Some of the best mornings of your photographic life will be the ones an hour from your front door.

← All Stories