Near India Gate this April, a black kite dropped from the sky.

It was an ordinary afternoon when the call reached the rescue desk at Wildlife SOS.

When the team arrived, they found the bird lying still on the ground. Its wings were intact and its feathers unbroken, yet its body had almost given up. There were no visible injuries to explain the collapse.

The rescuers moved quickly. They placed the bird in the shade, administered fluids and monitored it closely. Within a few hours, the kite had regained enough strength to spread its wings and fly again.

Before that rescue had ended, another call came in from Chattarpur.

A juvenile black kite had collapsed. By the time rescuers reached it, the symptoms were almost identical: dehydration, heat stress and complete exhaustion.

Soon, a ring-necked parakeet was found grounded in a Delhi residential colony, unable to lift itself back into the air. In Uttar Pradesh, a juvenile flamingo was found struggling after prolonged exposure to extreme heat.

The list continued to grow over the following weeks.

Rock pigeons were picked up from railway stations, unable to move. Indian peafowl wandered into residential colonies. Mynas and owls appeared inside office buildings, embassies and institutional campuses, either too weak or too disoriented to find their way out.

Many of the birds were entering human-made structures in search of shade, water or relief, as though the city’s buildings had become their last refuge from the heat.

Experts say this changing behaviour reveals a much larger story about what rising temperatures are doing to wildlife in India’s cities.

The hardest weeks of summer began in April

For years, rescue teams across north India prepared for May and June as the most difficult months of summer. That was usually when temperatures peaked and wildlife distress calls surged.

Earlier this summer, that familiar calendar no longer held.

The crisis began in April.

Data from Wildlife SOS’s Rapid Response Unit shows that, in April 2026 alone, the organisation recorded nearly a 40 per cent increase in wildlife rescues across Delhi-NCR compared with the same month in 2025. These were the highest April rescue numbers in its history.

Bird rescues rose even more sharply, increasing by nearly 49 per cent. Rescues involving mammals and reptiles collectively rose by almost 24 per cent.

The trend continued through May.

Bird rescue cases across Delhi and Agra remained high. Taken together, April and May 2026 saw nearly a 21 per cent increase in bird........

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