From Mandaveli to Mahabalipuram: How the ashy woodswallow receded from urban spaces

As this bird’s breeding season reaches its tail end, a throwback to the days when nesting pairs could be seen in urban spaces, sometimes atop lamp posts. Despite being more easily sighted in Chennai and other bustling sections within its distribution range, an erroneous notion about the bird persisted for a long time

The ashy woodswallow — also known as the ashy swallow-shrike — inhabits palm trees where they chirpily attend to their domestic duties. Where only a smattering of palm trees exists, the bridge arm of a lamp post becomes home. Truth be told, in urban spaces, this adaptation is largely a thing of the past, existing mostly in birders’ anecdotes and ornithologists’ field notes. Ornithologist V. Santhanam had once written about a pair of ashy woodswallows that nested atop a lamp-post at a Mandaveli junction, in the Newsletter for Birdwatchers. “That was in the mid-1980s, and Mandaveli was relatively busy. Just near RK Mutt Road and the bus stand junction, there was a lamp-post close to the petrol bunk, where an ashy woodswallow pair was nesting successfully for more than a year,” recalls Santhanam, spotlighting how they disdainfully rejected a couple of palm trees standing diagonally opposite the lamp-post.