Day 10 - Genus Riopa and the colours of the rainbow!

Genus Riopa from Thiruvalluvar Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, IN on July 07, 2025 at 07:35 AM by flowergirl_madras � iNaturalist

After a warm and still night, the sun was out rather too bright and early for me.

Today's morning walk was not on the beach, therefore, but in the bylanes of Kottivakkam.  The lanes of Raja Gardens is a lovely place - there are many wild, untended empty plots and leaf litter by the side of the roads.  Garbage collection is good, and there is no stray dog feeding, and that keeps the population of stray dogs down.  The walking "hazard" here, is the two popular neighbourhood schools, with parents whizzing this way and that on their two wheelers, making sure their children each on time! 

I digress, as usual.

We saw two white-breasted water hens in one of the empty plots, along with this skink

Genus Riopa for sure.  But is it a Common Dotted Garden Skink Riopa punctata or a 

White-spotted Supple Skink Riopa albopunctata, I could not say.  What do you think?

The small legs of skinks makes them move like snakes, slithering along, rather than scooting along. My friend also slithered away into the moist undergrowth near a leaky pipe.  It was a young one, 3-4 inches long from head to ail, with that lovely red tail.  The tails (like lizards), can regenerate - they will drop them when attacked.

The colours of the rainbow in an oil slick on the road!

I am hoping for rains tonight!

Day 9 - My first glimpse of Maya the Shaheen this year

 July 6th 2025

Our MRC Nagar Shaheen falcon - christened Maya - arrived this year on 30th May 2025, two days after I left the city for a stint in Bangalore.  

MRC Nagar's Leela business centre building may be abandoned and unoccupied by humans, but for the birders of the city, it is a very happening building - 

Vismaya the peregrine is a resident in the winter.

Maya the Shaheen is here through the SW monsoon.  This is the sixth monsoon she has been sighted.  From 2020 onwards.

Arrival dates: (Courtesy Sanjeev)

26th June 2020
31st May 2021 
2nd June 2022 
25th June 2023
9th June 2024

30th May 2025

She comes in with the monsoon winds, and every year we watch her movements - her hunts, preening, her ramp walks on the balustrade.  We provide much curiosity and amusement to the citizens of MRC Nagar who are bemused at our fascination with a bird.

She's the bird with the fastest dive. Falcons are awesome.  As GK, our Raptor Guru says, "It's a Shaheen female based on the longer  moustachial stripe & the overall build.  Shaheen Tiercels are quite compact & small, with a short broad moustachial stripe.

And we assume it's Maya based on the perches she take, her routine, all that. If another female reaches here & follows all that of Maya, it's practically not possible to find out unless they're a permanent visible clues in non-feathered parts."

I have recorded seeing her on 16th June 2024, both in the morning and in the evening on eBird.

Morning 6am was with Sagarika, Ramanan and his son.

6.05 - No bird on usual perch from the Leela viewing point
6. 35 - A black kite flew close, pigeons were disturbed 
7.05 - We walked towards the police tower, saw her taking a dive and returning to perch away from us, Northern side, then moved towards North West and moved southeast before flying towards Leela at 7.29 am. It was not well settled and kept moving its head.
724 - Wing Stretching
729 took off toward the East
742- Not seen in the usual place, but corner ledge, facing Jains.
8.00 - Wing stretched and flew towards Jain making 2 circles
803 - Back without kill, perched on window rail, finally seen facing towards the glass. Looking at own reflection perhaps

Pictures in the ebird list here.

Evening 530 pm ebird list

She did a spectacular aerial display of diving, gliding and soaring over the Business Tower.

Circling the Leela building.
535 pm - circled and chased a pigeon - failed hunt.  
flew around the roost area and then a little south, then circled back and was seen over the main Lee hotel for a long time.  
No successful hunt observed.

June 15th 2025 pictures from Hrishu.  I was not there.

Photo by Hrishu.  Falco peregrinus peregrinator

Photo by Hrishu. Falco peregrinus peregrinator

I finally got a live Darshan this morning!  Thanks to Hrishu and Aaditya's message that she was sighted.

See that little black blob on the railing?  Well that is the falcon who has turned her back on us.

 Here's the Ebird list for the morning, from Hrishu.

Hopefully, I will see her more regularly in the coming weeks.

Day 8 - Morning walk observations

 5th July 2025

Morning coffee with the Munia in my balcony.  He/she comes and investigates  the Kopsia pot with soft pips, quite different from the loud and piercing calls of the Tailorbird.  

Off for our morning walk.  It is a Saturday, the beach is buzzing with human activity of all sorts.  The breakfast lady is doing brisk business, the crow feeding man is on the beach surrounded by more than a murder of crows, the dogs are lolling in the sands after their barking exertions of the night, and the Urbaser crew is hard at work cleaning up after us messy denizens.  Fruit seller lorries, vegetable vendors, walkers, joggers and strolling cattle - and you get the picture.

We escape via the bylanes into the quieter Valmiki Nagar neighbourhoods, where the Indie doggies and their pet parents are having a conference,  and then to the Kalakshetra road, where the girls are hurrying to dance class, the Coucals are calling in the trees and drongos are busy catching dragonflies.

We head back via the large peepul tree, the ISKCON centre and boys busy putting up the announcement for a cricket tournament.

It is the shortcut back, via the Valmiki Nagar thickets that reveals all my non-human observations.

An Ashy Prinia called from the thickets and flew as we walked past.  

Ravan's Mustache (Spinifex littoreus) grasses spread out on the sands and a couple of lost ghost crabs scuttled away from sight.

The Giant Calotropis plants were filled with bees, wasps and butterflies.  Sekar waited patiently as I malingered and chased the gram blues, the Common Lime butterflies and the Emigrants. 

Mottled Emigrant (Catopsilia pyranthe) nectaring on Flannel Weed

I vainly attempted some phone photography but the butterflies were too frisky and skittish.  Or maybe just busy.  I did get this Mottled Emigrant, and I marvelled at the camouflage - check the colours - butterfly and leaf.  

The sands are dotted with this Flannel Weed - so named because the surface of its leaves are covered with fine hair, giving it a flannel-like feel.  it is from the Mallow family and native to India.

Another yellow beauty.  Large Caltrops Pedalium murex.  Flowers of India puts the Tamil name as ஆனைநெருஞ்சி Anai-Nerunci,

I loved the symmetry in the arrangement of the leaves as well.

We were soon back home, armed with some greens and tomatoes from our familiar veggie vendor, who was being engaged in friendly banter by the regular walking crew.

More tomorrow, then.

Day 7 - Red and Black

 4th of July

A Common Mormon female I spied

Her mimicry skill cannot be denied

She disguises as a toxic Rose

Right under your very nose

Predators give her a berth a mile wide. 

She nectared on the ixora so red 

Moving  from flower head to head

I watched in delight 

Her fluttering flight

Black, red and white wings outspread. 

She could be Cyrus, Stichius  and Romulus

The disguises of female Papilio poly-tes 

She seems to dwarf 

the male of one morph

And all this she does with no fuss!

*******

Papilio polytes- Common Mormon female in Romolus morph, where it mimics the poisonous Crimson Rose

Refer Batesian mimicry for more fascinating stuff.

Day 6 - Fruits of Nizhal's labour

 July 3rd

On Tuesday, I went to the TTUF Nizhal park to help with watering of the semi-grown saplings there.  Managed entirely with volunteers, the park is a beautiful place.  I visit too rarely these days.  

I joined the relay of merry and chirpy young volunteers with watering cans going up and down the central path.  I had a good workout - carrying those five litre watering cans, two at a time.  😅

I watched the dragonflies and grasshoppers, heard the babblers and the mynas in the trees.  

Magizham - Mimusops elengi - one spectacular red fruit with a background of dark wavy green.  

Arjuna fruits - Terminalia arjuna - hung in abundance, ridgy and starry.  

The Crepe Myrtle's purple flowering spikes were replaced by these fruits.  Ripening - moving from green to this dark brown.

And this!  The Noni tree was in flower and fruit!  Morinda citrifolia

I sat this afternoon and tried to sketch them. 

The wavy edges of the magizham leaves were beyond me, and the Noni maybe looked ore like a pineapple, and the Arjuna fruits - I need to figure how to sketch a ridge.  

An exercise of mindfulness this afternoon.

Day 5 - watching Papilio

2nd July

From my window, the Moringa tree flowers I see. At midday yesterday, the creamy white flowers against the bright green leaves, peppered with the old yellow leaves sway in the slight breeze.

It is warm but that doesn't deter the Lime Swallowtail butterflies from their nectaring activities I find. There are two that I can see, as I reach for the camera. Cream on cream.

The camera focuses on the 'wrong' things - that drying leaf, the pigeon net in the foreground - before finally figuring out where my interest lies.

Papilio demoleus comes into focus! And I am happy with the outcome.

This most common butterfly, I still find so pretty. The creamy spots, the little blue and red tinged spots on the large dark body. And to think it will be dead in maybe 4 days or less.

Day 4 - Framed!

 July 1st 2025

Half the year is gone!

The window

frames

glimpses.

A Gentle peek of the outside

Freezing a Munia moment

Why is the munia a quiet visitor?

and the sunbird a chirpy one?

Day 3 - The dawn chorus

 Jun 30th 2025

Red-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus cafer)

I love the mornings when the crow chorus is muted and I hear the other members of the  dawn orchestra.

Today was one such.  The crows were in the distant trees and the red vented bulbuls were on the closer Teak tree. I lay in bed listening to their to-to-doo calls, back and forth.  As I lay in bed, I pictured their alert coal black heads cocking this way and that, as they called.  Sometimes tails fanning. 

Birding by calls.  I enjoy it these days.  I don't need to see the birds, I just enjoy their calls and don't get into a frenzy trying to find them.

The bulbuls have been active these last few weeks in my neighbourhood, flitting from the teak tree, to the wire (in the picture), and even to our balcony plants, they in their morning busyness me in my morning pre-caffeine sleepiness.

It is a bird of low concern, seeming to be doing well in urban India in green neighbourhoods.  SOIB reports that its presence in TN is stable

As the bulbul flew off this morning, a tailorbird came by - what a sharp shrill call it has!  And they call incessantly as they go about their foraging, with a reply coming from further afield. It was so close I could see the black bib on his chest and the delicate pink legs.  

Let me see what tomorrow brings.

Day 2 - Owlet moths and sketching attempts

 June 29th 2025

I found this beautiful Spirama spp moth on my window sill on my late father's birthday - June 24th.  The ancient Greeks believed that moths carried the spirits of the dead, who visited their loved ones.  That is me looking for a connection.  Science shows that these Erebidae moth sightings go up in June, and so too my sighting.

It was dark, past 9 at night, and I as about to shut the window to keep you-know-who out, when I saw this creature.  We both startled each other, and as I gasped in wonder, it flew into the room and fluttered about in panic.  I turned the fans off, alarmed that it would fly into the fan and meet a horrible death, and it slowly calmed and sat on our white walls, when I got this picture.  

What a beauty, is this where our kalamkari artists got their inspiration from?  Lok at the beautiful border design and those lovely "eyes".  

Next morning, he was still there, though on a different wall.  I opened out the windows, and as I sipped my coffee, he (from the markings I have decided it is a male, I may be wrong), kind of fluttered out, in an uneven zig zag flight into the cooler morning air.

Now on the evening of the 29th, Abhishekha Krishnagopal, a young artist and ecologist kicked off the nature journaling journey for Monsoon Beauty 2025, and I dipped in and out of her webinar.  She made us use circles and squares and draw fruits and flowers with those circles.  "See?, wasn't that easy?", she would sweetly say.  Here at home, I grunted and rolled my eyes, oh yes indeed.  Easy for you to say, not for me who has been traumatised by biology drawings since childhood.

The point that she made was also that when you sketch, you notice textures and aspects that you do not usually.  You appreciate the insect, flower or tree that much more.  

So I decided to give the moth with the soul and the eye a sketching shot.  I did notice and appreciate the way the forewings and hindwing arranged themselves/. I noticed that they eyes were like inverted commas.  I noticed the thorax in-between the wings.  And I noticed that single outstretched leg.  

  

What do you say, appa?  Pass or Fail?  😁

Day 1 - Nature Journal - On the banks of the Adyar River

 28th June 2025

Monsoon Beauty 2025 starts today!  For the last five years, India's Nature celebrates each monsoon with some nature appreciation and citizen science pushes.  This year too, they are celebrating the Indian SW monsoon from 28th June to 7th September.  here in Chennai, this is not our main monsoon, and this period is that sticky, humid, wet-blanket like phase, of still days where not a leaf stirs, and we are all also quite lifeless and low in energy.

Every few days there will be a shower that brings relief, but also makes the earth steam, and you can feel the humidity.  Chennai weather is not for the faint-hearted, and definitely not for the Bangalorian.  😅

I digress - click here to know more about Monsoon Beauty 2025.  

A breakfast rendezvous today morning with a friend, took me to the banks of the Adyar river.  I arrived early and strolled down to the river front, hoping maybe to catch a glimpse of my friend G3 as she rowed past.  But no, she was not on the waters today, but the White Breasted Water Hens were. They always remind me of Japanese Geisha girls for some reason, with their white faces, and elegant flicks of their tails.  The tide was down and the banks were dry, and these Rails seemed to be finding insects. I stood on the bund and enjoyed their loud croaky calls  and spidery legs.

A lone Grey headed swamp hen stared at them.  I wonder if he/she knew that they were going to be rechristened as Purple swamp hens?  We humans, I tell you.

A bare Prosopis tree in the distance had a speck of blue - a White-throated Kingfisher that flew with an indignant rattly call as I approached it.  As I strolled back, the mynas called and hopped around on the grassy space between the Neem trees, Black Kites circled above and the parakeets screeched and flew from Neem to Rain tree.

I heard the Koels call, and then was delighted as a Coucal flew across - its rust-coloured wings catching the sunlight.

We sat on the verandah, enjoying watching the large stately trees buzzing with bird life and the shrubs below with nectaring butterflies - common lime, crimson rose, common leopard and tawny coster in abundance.  

In a distant tree hole, I saw the spotted owlets too - it is their favourite hole.  

Here is my e-bird list.

I wonder why I did not take any pictures that morning.  Distracted by the mushroom omelette and the fresh orange juice?

Pre-monsoon encounters with the tree frog

 It has been an interesting two months in our apartment.  We have a new resident - a tree frog.  Inside our apartment.  Early May, I noticed it in our balcony while watering the few plants that we have there.  It kind of leapfrogged with a start as water splashed on it.  

I was quite bemused - how did this frog land up on a 3rd floor balcony.  OK maybe I didnt see right, maybe it was a frisky garden lizard, I mused, and didn't think too much about it.  

A few days later - it was exploring our apartment.  OK sorry - this is the only picture I could manage in poor light before it jumped and hid behind the cabinet.

Now what?  

Many days - and there was no sighting - until our carpenter who was undertaking some repairs on the said cabinet informed us triumphantly that he caught it and flung it out of the open window.  Aha, we cheered, now it must be back in the garden where it belongs!

However, a few days later and lo and behold it was hopping merrily under our dining table, once again seeking refuge behind the cabinet when we tried to chase or catch it.

This game of frog and human continued - one day on the window sill, one day on the window itself, another evening spied on the wall below the window sill.  Should we leave window open or close?  What does it eat, how is it surviving?

Of course with all these questions and supposedly being one with my natural environment, I tried to maintain an insouciant air, while every morning looking around nervously so as not be startled by something leaping at my feet.

This poor quality picture above gave me an id - Chunam Tree Frog (Polypedates maculatus) from Inaturalist, and this set me off on my Google research and quest.

I laughed at this paragraph in Wiki - "In south India they can be a nuisance to households as they enter homes in search of food. They can climb walls with the help of their webbed feet and reach even higher floors, entering through the open windows."

Yes indeed.  Supposedly they have day roosts - this one has chosen the dark and cool corner behind our cabinet.  And the call is a rat-a-tat - it has not called as yet... I will keep you posted on this.

Someone called Rivu Ghoral has blogged in his Backyard Herping about this.  He wrote - "Previous studies showed that this frog comes out every night to hunt but it returns to the exact place at dawn." 

Oh!  So that's the pattern - out at night and back at dawn.  So, last evening, we left the balcony window wide open, turned off the dining room lights and watched TV in our living room, hoping our amphibian friend would get the hint.  And what do you know, we checked after dinner, and the cabinet-den was clear!! We quickly shut the windows, so that dawn entry was blocked, and I am happy to report that we successfully relegated it to the balcony.  For today.

It is a very common and abundant frog, I learnt.  It lives for 3 years at least (yikes!) and they breed in the monsoon (double yikes!) Is my friend male or female?  I have no idea - the genders are similar I believe.  It is not calling - so maybe a female?  Please wish us luck - they lay 850 eggs at a time I read.  

Supposedly, they feed on insects and spiders - and so maybe it will slurp up all the mosquito larvae this monsoon. I need some good news like this.

More news as the story develops.  Stay tuned my friends.