One of my friend Arun Gupta, an avid birder and who owns a well known hospitality property Shaheen Bagh at Dehradun told that a large number of gulls come to the Yamuna Ghat near I S B T in the heart of Delhi. Initially I did not believe it but I thought of verifying it. Accordingly I went to the designated place on 1st December 2012 in the early morning . At the first sight I could observe a few birds. Slowly and slowly saw a number of them coming from metro bridge side and made themselves comfortable on the water. I also observed a flock of birds coming from Okhla side. The ghat is between two well known marks. On the left is metro rail bridge and on right flank is old iron rail bridge which is more than 100 years old. One of the boat man at the Yamuna Ghat informed that these birds start visiting this ghat from Oct and remains up to end of Feb .
We could see a large flock of birds coming from the east as well from the west. These are black or brown headed gulls. When they arrive in Delhi the head is not black but by the time they are ready for their backward journey to the breeding habitat the head bears the black or brown color.
The question is why these birds come to such a place which has the dirtiest water in DELHI as all the drains outlet is in the Yamuna river. In fact we should not call this Yamuna river as it has lost its identity and this has become a big NALA. We observed that some persons come daily with namkeen seb or bhujia. They hire a boat and sail to the middle of the river and off load the entire content in the water. Immediately the gulls in hundreds pick up the morsels from the water. One can appreciate it when one observes it.