Mad Madrasis at Melghat

We did make it!

75 + birds species

Dry - I mean really dry - teak forests

Five dry rivers

Brown everywhere

Including the gaur, sambar and wild boar

MTDC horrors at Chikaldhara

A leopard seen while on foot

Bone-rattling jeep drives

Dahi rabdi at Semadoh

40 degrees + temperatures with no power

New friends - Sajid the driver and Neelkant the make-shift cook boy

MNS camaraderie

Endorphins released to last us a year, I think!

Nothing-is-impossible Vijay

Been there done that Mr Ramanan

Ever giggling and helpful Divya

Sweet-tempered Shoba (doesnt anything make her mad?!)

Mr Ranjan from Kochi

Deepika and Shoben - between them we had everything from a knife to bottle opener to kakras and teplas

Raji - our quack doctor with her Himalaya ayurvedic supplies

Stoic and wry Sekar

A trip full of memories and incidents to last a lifetime.  Pioneers, maybe we were?  I wonder if there is anyone in madras who has been to Melghat?!

More, as and when I recover!

Continued here.

Will we make it to Melghat?

Our train tickets to Badnera are still waitlisted, for our journey to the Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra.

So, silence for the next ten days on this blog means good news, and that we did make the train.  Else, I'll be back and blogging my blues away.

Where is Melghat?

Good question!  I was also ignorant until a month ago, when the MNS trip was announced. Now, I know that its in the Gavilgarh hills, which is an offshoot of the Satpura mountains in northern Maharashtra.   

What I am looking forward to is the 5 tributaries of the Tapti for which it is the catchment area supposedly, as also the peak Vairat, which is at a height of 1,000+m, and the forests and the cool weather (I hope!).  Maybe the Gavilgarh fort as well.

How are we getting there?

We are taking Navjeevan express from Chennai to Badnera, a 19 hour journey, and then driving down to Chikaldhara, where we will probably stay at the MTDC accommodation.

And will we see the increasingly rare tiger?  

Here are some links about the state of the sanctuary:

Project Tiger Status Report for Melghat, 2001

The Business Line report on the state of the sanctuary in 2003

Sanctuary Spotlight in The Hindu, 2005

While I was away....

it looks like my husband was busy with the birds (thankfully the feathered kind!), and caught our daily visitor in fine form.

(To really enjoy these lovely photos, please click on them and see them full-size.)

Now, I am quite convinced that he's the same chap whom I wrote about here. He knows us so well, that he doesn't budge even if we eyeball him. Should probably take to modelling. Look at the fine pose he has struck, and since he didnt fidget this time, these picture came out really sharp.

He obviously spends a good deal of time on his daily toilette. Notice how all the white on his chest is really white. I mean he does this without soap or detergent! They look so soft and downy as well. All the brown feathers are groomed and not one is out of place. And then on his head, look at the lovely grey streak all the way to the back.

He stops on the ramp, then turns around and allows us to see his tail as well! And all the while he goes chirrup, chirrup, and looks at us impatiently. Should name him... What though? ... Sparky... Perky.... Chirpy... Cheeky... Ginger...

The red-capped postman

Thats what he reminds me of. (Actually my postman is dressed in blue and has no red cap.)  Or is it a schoolboy in uniform?  Or maybe a fireman from a Noddy book?

Sinna kukuvaran in tamil....

Or Chempukotti in malayalam

Or Coppersmith Barbet

Or Megalaima haemacephala

Another sparrow-sized bird, that goes tonk-tonk outside my bedroom window, on the Millingtonia tree! My husband was lucky with these pictures, as Mr Barbet usually shows up early morning, when the light is poor.

As he sits there, his head moves jerkily back and forth as he calls out in that repetitive tonk-tonk, sounding like a melodious version of the worker banging on the steel rods in the construction site next door.
I never tire of looking at this bird, its lovely red cap and red chest. And that stout bill.

Poor Mrs Barbet, she has no such adornments and is a rather plain green, as you can see below. Unlike the sparrow, its rather shy, and flies off at the least movement at my window.
I wonder if they eat neem fruits, since they are frugivorous, and that's the only fruit tree on our street! They're supposed to feast on figs, banyan and peepul fruit..

There are some great photos on Flickr of this little bird.    My favourite is Ryan Brookes, who has captured the bird in that large urban sprawl Mumbai.  Its amazing how amidst all the noise, dust and hustle bustle, you can still find these treasures, if you only look.

Another great one is Pixelography, who's got two of them on a branch, in Chennai.

Memories of Central Park

"Where else can you get a half a million things,
All at a quarter to three", sang Huey Lewis and the News, about New York.

Our summer of 2005 was spent at New York, and besides the wonderful times with our family there, I have very happy memories of Central Park. It was my first chance encounter with birding as well.

In Madras, one has to live near the beach, and in New York you have to be around Central Park!

We arrived, just at the end of the winter, and as we drove in and through the park, the winter brown was contrasted with this lovely burst of yellow.

In a fortnight, though, it was different, the lawns were green, and the trees too, and New Yorkers just hung out taking in the sun. So did we. 

I remember in the bad old days, we Indians would be terrified of Central Park, and were constantly told how innocent Indians would definitely get mugged there. During my previous visit I was given strict instructions by my mother not to wander alone in the park!


Then came the flowers, and the tulips, in colours to take our breath away. I went crazy and kept clicking away, I remember. Digicams zindabad!

My son, ten years at that time and I would hang around the conservatory pond, where you could rent a remote-controlled sailboat, by the hour, and watch it zip across the water as it caught the breeze. Each visit there would be something going on - a wedding party, the horse patrol, and of course the Hans Christian Anderson statue.

What I remember with amusement though is Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk, which had taken up a nest in one of the buildings across from the park, much to the excitement of local birders. Back then, I had not been introduced to the strange and quixotic world of birders and birding, and was tickled pink to see a Pale Male viewing telescope, set up at the pond! There was a lot of buzz around Pale Male that summer of '05, since the building residents wanted to get rid of the nest, but naturalists and birders united in protest and successfully stalled the operation.


There is also a small boating lake where we came across these turtles, sunning themselves. The whole area is filled with birdcalls generally.

Going through the papers one weekend, my sister-in-law mentioned that there was a morning walk to see the birds of Central Park that Sunday. Out of curiosity, and the thought of another walk around CP, we both went off the next morning, bright and early. I think between us we had two fungus-filled binoculars. And of course, since we were going birding, it had to be a drizzly, overcast morning. (This has been the story of my birding - overcast skies and rain, be it Pulicat, Penchalakona or Central Park!) There was a group of older, white women (we were the 2 oddities there I remember), and our leader was a man (David I think) who had run up a list of some 800+ odd birds seen in his life, and was looking to cross a 1,000 that year. Anyway, off we went through the parks lesser used paths, and every now and then he would stop and point out some lovely bird and there would be oohs and aahs all around, while my sis-in-law and me would squint desperately through our binoculars and not see it most of the time. I think I managed to spot one robin and a wagtail! After a bit of this, the birder could not bear it anymore. He suddenly thrust his binoculars into our hands, and said take a look through this.

It was then that my eyes were opened - quite literally almost - to the beauty of these little birds, and the joys of birding! I resolved to get a good pair of binocs, which my husband eventually indulged me with, before he was also drawn into this pastime, and then we needed 2 pairs.  Oh well.

So, to cut a long story short, my new-found interest in the birds can be traced back to that day in Central Park, and to my sis-in-law, I say thank you!  There is a Birds of Central Park site, and also a book called Club George:  The Diary of a Central Park Birdwatcher.  

Then there was the day we hired bikes and went riding up the Greater Loop, only to get lost, with my son having better navigation skills than me.  On top of that, those bikes did not have a conventional brake, you know the kind we have on the handle bar,  Instead you have to pedal in reverse to stop the bikes!  I shall not go into the details of my undignified cycling, but it definitely kept my son amused.  

And how can we forget the Central Park Zoo?  More on that, soon, as well as our encounters with Gus, Ida, Breezy and gang.

Golden oriole!

This Golden Oriole came visiting - to the Neem tree outside my second favourite window. (If you remember, my most favourite window is the one with the view of the Millingtonia.)

I was at work, on my computer, when its sweet call caught my ear, I looked up to see it sitting there! Lovely bird isnt it?

I hurried off to get my binoculars, and grabbed the only camera at hand then, and came up with these two grainy pictures!

It has a striking streak of black around the eyes, and this male bird that I saw has black on the wings. The female, which I have not seen, is supposedly a duller colour without this much black styling.

Salim Ali has a lovely description of its nest - "A beautifully woven deep cup of grass and bast fibres bound with cobweb, supsended hammock-wise in the fork of a leafy twig, 4-10m up". Lets hope I come across one some time, as the eggs are spotted as well.

New age birds these. Papa and mama share all domestic duties!