How well do we know this neighbour?

The Geisha hen, I call it.  Always reminds me of  a painted face.  Now a Geisha is supposed to be graceful and all that....but not this endearing water hen, which clucks around and moves in a. jerky fashion, busy always.  Any wetland, and it is sure to be spotted.  Even in the dirty waters of the Buckingham canal I have seen them, amidst the water hyacinth.

It was nice to read this article by Frederick in the Downtown section on a day which was not at all good, a Happy Teacher's Day, that will now forever be a day we lost dear Keshav.  One more life's lesson learnt from the school  of living.  

The Hindu

Prince Frederick

5/9/21

The commonplace remains unnoticed. It takes unusual circumstances, sometimes a breakdown of the regular order, for it to gain attention. Does anyone have memories of “oxygen” dominating quotidian chatter before the Second Wave?

The white-breasted waterhen is an avian example of the commonplace — ten a penny, as megatick seekers among birders would uncharitably put it.

The bird is widespread in its range. It is easily sighted in its habitat, in striking contrast to some of its painfully attention-shy resident rallidae cousins — the slaty-breasted rail, the ruddy-breasted crake and the Baillon’s crake.

And therefore, it is unconsciously ignored, ironically concealed from sight, and missing from birders’ field notes.

In later part of August, this writer would have looked through a white-breasted waterhen pair if not for how they herded their brood to safety.

Parent-birds of most feathers have a strong gathering instinct, which they use through subtle cues to the young. But this particular pair seemed to herd their young with the efficiency of a Belgian sheepdog. There were five chicks, and a majority of them seemed bent on straggling away from the flock. The scene was unfolding in a pool of water right outside the massive bund of a lake on the winding Gandhi Road in Nedungundram, with the Vandalur-Kelambakkam Road just a walking distance away.

One parent led the pack and the other brought up the rear.

However, the main point of interest is how the chicks helped themselves to safety the next day, when this writer watched these precocial chicks plunge into the same pool of water, alarmed by what they assumed to be intrusive steps, and deftly climbing on to the vegetation and disappear to safety.

The swiftness with which they slipped away was impressive. It was as if they had a claw in each of their wings. That is hardly figurative, because apparently the young of the white-breasted waterhen do possess them. But there is no recorded evidence of white-breasted waterhen chicks putting those wing claws to any use.

A few years ago, Pune-based animal rehabilitator Devna Arora put out an interesting note about wing claws that she noticed in a white-breasted waterhen chick that had been brought into her centre for rehabilitation.

“I just made an observation, because I know that it has not been recorded properly. I have not gone into studying the subject in detail — as I am a rehabilitator, and not an ornithologist. I have made an observation note, in case it is of use to anybody in the future,” explains Devna, whose note can be accessed at her website.

Wing claws should theoretically be a valuable prop to chicks of nidifugous species, particualry those that have much clambering to do. Of the raillidae family, the white-breasted waterhen is essentially a bird of the reeds, though it does not restrict itself to it.

Ornithologist V Santharam points out that use of wing claws by chicks as a safety prop has been documented in the hoatzin, a bird found in the Amazon. He remarks that in the context of wing-claw use, more observation of the young of species like the white-breasted waterhen is required. However, he notes: “Besides the hoatzin, it appears that wing claws in most other species are just a vestigial organ like the appendix in human beings.”

Looking down

 Fresh leaves, dried leaves, I do spy
light green, dark green, brown...
and even a Lemon Pansy butterfly. 

Green circles, pink stars
Brown sand and grey wall, and
Amaryllis lilies, from afar.

 

Through the window

A Common Tailorbird came visiting our little patch of green
More loud tweets to be heard than being seen
I watched without moving as it flitted and called
Now on the branch, now on the wall.

And then today this happy surprise
A single yellow spike
of mustard.
Overnight, did it rise?

 

More on the sand wasp

May/June 2021

 

Covid quarantine

Morning coffee on the patio steps.

Watching the Quisqualis fallen blooms

Being disturbed by a buzzing.

A green and black digger

vanished into a hole

at great speed

in the blink of an eye.

Another one I spied

Hovering and humming

searching it seemed

for its secret entrance.

And then it vanished within.

I take a picture, 

ASK MNS

voila, an id emerges - sand wasp, Bembix species - 

even before the said insect did!

Anyways, the next few mornings

coffee and sand wasp gazing.

Sagarika sent me this link - Bug Eric had seen them in North America.

Which one was mine

Here in Chennai

I still have not figured.

Watched the way she shovels 

so powerfully

front legs flinging the sand

making tunnels

laying eggs

feeding larvae

catching flies.

And this link described the males

buzzing and wasping

patrolling the openings

laying wait for the female to emerge;

copulate.

One track minds

or instinct?

Quarantine ends

My observations come to a halt

generations of wasps

buzz in and out

unseen and unheralded. 

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

I now need to discover "Newsletter for Birdwatchers" that is quoted here, along with Santharam of Rishi Valley.  

I have seen these birds in the Kalakshetra campus.

I also looked up allopreening - the preening done by one bird on another.

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

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
Prince Frederick
The ashy woodswallow — also known as the ashy swallow-shrike — inhabits palm trees where it chirpily attends to its 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. Santharam 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 Santharam, spotlighting how they disdainfully rejected a couple of palm trees standing diagonally opposite the lamp-post.
Were those palm trees taken by other pairs of ashy woodswallows; or any other birds? “No, these two were the only breeding pair in that area.”

1. Within its established range, the ashy woodswallow (artamus fuscus) is usually found in good numbers in areas marked by stands of palm trees.

2. Though the species is comfortable occupying power lines and poles, these are no substitute for palm trees.

3. On sections of ECR — for example, Pallipattu — that are marked by a proliferation of palm trees, these birds can be seen perched on power lines

4. Ashy woodswallows are a gregarious species known for their huddling and allopreening rituals, performed as they park themselves on the power lines

5. Both the male and female are a picture of familial commitment sharing nest-building, incubating and post-natal parenting responsibilities.

6. This bird sallies forth from its perch, snatches the prey while on the wing and even polishes it off before returning to the perch.

7. Birder Sidharth Srinivasan recalls a scene from Nanmangallam where waiting ashy woodswallows made quick work of butterflies that gained elevation after a mud-puddling session

8. Sidharth observes that the ashy woodswallow occasionally lets out a harsh call, one that is markedly different from its regular call. The ashy woodswallow is known to mimic other birds, certainly not as prodigiously and markedly as a drongo would, but will certainly slip in an odd note or two now and then.

The presence of the palm trees, within the hearing range of one wheezy call, probably put these birds at ease about the location. Santharam also recalls how in MRC Nagar, “largely an open area at that time”, ashy woodswallows would string the power lines, huddling and allopreening.
With palm trees on the decline even in semi-urban spaces, it takes a long drive to put oneself within the possibility of savouring such “ashy-avian” delights. An unthinking question could be: Aren’t there more power lines within the city now? The ashy woodswallow may find a comfortable perch in a power line, but does not usually see it as a substitute for a palm tree. These birds invariably “test” the strength of power lines found in a place that proliferates in palm trees. The further one drives down East Coast Road, the greater the chances of sighting gaggles of ashy woodswallows on power lines. Just ahead of Mahabalipuram, there are villages where one can make this association between palm trees and ashy woodswallow. As ashy woodswallows have now receded far from urban spaces, and farther still from our collective consciousness, one can take kindly to gaps in the overall understanding of their behaviour.
However, in decades past, when the species was hardly a will o’ the wisp, and put up live shows in residential localities, an erroneous assumption about its behaviour persisted, In retrospect, it looks indefensible.
It was largely believed that ashy woodswallow stuck to their towers and never descended to terra firma. Beyond casual conversations, the assumption was found validated even in some field guides.
Seeking to tackle this erroneous notion, Santharam wrote about in the edition of Newsletter for Birdwatchers that saw the light in January 1981. “I have seen this species on the ground on many occasions. The first such occasion was on 23.3.79 when a pair of these birds were pulling out some tufts of grass probably to line the nest at the open meadow of Adyar Estuary. One bird having collected a beakful of material headed towards some palm trees. The other bird remained on the ground for sometime and then flew in another direction,” Santharam penned his observations.
“On another occasion, I was observing a finchlark nest that had two chicks in June 80. An ashy swallow-shrike alighted on the ground a few yards away. On seeing the bird near their nest, the agitated parents, especially the female vigorously attacked the intruder and forced it to move away.”
Santharam ends his note by explaining what necessitated it.
“While the Handbook (Vol. 5) says that this species has “not been recorded actually on the ground, but may do so.....”, Whistler in the ‘Popular Handbook of Indian Birds’ asserts that this species never visits the ground. It was interesting to note that the nesting materials include fine grass, roots, fibres and feathers.”
Forty years on, Santharam has this to say: “Apart from the rare occasions when it comes down to take out the grass, this bird has no need to come down. It catches insects in flight, and sits on wires and poles. That is the reason why it (the bird’s rare descent to terra firma) was probably not reported. Or people thought it was not significant. Because both these people had mentioned specifically that it is not seen on the ground, when I saw it happen, I wanted to report it.” From past literature about this species, it is staggering to note that the species’ relationship with terra firma has a matter of deep speculation.
In 1951, the celebrated naturalist Charles McFarlane Inglis — who associated with the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Entomological Society in the forms in which they existed then — wrote a note about the ashy woodswallow to The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, and it got published.
At that time, Inglis was staying at Kenilworth in Coonoor, and he was calling attention to a discovery about the species he had made some years ago.
“Although I have no evidence of this swallow-shrike actually settling on the ground, I have proof of the nearest thing to it,” writes Inglis and goes on to present photographic evidence of an ashy swallow-shrike helping itself to a bird bath, which it shared it with a grey-headed myna. Inglish was “staying with my friend, the late H.V.O’ Donel, on the Huldibari Tea Estate in the Duars” when both made the discovery.
As Donel had a camera at hand, the rare event of an ashy woodswallow setting claws on object just inches above terra firma could be recorded for posterity.
(Uncommon Residents is about the resident birds of Chennai and surrounding areas that are rarely seen)

Takeaway food and drink litter dominates ocean plastic, study shows | Plastics | The Guardian

Takeaway food and drink litter dominates ocean plastic, study shows | Plastics | The Guardian

Just 10 plastic products make up 75% of all items and scientists say the pollution must be stopped at source

Damian Carrington

A turtle tries to eat a plastic cup: consumer items such as food containers make up the largest share of litter origins, the study found. Photograph: Paulo Oliveira/Alamy Stock Photo

@dpcarrington

Thu 10 Jun 2021 16.41 BST

Plastic items from takeaway food and drink dominate the litter in the world’s oceans, according to the most comprehensive study to date.
Single-use bags, plastic bottles, food containers and food wrappers are the four most widespread items polluting the seas, making up almost half of the human-made waste, the researchers found. Just 10 plastic products, also including plastic lids and fishing gear, accounted for three-quarters of the litter, due to their widespread use and extremely slow degradation.
The scientists said identifying the key sources of ocean plastic made it clear where action was needed to stop the stream of litter at its source. They called for bans on some common throwaway items and for producers to be made to take more responsibility.
Action on plastic straws and cotton buds in Europe was welcome, the researchers said, but risked being a distraction from tackling far more common types of litter. Their results were based on carefully combining 12m data points from 36 databases across the planet.
“We were not surprised about plastic being 80% of the litter, but the high proportion of takeaway items did surprise us, which will not just be McDonald’s litter, but water bottles, beverage bottles like Coca-Cola, and cans,” said Carmen Morales-Caselles, at the University of Cádiz, Spain, who led the new research.
“This information will make it easier for policymakers to actually take action to try to turn off the tap of marine litter flowing into the ocean, rather than just clean it up,” she said.
Straws and stirrers made up 2.3% of the litter and cotton buds and lolly sticks were 0.16%. “It’s good that there is action against plastic cotton buds, but if we don’t add to this action the top litter items, then we are not dealing with the core of the problem – we’re getting distracted,” Morales-Caselles said.
Prof Richard Thompson, of the University of Plymouth in the UK, who was not part of the research team, said: “Having [this data] recorded in a proper scientific way is incredibly useful. There can be a reluctance to take action on something that seems very obvious because there isn’t a published study on it.”
The research, published in the journal Nature Sustainability and funded by the BBVA Foundation and Spanish science ministry, concluded: “In terms of litter origins, take-out consumer items – mainly plastic bags and wrappers, food containers and cutlery, plastic and glass bottles, and cans – made up the largest share.”
The analysis included items bigger than 3cm and identifiable, excluding fragments and microplastics. It distinguished between take-out plastic items and toiletry and household product containers.
The highest concentration of litter was found on shorelines and sea floors near coasts. The scientists said wind and waves repeatedly sweep litter to the coasts, where it accumulates on the nearby seafloor. Fishing material, such as ropes and nets, were significant only in the open oceans, where they made up about half the total litter.
A second study in the same journal examined the litter entering the ocean from 42 rivers in Europe, and was one of the datasets Morales and colleagues used. It found Turkey, Italy and the UK were the top three contributors to floating marine litter.
“Mitigation measures cannot mean cleaning up at the river mouth,” said Daniel González-Fernández of the University of Cádiz, who led the second study. “You have to stop the litter at the source so the plastic doesn’t even enter the environment in the first place.”
In May, Greenpeace revealed that UK plastic waste sent to Turkey for recycling had been burned or dumped and left to pollute the ocean. US and UK citizens produce more plastic waste per person than any other major countries, according to other recent research.
The researchers recommended bans on avoidable take-out plastic items, such as single-use bags, as the best option. For products deemed essential, they said the producers should be made to take more responsibility for the collection and safe disposal of products and they also backed deposit return schemes.
“This comprehensive study concludes that the best way to confront plastic pollution is for governments to severely restrict single-use plastic packaging,” said Nina Schrank plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK. “This seems undeniable. We will never recycle the quantity of waste plastic we’re currently producing.”
Thompson said: “What’s going on in the sea is a symptom of the problem – the origin of the problem and the solution are back on land and that’s where we’ve got to take action.”

Lockdown again

25th May 2021

While we humans struggle with the pandemic, life goes on.

The sapotas are getting ready, and I eye them everyday with delight.

Technically, this is the neighbour's tree, the boughs nicely overhanging on to our garden, inviting us to reach out and pluck a few fruits.  So whats's the ethics of this I wonder - may I pluck or not?  Can I covet these fruits?

And the jasmine blooms every day, and I never get bored of watching them.

Two blooms and a bud.  Gundu mallis.  And see the leaves all washed with the rain.

Under the Rangoon Creeper, an insect buzzed around, and then alighted on the mud, kicking furiously with its front legs, as it burrowed inwards.  

I had not seen one of these earlier.  Lovely green and black markings.  It buzzed as it moved around, and I marvelled as to how far the sand it kicked went.  

My naturalist friends identified it as a sand wasp species - Bembix - but I am as yet unable to figure out which one.  This one's colouring quite different from the other Bembix specimens I found online.

OHB variations

Variation%20in%20Oriental%20Honey%20Buzzard%20%u2013%20Birding%20Beijing%20%u5317%u4EAC%u89C2%u9E1F

Reference for myself - one of the most polymorphic raptors.  

Summer blooms

 

The Hosts lily blooms in the summer heat.  Two stalks, and maybe a third? 

Framed by lily leaves

Two beauties I captured, there are more.

My fitness coach - A Lazy jumbled verse

He's dark and handsome
Like a shadowy phantom
This fitness coach
of mine

He caws his approval
As I work up a sweat 

Exhorting me, to situp 

number twenty nine.

As I huff and I puff, burning
those  calories 
My coach shows no mercy,
Oh to stop would be divine! 



His high standards I do not meet,
Or so I am guessing,
from the dish that is  resounding
beneath his disapproving feet.



Ah the relief, I am finally done!
but hey, the phantom, 

In a blink he is gone.

A fleeting shadow across my face
As he takes to the skies
And the wide open space.

A caw in goodbye

till we meet again!

Saturday excursions - Edianthittu backwaters, whale bone, Kaliveli wetlands and more

 Saturday March 6th 2021

5am - Sheila and I headed to Neelangarai, where we would hop into Ashish's car and head further south on ECR - my first Intertidal survey outing, armed with sandwiches of course.  The MNS Intertidal survey was announced in September of 2020, with a workshop (which I did not attend), for training on the survey techniques.  We were doing the areas around Chennai, with the overall broad objectives being to assess the present status of Important Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Areas (ICMBAs) along the Tamil Nadu coast, 

Edianthittu is one of the survey locations, in Zone 1, which is from Tiruvallur to Pondy, a little less than 160 kms of coastline.  I had missed many - Yashna beach near Kovalam, as well as Pulicat.  So I was happy to be part of this, more as a tourist really - since the core team were into some transect surveying and were busy documenting mollusc and gastropod diversity.  

I had seen some beautiful pictures of the previous trips - razor clams, sea squirt, and some really beautiful shells.

Sunrise over the backwaters, with a tern up in flight

The pin was where we were headed, about 100 kms from home, on the ECR - Azhagan Kuppam road, Villupuram.

First left after the large bridge before marakkanam, and then wound our way on very narrow roads, past a prawn hatchery to the road head on the beach.  Fishing boats were out on the water and everyone seemed busy.

Vikas educated me thus - "It has two species of mangroves and is one of the larger mangrove patches in that district. Mangrove dependent species of crabs have been recorded, along with birds that like the set up like the terek Sandpipier and common Greenshank. In winter it is known to attract various birds such as the Curlew Sandpipier, Dublin, stints, golden plovers and many species of raptors including falcons and harriers. The Grey-tailed Tattler was recently seen there (the second location in the country where this bird is known from, first being Pulicat). Sea grass is found near the mouth of the river, which is well known to be a nursery for shrimps."

We were going to walk along the coast, to the area opposite the Alamparai fort, where the Edianthittu backwaters meet the Buckingham?

715 am - We set off from our vehicles.  There were fifteen(?)  of us, and wonderful to see so many young energetic participants.  It was a beautiful morning, there was a light breeze, the sea waters were clear and the sand was as yet cool beneath our feet.

Ravanan meesai

All along the dunes we found Spinifex littoreus, eli mullu, all spiky and poky.  They are said to be good sand binders

I learnt that the grass had different female and male flowers.  Those longish oblong ones are the male ones, if I heard correctly.

These round ones are female, and they also tumble along and disperse the seeds.

Beach Swales

On the other (western) side of the dunes, there were a line of pools.  

The insect life in the pools including those whirligig beetles going round and round on the surface.

Yuvan explaining how the fresh water gets pushed up by the pressure of the sea water

The masked core survey team noting every insect.  Those pipes being held by Rohith would join to form a square, within which they would survey and note all creatures found.

The casuarina behind was filed with the call of Francolins - I didnt see any.  As we walked some snipes also got flushed out, but of course I did not see them.  Nor did I see an oriole which some members did.  

But Sheila and I saw the Pied cuckoo - four of them in fact - as we walked along the ridge of a sand dune. (Photo by Sheila)

The Jacobin cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus),  the pied crested cuckoo, with the estuary behind.  (Photo taken by Sheila)

It was so picturesque

A lot of the shore life follows....most of which I cannot identify.

Telescopium telescopium, or "Horn snail, I think

A hermit crab in hand

and on the sand

Sea grass!

Alamparai fort at the far shore

We made slow progress walking back on the sand, with the sun high up, but with a lovely breeze blowing, and the sea so blue, with terns and gulls wheeling close to boats.  On a mud bank, we saw a bunch of bobbing brown-headed gulls as well.

Every few metres, Ashish would pick up a lovely looking shell, each one with a design more intricate than the last.  Each one that I felt compelled to take a picture of.

Sunetta meroe?

wonder if this is Sunetta scripta?

Duck clam shell?

Dardanus crassimanus, the mauve-eyed hermit crab

Grey bonnet snail - a sea snail?

Is this a Chinna Mulli Sanghu?  Bufonaria crumena

And then there was much waving and shouting by the group ahead of us, and as we approached we saw this.

Like a huge block of cement, it was the vertebral column of a whale - sperm whale maybe - and it was massive.  Just four of the vertebrae, and it was sobbing, the mind boggled as to the size of the whale.

We reached the fishing village, and north of us a Pallid Harrier moved inland, majestically.

The complete Yedianthittu bird list is here.

We then drove on to the Kaliveli wetlands - the first time I was going there.  It is a nondescript turning off the Pondy road, and we bumped along past paddy fields.  Palm swifts above, and red wattled lapwings were resting on the bunds.  We drove on further and the fields gave way to wetlands that were more like empty marshy land, rather than filled with grassy vegetations.

Some buffaloes cooled off in the shallow waters.

Ashy crowned sparrow larks watched us from the wires above.  Photo by Sheila

There were the regular water birds - Ibis, OBS, herons, a few sandpipers, kingfisher, beeeaters, and even a pipit.

A booted eagle circled in the skies above.  Photo by Sheila, with the "landing lights" clearly visible.

The complete Kaliveli list from that morning is here.

We drove back via Nemmeli on the Thiruporur road, and didn't see to much there, and then headed back home.

The Intertidal Survey led to the Young Naturalists - Suneha, Nandita, Yuvan, Vikas, Aswati and Anooja - putting together "A guide to the coastal biodiversity seen along the Chennai coast and neighboring districts. Featured species are those that have been recorded by the team from Madras Naturalists’ Society, as part of our documentation of the Tamil Nadu coast."

I was happy to experience part of the survey, and it was a lovely morning out with Sheila and Ashish, and we missed Chithra, this time.

It is May now, and Covid rages all around us, and we stay home.  It feels good to relive these outings we did earlier this year, even if it was with masks and social distancing.