When I visited Bird Valley Park in Pune recently, I witnessed a curious scene. You can check out my pictures of the lake-park and ducks here in my previous post. Coming back the incident; here is the sequence of events which unfolded:
The lake has both complete white and spotted brown type of ducks.
(Above) Two brown ducks were swimming and enjoying in the lake
(Above) Suddenly a group of white ducks rushed towards them
(Above) More white ducks joined them and they started confronting the brown ducks as if there was going to be a gang-war
(Above) The brown ducks were threatened and one of the brown ducks, perhaps the male, is seen coming in front of the other duck which was perhaps female and it appeared as if he was trying to protect her. But the brown ducks were completely bullied. All ducks were also making noise.
(Above) After a while, it was all fine. The white dominating ducks were calmed down after having made their point and in a few minutes swam to a different area.
I do not know exactly what transpired among those ducks. But clearly the white ducks were united as a group and the brown spotted ducks were a separate team. There was certainly a tension between these two groups which did not turn into a full fledged street (lake) fight and no one was really harmed. Perhaps the white ducks sent a message to the brown spotted ducks. Was it a fight over territory which had food? Most likely. The white ducks also appeared much bigger in size and were stronger; giving them an edge.
After this incident, I am left wondering that perhaps racism is not really a human trait; is it? Perhaps even among some animals and birds, folks are treated differently based on their "color".
"Birds of a feather flock together" - is an old saying; how could I forget?
A curious incident indeed.
- Rahul Tiwary | Pune | March 2019
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