A ‘ballerina’ shows up at Nemmeli Salt Pans

This is the first sighting of the Demoiselle Crane anywhere in the Chennai Metropolitan Area and the second location in Tamil Nadu where the migratory bird has been documented. The only other records of the bird from Tamil Nadu have come from Vijayanarayanam Tank in Tirunelveli. Naman Bora and Amoggh Chatty found the vagrant bird feeding in the reeds at Nemmeli salt pans on February 28, 2026; the former would return to the spot the next three days and find the bird tenaciously clinging to this feeding spot

Marie Antoinette’s image has been shaped by words not her own, but consistently put in her mouth through the centuries. Two things she did not say continue to be misattributed to her. One, the suggestion that the poor French peasants could have cakes if they lacked bread. And the other, oddly, has to do with ornithology. She is believed to have given Demoiselle Crane its name impressed by its uber-feminine movements, largely dance-like. Anyone in India faintly familiar with the French language having taken it up to bump up the aggregate in their higher secondary board exams, as this writer did decades ago, would realise Demoiselle is from French and a variant of Mademoiselle, denoting a young lady. Back to Marie and her putative bird-christening abilities, this bird was given that name for its ultra-feminine demeanour but not by her. Here is why.

The infamous French queen was born in 1755, and an account of why the bird goes under the name Demoiselle Crane is found, with an illustration, in George Edwards’s A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, its various volumes written between 1743 and 1751. Even if the account about the Demoiselle Crane spilt out of the quilt-pen in 1751, it is a good four years before Marie arrived. The truth in fact runs deeper, the bird’s name and its significance preceding the book.

Why harp on Marie Antoinette and the Demoiselle Crane now? Here is answering this question nagging the reader. On the evening of February 28, 2026, two youngsters from Chennai were treated to a ballet performance by the “mademoiselle” at the Nemmeli salt pans. Naman Bora, a sophomore-student at VIT on Kelambakkam-Vandalur High Road and Amoghh Chatty, a Class X student of PSSBB Millennium at Semmancherry, both members of Madras Naturalists Society (MNS) sighted and photographed a lone vagrant Demoiselle Crane (Grus virgo) while it was feeding among the reeds and while it was in flight.

The record of the sighting is up on eBird; and it is the first documented sighting of the bird in Chennai.

A vagrant Demoiselle Crane photographed in the reeds at the Nemmeli salt pans by Amoggh Chatty on February 28, 2026.  | Photo Credit: Amoggh Chatty

Gnanaskandan Kesavabharathi, a senior reviewer at eBird, confirms it and places this individual bird in its life stage based on its features: “It is a sub-adult bird considering the white near throat and forehead, short white ear tufts and the brownish orange iris versus a reddish iris in full adults.”