Chameleons and calotes

This here is a garden lizard, aka onaan aka "bloodsucker"!

Probably called bloodsucker, as its throat turns a bloody red during courtship.

As also this -

Among the teak flowers, high up, on the prowl for butterflies.  

But this here is an Indian chameleon!

Chamaeleo zeylanicus.  Fixing me with a beady stare, as its skin moults.  I did not see that long tongue of his.

Eyes shut.  They have a long tail, almost like a fifth limb.

And this here, is a video of one of the six chameleons seen in the Snake Park, Guindy enclosure.  Watch it, and see those eyes, as they move independent of each other, and the chameleon moves slowly along the tree branch.

Why should we protect snakes?

At the Snake Park.

The Story of the Most Common Bird in the World

I thought the crow was the most common, but anyway its a nice essay.  I don't know if I agree with the premise that the more common they are, the less you like them.

I actually don't mind the crows, I find the pigeons very annoying, and I love the mynahs - three most common birds here in Madras.

The Story of the Most Common Bird in the World | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine

Why do we love what is rare and despise what is all around us?

• By Rob Dunn
• Smithsonian.com, March 02, 2012, Subscribe

Even if you don’t know it, you have probably been surrounded by house sparrows your entire life. Passer domesticus is one of the most common animals in the world. It is found throughout Northern Africa, Europe, the Americas and much of Asia and is almost certainly more abundant than humans. The birds follow us wherever we go. House sparrows have been seen feeding on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building. They have been spotted breeding nearly 2,000 feet underground in a mine in Yorkshire, England. If asked to describe a house sparrow, many bird biologists would describe it as a small, ubiquitous brown bird, originally native to Europe and then introduced to the Americas and elsewhere around the world, where it became a pest of humans, a kind of brown-winged rat. None of this is precisely wrong, but none of it is precisely right, either.

Part of the difficulty of telling the story of house sparrows is their commonness. We tend to regard common species poorly, if at all. Gold is precious, fool’s gold a curse. Being common is, if not quite a sin, a kind of vulgarity from which we would rather look away. Common species are, almost by definition, a bother, damaging and in their sheer numbers, ugly. Even scientists tend to ignore common species, choosing instead to study the far away and rare. More biologists study the species of the remote Galapagos Islands than the common species of, say, Manhattan. The other problem with sparrows is that the story of their marriage with humanity is ancient and so, like our own story, only partially known.

Many field guides call the house sparrow the European house sparrow or the English sparrow and describe it as being native to Europe, but it is not native to Europe, not really. For one thing, the house sparrow depends on humans to such an extent it might be more reasonable to say it is native to humanity rather than to some particular region. Our geography defines its fate more than any specific requirements of climate or habitat. For another, the first evidence of the house sparrow does not come from Europe.

The clan of the house sparrow, Passer, appears to have arisen in Africa. The first hint of the house sparrow itself is based on two jawbones found in a layer of sediment more than 100,000 years old in a cave in Israel. The bird to which the bones belonged was Passer predomesticus, or the predomestic sparrow, although it has been speculated that even this bird might have associated with early humans, whose remains have been found in the same cave. The fossil record is then quiet until 10,000 or 20,000 years ago, when birds very similar to the modern house sparrow begin to appear in the fossil record in Israel. These sparrows differed from the predomestic sparrow in subtle features of their mandible, having a crest of bone where there was just a groove before.

Once house sparrows began to live among humans, they spread to Europe with the spread of agriculture and, as they did, evolved differences in size, shape, color and behavior in different regions. As a result, all of the house sparrows around the world appear to have descended from a single, human-dependent lineage, one story that began thousands of years ago. From that single lineage, house sparrows have evolved as we have taken them to new, colder, hotter and otherwise challenging environments, so much so that scientists have begun to consider these birds different subspecies and, in one case, species. In parts of Italy, as house sparrows spread, they met the Spanish sparrow (P. hispaniolensis). They hybridized, resulting in a new species called the Italian sparrow (P. italiiae).

As for how the relationship between house sparrows and humans began, one can imagine many first meetings, many first moments of temptation to which some sparrows gave in. Perhaps the small sparrows ran—though “sparrowed” should be the verb for their delicate prance—quickly into our early dwellings to steal untended food. Perhaps they flew, like sea gulls, after children with baskets of grain. What is clear is that eventually sparrows became associated with human settlements and agriculture. Eventually, the house sparrow began to depend on our gardened food so much so that it no longer needed to migrate. The house sparrow, like humans, settled. They began to nest in our habitat, in buildings we built, and to eat what we produce (whether our food or our pests).

Meanwhile, although I said all house sparrows come from one human-loving lineage, there is one exception. A new study from the University of Oslo has revealed a lineage of house sparrows that is different than all the others. These birds migrate. They live in the wildest remaining grasslands of the Middle East, and do not depend on humans. They are genetically distinct from all the other house sparrows that do depend on humans. These are wild ones, hunter-gatherers that find everything they need in natural places. But theirs has proven to be a far less successful lifestyle than settling down.

Maybe we would be better without the sparrow, an animal that thrives by robbing from our antlike industriousness. If that is what you are feeling, you are not the first. In Europe, in the 1700s, local governments called for the extermination of house sparrows and other animals associated with agriculture, including, of all things, hamsters. In parts of Russia, your taxes would be lowered in proportion to the number of sparrow heads you turned in. Two hundred years later came Chairman Mao Zedong.

Mao was a man in control of his world, but not, at least in the beginning, of the sparrows. He viewed sparrows as one of the four “great” pests of his regime (along with rats, mosquitoes and flies). The sparrows in China are tree sparrows, which, like house sparrows, began to associate with humans around the time that agriculture was invented. Although they are descendants of distinct lineages of sparrows, tree sparrows and house sparrows share a common story. At the moment at which Mao decided to kill the sparrows, there were hundreds of millions of them in China (some estimates run as high as several billion), but there were also hundreds of millions of people. Mao commanded people all over the country to come out of their houses to bang pots and make the sparrows fly, which, in March of 1958, they did. The sparrows flew until exhausted, then they died, mid-air, and fell to the ground, their bodies still warm with exertion. Sparrows were also caught in nets, poisoned and killed, adults and eggs alike, anyway they could be. By some estimates, a billion birds were killed. These were the dead birds of the great leap forward, the dead birds out of which prosperity would rise.

Of course moral stories are complex, and ecological stories are too. When the sparrows were killed, crop production increased, at least according to some reports, at least initially. But with time, something else happened. Pests of rice and other staple foods erupted in densities never seen before. The crops were mowed down and, partly as a consequence of starvation due to crop failure, 35 million Chinese people died. The great leap forward leapt backward, which is when a few scientists in China began to notice a paper published by a Chinese ornithologist before the sparrows were killed. The ornithologist had found that while adult tree sparrows mostly eat grains, their babies, like those of house sparrows, tend to be fed insects. In killing the sparrows, Mao and the Chinese had saved the crops from the sparrows, but appear to have left them to the insects. And so Mao, in 1960, ordered sparrows to be conserved (replacing them on the list of four pests with bedbugs). It is sometimes only when a species is removed that we see clearly its value. When sparrows are rare, we often see their benefits; when they are common, we see their curse.

When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, there were Native American cities, but none of the species Europeans had come to expect in cities: no pigeons, no sparrows, not even any Norway rats. Even once European-style cities began to emerge, they seemed empty of birds and other large animals. In the late 1800s, a variety of young visionaries, chief among them Nicholas Pike, imagined that what was missing were the birds that live with humans and, he thought, eat our pests. Pike, about whom little is known, introduced about 16 birds into Brooklyn. They rose from his hands and took off and prospered. Every single house sparrow in North America may be descended from those birds. The house sparrows were looked upon favorably for a while until they became abundant and began to spread from California to the New York Islands, or vice versa anyway. In 1889, just 49 years after the introduction of the birds, a survey was sent to roughly 5,000 Americans to ask them what they thought of the house sparrows. Three thousand people responded and the sentiment was nearly universal: The birds were pests. This land became their land too, and that is when we began to hate them.

Because they are an introduced species, now regarded as invasive pests, house sparrows are among the few bird species in the United States that can be killed essentially anywhere, any time, for any reason. House sparrows are often blamed for declines in the abundance of native birds, such as bluebirds, though the data linking sparrow abundance to bluebird decline are sparse. The bigger issue is that we have replaced bluebird habitats with the urban habitats house sparrows favor. So go ahead and bang your pots, but remember, you were the one who, in building your house, constructed a house sparrow habitat, as we have been doing for tens of thousands of years.

As for what might happen if house sparrows became more rare, one scenario has emerged in Europe. House sparrows have become more rare there for the first time in thousands of years. In the United Kingdom, for example, numbers of house sparrows have declined by 60 percent in cities. As the birds became rare, people began to miss them again. In some countries the house sparrow is now considered a species of conservation concern. Newspapers ran series on the birds’ benefits. One newspaper offered a reward for anyone who could find out “what was killing our sparrows.” Was it pesticides, some asked? Global warming? Cellphones? Then just this year a plausible (though probably incomplete) answer seems to have emerged. The Eurasian sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus), a hawk that feeds almost exclusively on sparrows, has become common in cities across Europe and is eating the sparrows. Some people have begun to hate the hawk.

In the end, I can’t tell you whether sparrows are good or bad. I can tell you that when sparrows are rare, we tend to like them, and when they are common, we tend to hate them. Our fondness is fickle and predictable and says far more about us than them. They are just sparrows. They are neither lovely nor terrible, but instead just birds  searching for sustenance and finding it again and again where we live. Now, as I watch a sparrow at the feeder behind my own house, I try to forget for a moment whether I am supposed to like it or not. I just watch as it grabs onto a plastic perch with its thin feet. It hangs there and flutters a little to keep its balance as the feeder spins. Once full, it fumbles for a second and then flaps its small wings and flies. It could go anywhere from here, or at least anywhere it finds what it needs, which appears to be us.

Rob Dunn is a biologist at North Carolina State University and the author of The Wild Life of Our Bodies. He has written for Smithsonian about our ancestors’ predators, singing mice and the discovery of the hamster.

Murungai on my mind

These last few days, I have been obsessed with the humble drumstick that I love to use in sambar, stew, avail and anything else - soup even.

I enjoy contentedly chewing on that fibre at the end of a nice rice-laden meal, with my plate exhibiting a neat stack of chewed up murangikai.

I am putting together some educational material on indigenous trees, and the drumstick is on the top of everyone's list it seems.

And its not for the drumstick so much as for the leaves! Click on the link and go below Ranjitha Ashok's article to find Vijayshree Venkatraman's similar mind-blowing discovery!

(I know the excitement is a bit dated, but I was always a bit backward.)

Madras Musings - We care for Madras that is Chennai

A miracle tree in your backyard? (By Vijaysree Venkatraman) As children, many of us hated one vegetable with particular passion and greeted its  appearance on the menu with exaggerated distaste. I reserved this treatment for the slender drumstick. The sight of the chewed-out sheath piling up by people’s plates, when they are done with the pulp within, grosses me out to this day. Some cooks use a fistful of drumstick leaves to flavour the lentil-rich adai. Others capture the characteristic aroma of these sprigs in clarified butter – a delicacy I haven’t thought about in a long time now. But at an international conference in Boston, which I call home now, a Red Cross volunteer spoke of a “miracle tree”, which could be a possible solution to malnutrition in poor, tropical countries. Ounce for ounce, this tree’s leaves contain more beta-carotene than carrots, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more potassium than bananas, the slide read. The protein content is comparable to that of milk and eggs, it further proclaimed. It dawned on me that la moringa, whose virtues the speaker was recounting in French, was none other than our scrawny drumstick tree. The scientific name Moringa oleifera comes from the Sinhalese word for drumstick. A dozen other species native to parts of Asia and Africa belong to this same plant family. “But typically their leaves taste rank or cabbage-like, and some varieties are simply obscure,” an evolutionary biologist tells me. In Mexico, he encountered the moringa once again. Here, the drumstick is an unknown culinary entity, but the fern-like foliage makes the tree an ornamental. “Perhaps it arrived long ago via the Philippines – where the vegetable is popularly known as Mulunggay – when Spanish galleons sailed between Manila and Acapulco,” the researcher surmises. From research literature, I learn a number of facts about this tree, a familiar sight in Chennai. The moringa is drought-resistant and thrives in soils considered unfit for any cultivation. Both the leaves and the pods are edible, which makes it a good food crop. The seeds yield edible oil that can be used as a bio-fuel. The residue of the ground seed can purify turbid water. Typically, gardeners prune the moringa once a year to keep the produce within arm’s reach. Because of its soft wood, timber is the one thing this low-maintenance tree is not good for. There is no zeal, they say, like the zeal of the new convert. I asked my parents to plant amoringa in their compound in Chennai, so that I can have a fresh supply of the greens when I visit them. They responded with an instant ‘no’, saying that it will attract the kambli-poochi.They don’t know the English equivalent of the name, but I guess that it is just a very hungry caterpillar. I was skeptical of this furry creature. Even its name seems made up. Soon, Nancy Gandhi, a long-time resident of the city, also wrote saying that she once had to cut down her a moringa because it became infested with the kambli-poochi. When an American, albeit a naturalised Chennaiite now, mentions the dreaded pest with the funny name, I tend to believe her immediately. Still, I am certain that some veteran gardener would know a nifty solution to this problem. Meanwhile, there was nothing left for me to do except write about the merits of the moringafor an international newspaper headquartered in Boston. In Chennai, my photographer, a middle-aged man, eagerly set out to find me a suitable image. As he roamed the streets on this mission, a helpful auto-driver asked him what he was looking for. The reply, “a pod-ladenmoringa tree,” earned him a smirk and knowing smiles from passers-by. These responses could have had something to do with the local belief that the moringa pod is an aphrodisiac. There is no denying the moringa’s excellent nutritional profile, which is borne out by laboratory analysis, but there has been no clinical study to prove that the plant can combat malnutrition. Perhaps my article will get philanthropic foundations to fund such a study. I could save the world from hunger, I think grandiosely. And if I write about its supposed virility-enhancing qualities, some rhinos might be spared too. New England is no longer puritanical, but sneaking this last bit into the article might be hard. One thing about my current home, however, will never change. The winters will always be brutally cold here. I simply can’t expect the hardy native of the tropics to survive in my Boston backyard. Frankly, I sometimes wonder how I manage this feat myself! Still, there is something I can do. I can write and spread the word about the dietary goodness of a tree whose produce I had done my best to avoid during my Indian childhood.

So, now is there any truth to this kambli poochi belief, that I keep hearing everywhere?
Kavitha Mandana provides first hand evidence.

KAMBLI poochis are a clever lot!

Insects seem to know more about the fabulous treasures that nature holds. Discover the drumstick tree, says Kavitha Mandana

I don’t know if you have ever had close encounters with those, hairy, horrible, creepy caterpillars that we knew as ‘kambli-poochis’ when we were young? During a particular season they would swarm all over my grandmother’s garden in Mysore. And their particular haunt was the drumstick or moringa tree. One day the drumstick tree would look normal, and the next day, its bark would be wrapped in a ‘kambli’ or blanket as thousands of these caterpillars set up home there. I could never eat my grandma’s drumstick sambhar because I always felt it had kambli-poochi fur in it! But I now realise that those creatures were a clever lot. Yes, hidden behind all those bristles is a decent brain. Because they picked the tree with the highest nutritional and medicinal value in the whole garden! How come they know about it and we don’t?

She goes on to extol the virtues of the murangi before concluding that -
All these days, I’ve been eating bananas for brain-food. But if moringa has more potassium than banana, I’m going to switch. I can’t bear to think that those moringa eating kambli-poochis might be brainier than me!

Now, I need to figure out what this kambli poochi is. Is it the Gypsy moth?  No it's not.  Chitra enlightened me that it was the Eupterote mollifier.  This hairy caterpillar can become quite a pest, it appears, completely defoliating the tree in extreme cases.  

Pradip Krishen on New Delhi's trees

Pradip Krishen on New Delhi's trees - India Real Time - WSJ

By Krishna Pokharel

Pradip Krishen

Bistendu, also called mountain persimmon or bombay ebony, is one of Delhi’s native trees that can be seen on Delhi’s ridge and many large parks.

Pradip Krishen is passionate about trees. A filmmaker-turned-naturalist as well as an author, Mr. Krishen spent almost a decade working on his “Trees of Delhi,” his popular 2006 field guide. His “Jungle Trees of Central India,” will be released later this year. Writing about plants and trees was also the focus of his session at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which ended Tuesday.

On a recent afternoon, India Real Time sat with Mr. Krishen, 62, and asked him to what extent New Delhi’s trees are a British legacy. Edited excerpts.

WSJ: What was Delhi’s vegetation like before the capital was moved there in 1911?

Mr. Krishen: All the evidence that we have, which is basically some travelers’ accounts, suggest that most of the area that is south of the Walled City [Old Delhi] was pretty empty. There are some reports by people in the later part of the nineteenth century that suggest it was just rubble, gravestones, old mausoleums, and mostly just a devastated kind of place.

But if you look at the natural ecology of this part of Delhi, there is no reason why it shouldn’t have supported good vegetation. What’s known as the lower-alluvial or the Bangar region, which includes all the areas like Golf Links, Mathura Road, Lodi Gardens, has very good soil. But if you read, for example, accounts of what Lodi Gardens was like at the turn of the century, it sounds awful.

For reasons that may have been partly historical and partly just because it was just over-grazed kind of place, it was very poorly vegetated before trees were planted there after 1911.

WSJ: Are New Delhi’s trees, in some ways, a British legacy?

Mr. Krishen: New Delhi’s trees are definitely a British legacy. But it’s important to sort out what is the British component and what is the non-British component. Obviously, the schemes are getting muddied. For example, along Akbar Road where you have the imlis, now you have second row of amaltas at the back. That is not part of the British planting.

Pradip Krishen

Author and naturalist Pradip Krishen

What is also a British legacy is the prosopis julifora, which has taken over all of Delhi’s semi-wild areas. If you go to the ridge, it is now dominated by this Central American tree that was introduced only in the 1920s. It has invaded this place in a huge way.

WSJ: How important were trees and plants for the design of Lutyens’ Delhi?

Mr. Krishen: There were many many avenues in Lutyens’ Delhi. They initially only chose 13 species of trees and slowly expanded to 16 species, which they planted along various avenues.

The original intention was to have major avenues point in the direction of a particular feature, like a monument or other. The trees that lined the avenue would frame the monument. They wanted the trees to frame that feature by choosing trees of appropriate sizes.

They were consciously trying to avoid using trees that have become so common that nobody would look at them again. For example, all the most common trees that the Mughals would plant as avenue trees, they would tend to avoid.

They didn’t plant mangoes, the banyan, nor the shisham [Indian rosewood.]They planted things like the peepal [sacred fig] but not hugely. The neem [Indian lilac,] the jamun[Indian blackberry] and the arjun became the three main trees for them.

Pradip Krishen

Barna, also called bengal quince, is a small tree that can be seen in full bloom in Delhi in April.

There were some inspired ideas. Very often you take a tree from the wild and you don’t quite know how it’s going to adapt to cultivation. There is for example a tree called the anjan [Indian blackwood.] It’s a tree that to my mind had never been planted as an avenue tree anywhere. It’s not even a north Indian tree. Somebody I think took a bit of a risk and planted it on Pandara Road. It turned out to be one among the most beautiful trees of the city.

WSJ: Did the British planner get some of the trees wrong?

Mr. Krishen It’s only been 100 years and in many cases it’s only 70-80 years since British planting was done. In a way, it’s a good time to do a kind of ecological audit of how these trees have performed.

They tried a tree which is commonly called Buddha’s coconut or narikel. It was planted in one avenue because in some towns like Dehradun it forms very beautiful avenues—very tall, very straight and very formal looking. Somebody who was trying to get that effect would have said “let’s plant narikel in Delhi.” But if you go to Bishamber Das Road today, where it was planted, there are huge gaps and the tree has not survived well.

WSJ: What was their planting ‘philosophy’?

Mr. Krishen To my mind, the biggest issue was that the British consciously tried to avoid planning trees that they knew to be deciduous, trees that seasonally shed their leaves.

Pradip Krishen

Flowers of amla, or indian gooseberry, tree that can be seen in Humayun’a and Safdarjang’s Tomb gardens in Delhi.

They seem to have this bias that if a tree loses its leaves then “we don’t want it.” Otherwise how do you explain why they would not plant the amaltas [Indian laburnum]? It is one of the most beautiful trees that we have in this part.

As somebody who works very closely with trees that are native, I find this odd because actually all the trees that the British planted turned out to be deciduous, like the jamun.

WSJ: What are the ecological challenges that the trees of Delhi face?

Mr. Krishen: Some trees are much more capable of dealing with atmospheric pollution and some are more prone to particular kind of pollution.

Water is going to be crucial. If you plant a tree that has a tap root that goes right down and if you expect that tap root to be reaching ground water, what is going to happen when that ground water levels are dramatically falling because of the extraction of water?

Collect those seeds!

Natabar Sarangi - The Source from the source project on Vimeo.

Organic farming. Something I believe is an urgent need, here and now.

Termite pakodas

My Husband and Other Animals — A moveable feast

JANAKI LENIN

Harvesting Termites When pests become snacks Photo: Rom Whitaker

Before I met Rom, everyone I knew thought termites were pests. When the rains first arrive, clouds of these winged creatures begin to swarm. They buzz around lights and eventually commit suicide in our beverages and dinners. The rest of the year, diligent workers find devious ways of attacking wood furniture. Friends who cry “Herbal mozzie repellent only please” nuke termites with awful chemicals without a second thought.

When Rom and I moved to our farm, I realised that a termite swarm is a major natural-history event. Termites are a rich source of protein that every creature regards as a feast. As the insects soared on their conjugal flights, watchful drongos made acrobatic sorties snapping them up.

Once termites find mates, they lose their wings and burrow underground to nest. Lacking superior aerial skills, shikras perched ungainly on the ground, pecking at these wingless ones. The birds’ prime prey, garden lizards also engorged themselves. They scurried noisily through the dry leaf litter aware that for the moment, their nemesis preferred the fat succulent bodies of these insects to their own scaly, tough ones. Nearby, a flock of white-capped babblers competed with magpie-robins and bulbuls in chasing termites through the grass.

Toads sat like statues, only their tongues flicking in and out mechanically. These were especially greedy little buggers, stuffing themselves more and more when they couldn’t even waddle out of the way. Scorpions rammed so many insects down their throats that the wings stuck out of their mouths, looking like feathered chimeras.

Perhaps this was the only occasion when nocturnal and diurnal creatures, predators and prey dined together. We once found a monitor lizard lying draped over a termite mound, sated, incapable of movement. Even palm squirrels, which I thought were vegetarians, joined in. The normally alert mongooses were so focused on stuffing themselves that they didn’t notice our presence.

Our two young emus were nowhere near as proficient as the others in finding termites. With their large round eyes affixed on an insect in flight, they chased it round and round in comical circles, only occasionally snatching one from midair. Later when the sun rose higher in the sky and the swarming died out, life returned to normal.

The arrival of rains is the cue for the insects to take off on their nuptial flights. But the Irula tribals are wizards in exploiting this resource even without a shower. Many years ago, on a moonless night, I watched them tie a sari around a mound to simulate the stillness before rain. A tin can was buried in the ground. An oil lamp, the only source of light, was balanced on cross-sticks on top of the can. They blew the powder of a local seed called ‘eessal kottai’ (‘termite nut’), which smelt of rain, over the mound. They chanted with a lot of sibilance, like the whispering wings of termites.

Initially nothing happened and I thought this was all hocus-pocus. Then the termites started emerging. They were unable to fly; perhaps their wings were not fully formed yet. They headed for the light and fell into the can. Soon, hundreds of thousands of them came pouring out like a black river. The Irula emptied the can into a gunny sack every few minutes and within an hour, the sack was half full.

Back at the Irula hamlet, we gathered around the fire as they roasted the insects on an iron griddle with rice, turmeric and chilli powders and salt. The fat from the termites sizzled and made the rice grains pop. When I gingerly sampled a roasted termite, I could barely taste it.

I followed the Irula example and shoved a whole handful into my mouth. And then another. Was it insects I was eating? They tasted of fried nuts with a buttery texture but the flavor was unique. Like those toads, I couldn’t stop stuffing myself. With a knowing grin, one of the Irula asked me how the midnight snack tasted.

I answered in Tamil, “Super.”

Printable version | Feb 18, 2012 1:05:11 PM | http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article2903369.ece

© The Hindu

Pongal at Point Calimere - an All-In-One!

The 2012 Pongal weekend was unusual for me, as we drove down the TN coast, and explored the Point Calimere area, along with other members of the Madras Naturalist Society. There was so much to learn, so much to see that there are several posts devoted to the visit.

You could start with the photo summary, which shows you where we went, and a quick sample of all we saw. Then read the description of The hamlet of Kodikarai and enjoy a slice of history in Lighthouses galore!

Did you know there are Feral horses in the grasslands of Point Calimere? Probably the only place in southern India?

Wherever, we went there were the ubiquitous Brahminy Kites. But, Point Calimere is famous for its flamingoes and migrating birds. Where were The missing waders?

See the pictorial results of our Beachcombing at Point Calimere, and travel to the mangroves at Muthupet. The Butterflies at Udayamarthandapuram is filled with pictures of those little creatures.

Uttara's report on the nocturnal wanderings is a fitting finale to a wonderful weekend shared with friends and family!

Pongal at Point Calimere - Nocturnal wanderings

I did not go on late-night walks, but my teenage friend Uttara did, on two successive nights, and this is what she reports:

Night One

And then, after more chatting and list-making in the lobby, we called it a day. At least most did. Kedar, Vikas, Vijay uncle, Prasanna aunty, Hemal aunty, Venkat uncle and I decided to participate in a night walk.

So we set out at around 10:00 and we were joined by some others on the way by the bridge. We walked along the road flashing our torches everywhere looking for roosting birds and snakes. And then, suddenly……it was just a brahminy kite on a tree. We carried on. 

Unfortunately for us, it seemed like all the animals had been wiped off Point Calimere because there was absolutely nothing. We had no choice but to turn back — at any rate, we weren’t having any luck with the birds. But the best part on the way back was when the power suddenly went out and we had to travel back guided by the light from our torches…and the stars. Once more, we got a clear glimpse into the universe as the sky and the stars seemed to stretch endlessly above us. Even in small places like Kodiakkarai where the sky is always so clear, it’s only when the lights completely go out that you realize how magnificent the sky is and how insignificant and small we are.

And once more, it was time for a nice, long sleep.

Night Two

Tonight too, as the others called it quits, we decided to go for another night walk, this time in the guesthouse compound itself but in the overgrown backyard. The participants this time were more or less the same as last time.

We walked right to the back where we spotted an unidentified frog at once. It was the first time holding a frog for quite a few of us. It didn’t feel disgusting in any way, though it did feel chilly in a good way. Then we walked through the overgrown grass, hoping to find a snake, the adrenaline really pumping now. Vijay uncle and Vikas were in front at the moment so they were the only ones who spotted the owl which disappeared in a flash so Prasanna aunty, Venkat uncle, Kedar and I missed it. But they were unable to decide on the species because they only caught a brief glimpse of the creature. 

Then we heard a nightjar. And suddenly, we caught sight of movement. But it was only a bat. Though at that very moment, Vikas said he saw something else besides the bat, the nightjar we’d heard, he decided. But again, because he was the only one who saw it — no, caught a mere glimpse of it, he was unable to ascertain the subspecies.

So we decided to check out the museum which was open 24x7 (Behind the guesthouse were a group of buildings including a small interpretation centre and museum). It consisted of three rooms, one explaining the medicinal plants found in the tropical dry evergreen forests, another with shelves containing the various kinds of shells found,  and the last room (with an entire wall covered in pictures of some of the numerous birds that could be found in the whole sanctuary) containing preserved birds. The museum did have some interesting stuff but it was poorly maintained. The entire place was caked with dust and it was clear the place hadn’t been cleaned in months. Nobody wanted to stay inside there too long so we headed back out into the open.

We decide it was getting late and we were going to have to leave in the morning the next day so the next bird would be the last. We were now right behind the guesthouse. With our eyes trained on the trees, we waved our flashlights about looking for anything roosting. Then there was a sound of rustling near a neem tree. Then all was quiet. We froze for a second then everybody began the flashlight-waving with renewed energy. Come on now! Where was it? And what was it? The suspense was building up to the point that it was crushing now.

“It’s just going to be a crow. Big deal,” remarked the pessimistic Kedar, though that observation was rather shrewd. Nonetheless, we were excited and we could feel our adrenal cortex forcing out more epinephrine.

Seconds passed and then a call rang out through the air, clear as day. Even a two year old kid could have accurately pinpointed that call to its source. What an anti-climax! Kedar was right all along. It was that annoying old Corvus splendens. I guess somewhere deep inside we’d all had the feeling that this would amount to nothing. Nevertheless, it was a big blow. 

Disappointed, we returned to our rooms to catch up on some of that much needed sleep.

Reminiscences of Madras

KV Sudhakar talks about the setting up of MNS, and the wonderful camaraderie. Their first trip was to Point Calimere. Full circle or what?!

The Hindu : FEATURES / METRO PLUS : The fall of a sparrow

AS TOLD TO PRINCE FREDERICK

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Nostalgia K.V. Sudhakar on the birds that once flocked our homes, how books on wildlife deepened his interest in natural history and his outings with the Madras Naturalists' Society

A haven for winged creaturesAdyar Estuary thenPhoto: K. raghunathan

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PHOTOS

Urbanisation is a major factor impacting wildlife. Before the days when grains began to be sold in neatly packed plastic covers at supermarkets, they were kept in open gunny bags and were sold, folded in old newspapers. As a result, a spill of grains was always found near the thresholds of poky little retail shops. Sparrows would feed on these spills. Even methods employed by wholesalers favoured these birds. When they were loaded and unloaded, sacks of grains would be lifted by sinking iron hooks into them and this practice caused spills. Dwindling numbers of such shops and more sophisticated methods of storing and transporting grains are among reasons for sparrows deserting Madras.

Not just sparrows, other birds that were once taken for granted have become a rarity. When we lived on Saravana Mudali Street in T. Nagar, our grandmother would show me and my brothers palm civets that clambered up coconut trees. Night herons would roost in the trees of our garden. As they made the sounds ‘waka! waka!', we called these herons ‘waka'.

Our interest in wildlife deepened when my brother K.V. Prabhakar found The Black Panther Of Sivanipalli by Kenneth Anderson in the collection of the Local Library Authority (LLA) on Mount Road. A copy of Vallikannan's Tamil translation of Robert C. Ruark's The Old Man And The Boy opened our eyes to the necessity of conserving wildlife.

Adyar Estuary being a haven for birds, we began to go there regularly. On one side of the estuary, the Theosophical Society served as a sanctuary for woodland birds. On the other was an open area — what is today the MRC Nagar — where ground-nesting birds congregated. Among them was an impressive number of yellow-wattled lapwings.

As bird-watching had become our foremost pastime, we began to hope for guidance from experienced birdwatchers. Our prayers were answered on May 17, 1978, when a group of around 40 birders met at the house of R.V. Mohan Rao. He had taken the trouble of getting their addresses and inviting them. A Bangalore-based group that ran a newsletter for birdwatchers helped him with the names and contact details of its members living in Madras. The meeting birthed the Madras Naturalists' Society (MNS). Founder of the Photographic Society G.K. Bhat was appointed as the Society's president. A visit to Point Calimere in December, 1978, was our first major expedition.

In those days, V. Shantaram — who now lives in the Rishi Valley — was the major guiding light for the fledgling group. He lived in Santhome and he took maximum advantage of its proximity to the Adyar Estuary, visiting it regularly and creating an exhaustive list of the estuarine birds. He was the driving force behind the Sunday trips to the Estuary. At 4.30 p.m. every Sunday, we assembled there and watched birds until one of these winged creatures asked us to ‘pack up' and go home. The stone curlews served as our time-keepers. They would pipe up always around 6.45 p.m. They would go ‘pick! pick! pick!” We also enjoyed listening to the cries of the red-wattled lapwings, which went “did did did did-you-do-it! did did did did-you-do-it!” Jokes in our group always centered around the calls and features of birds. The loquacious members were called open bills (a reference to openbill storks).

The weekend communion with Nature and the company of friends was so refreshing that we began to live from Sunday to Sunday.

As told to PRINCE FREDERICK

I REMEMBER

In those days, most birders in Madras relied on the slim-sized Book of Indian Birds by Salim Ali to identify birds. Every birdwatcher desired to possess Ali's ten-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan , which was incredibly exhaustive but came at a steep price. A birder friend received the 10-volume set as a wedding gift. On that day, he was the most envied man in all of Madras.

K.V. SUDHAKAR Born in 1954, he is a chartered accountant and a committed naturalist. With the Madras Naturalists' Society since its inception, he now serves as its president.