The Peacock of New Beach Road

Intermittently through the summer of '21, through lockdown, sightings of a young peacock yet to grow his elaborate tail feathers, have been reported up and down our road.  A solitary vagrant (?) that has taken a liking to the neighbourhood?

13th Dec 2021 was my close encounter.

The morning starts with a light drizzle, hmm, terrace walk, to go or not, tussle between my id (relax!) and my overactive superego (no you must go, don't be lazy)...sigh, superego wins, and off I go to our terrace. 

Emerging from the door, I gasped, there was the peacock just beyond the door, and not in the least perturbed or shocked at seeing me!  I stood stock still and watched as he strolled across the terrace to the wall and hopped up.

My first of several pictures of the young chap. Pavo cristatus - Indian peafowl

I moved slowly and kept my distance, took a few video clips and many pictures as it strolled and explored our terrace, at leisure, in the jerky fashion that many of these big birds have.

I admired the brilliant "peacock blue" of his neck.  Got a close look at the leg spurs.

I later read that,  that spur on the leg comes when they are around 2 years and tail feathers begin developing around 4.  So then was this chap between 2-4 years of age?  Why was he on his own like this?  I have always seen them in small groups, when I have seen them in India's sanctuaries, be it Kanha or Kaziranga.  I remember in Manas how there was a congregation of them at the entrance of the park.  Our first "Darshan" everyday before we headed in.  

All through the stroll, the house crows of the neighbourhood made their displeasure known, swooping close to his head, hopping closely with loud caws.  

The crows seemed bemused, not knowing what to make of this large bird, something new in the neighbourhood.  I remember when we spotted the Grey Hornbills, the crows behaved in the same manner. In that case, they successfully chased the pair of hornbills away, but our friend the peacock was not too bothered.

Finally, after a complete stroll around, with crows constantly swooping around, he hopped onto the eastern wall, before he launched off.

I peered over the wall, but lost sight of it.  Saw the beautiful reddening leaves of the jungli badam instead.

And then I spied him, across the road on the neighbour's roof!

It was an amazingly rewarding morning - I saw these 4 blue-tailed bee-eaters, as well and enjoyed their insect-hunting sorties and acrobatics.  Initially I wondered if they were chestnut-headed, but their long streamer tail made me conclude that they were Blue-tailed.  Here for the winter.

I also saw scaly-breasted munias, and this beautiful tree.

And here's the complete video.

21st December

An alert neighbour found the peacock once again - in the trees. And Sekar took these pictures through one of our bedroom windows.

We were able to admire the crest on his head, and the beautifully descriptive eyes.  That blue.... I had some sarees in that colour....silk, gorgeous.

He was feeding on the little berries and the young shoots...peck, peck, look, look, duck from the crow, peck again, neck in, neck up...we observed his motions.

And then he did something interesting...he lifted his undeveloped train of feathers, and quivered them, did a pirouette on the branch, showed us his rear.  Did this a couple of times, to a disinterested couple of crows as audience!  (Besides us of course!)

Getting ready for the breeding season?  Or is he immature still?  I wondered.

Further encounters ensued.

23rd December - on our car - seems like a photoshoot - blue on blue.  
Picture taken by our neighbour.

27th December evening - on the coconut tree, surrounded by crows, who were behaving in an indignant fashion - I mean, the coconut tree, this is the limit, I could almost imagine them muttering among themselves.

This was today - 28th December - on our neighbour's tank.  He was there for a good length of time.  Seemed to survey things around, and kept gobbling something - maybe ants - from around that brick he's standing on.

Wishing him a happy 2022, when he finds some other birds of his own feather - and maybe we will see his trail developing? And hear that characteristic peacock call, which has been completely absent.  Very quiet for an adolescent!

3rd January update

Spied this morning too, on the neighbour's fence, eating berries.  His neck caught the morning sun and I gasped with delight watching the shimmering colours through the binoculars.

A dog barked, and he was all alert.  A crow swooped close to its head and settled on the fence too, and immediately this chap put up his yet-to-fully-grow tail, and did his kathakali moves to the crow. So was that an act of aggression or is he (Heaven forbid) thinking he has to woo the crow?!

The neighbour's dog came bounding to the fence, and with a roll of its eyes, the peacock hopped across to the other side and vanished.

5th January - further update

Peacock evening it was!  My friend was on the neighbour's roof once again, and once again being heckled by the crow.  This time, I was able to catch its offensive actions on camera.

Up went its unformed tail, and it faced the crow - was it as a threat or in courtship?  The crow like the peahens, looked totally disinterested, looking the other way.

The crow hopped around on the wall, seemingly trying to deflect this attention, but the peacock moved in true kathakali style, quivering its feathers and also kind of rattling its beak, giving the crow his full attention.

In what felt like a slow-mo, the peacock swivelled as the crow moved.  

As i watched this scene in total rapt fascination, the crow decided it had had enough, and took off, (I like to think), when faced with the rear end of the peacock.

Immediately the tail came down and the peacock kind of peered over to see where the crow had gone off to.  

14th January

After a long hiatus, he was sighted this morning again.  Was it the overnight rain that brought him into view? on the roof of the bungalow across the road, once again in conversation with the crow.

I want to give him a name.  No inspiration at the moment.

The rains of 2021 November and the new rivers of Thiruvanmyur beach

November 2021

Thiruvanmyur

15th November 2021

After the first serious bout of rain, this plot at the corner of Baywatch boulevard and KK road  was semi-flooded and they were pumping the water all the way to the sea.

 

 

 And this was the other road along which a channel was created.  Reminding me of my grandmother's home, and the water canals that would course through the farm areas.

Definite paper boat kind of feelings.

28th November - the sun comes out, the sea was calmer and the cattle were happy with some dry spot!

November 29th.

New Beach Road is lined with RWH pits connected by a sloping pipe through which excess water goes to the sea, via this outlet.  

This plot at the corner of Baywatch boulevard and KK road is completely inundated - it is a sheet of water along with the road next to it. 

My hypothesis is that this now is the level of the water table.  The owners of the plot on the other hand, think they can pump away this water.  Which is what they are doing.  Water is getting pumped to the sea in huge pipes.  Can't the empty plots at least be allowed to keep their water, and support the monsoon ecosystem of frog and tadpole?  Will mosquitoes breed then?

I saw  tadpoles in a couple of waterfilled plots and have been hearing the sound of frogs, maybe for the first time ever, on NBR?

Water in SloMO From the beach

 Clean Up!

It was a timely and quick way to remove the plastic thrown back by the sea from the sands for sure.  The only problem with this is that it also affects the intertidal marine life doesn't it?  All those little crabs and clams - all collateral damage?

Several such mounds from the earthmover lined the road.
I hope that this kind of cleaning is a one-off event as otherwise the sands will get "dead".

As I watched the floodwaters join the sea, I ruminated on how, we are spending huge monies on desalinating the  ocean's waters on the one hand for our consumption, and then the fresh water that comes to us free, we are once again spending money and pumping back into the sea.

Surely there is a better way?

Chennai resident crosses birding milestone, documents 100 species from hearthstone - The Hindu

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/pallikaranai-resident-crosses-birding-milestone-records-100-species-from-hearthstone/article37732789.ece

Chennai resident crosses birding milestone, documents 100 species from hearthstone

Sundaravel Palanivel recently reached the three-figure mark, remarkably through patch birding from his home in Pallikaranai. His observations and photographic records include around 10 rarities and many insightful avian patterns

Prince Frederick

Any successful flourish of the bat or a breakthrough with the ball or any defining moment in a match would instantaneously whip up a frenzy in the stands. It would combine the spontaneity that goes with deliriously delighted fans and the craft associated with professionally trained cheerleaders.

When Sundaravel Palanivel ran up a workmanlike hundred recently, there was a rare form of cheering with spontaneity and aesthetics seamlessly woven into it. In that moment when he looked through the viewfinder at a dancing forest wagtail and pressed down the shutter-release button, and reached that magical three-figure mark, the sense of achievement was inescapable. That untrained but delectable cheerleader perfected that moment of glory. For the uninitiated, the forest wagtail does a sideways sway in elegant contrast to the almost frenzied up-and-down tail-bobbing of other wagtails.

It was a hundred counted not by runs, but feathers; and the duration in which it was achieved measured not by balls, but 24-hour days. With the sighting and recording of the forest wagtail, Sundaravel was documenting the hundredth bird species from his hearthstone. He had amassed that score in a two-to-three-year time frame, sedulously applying himself to confiding the sightings to an excel sheet.

Sundaravel travels long and often in the hope of clapping eyes on rarities, but has also stayed faithful to his patch which he watches with eyes peeled back.

The fact that he is domiciled at Kamakotti Nagar in Pallikaranai, and the view outside includes spits of land and water that borrow their character from the Pallikaranai Marsh was surely an incentive.

His apartment is located on Third Main Road Kamakotti Nagar, which is overlooked by the tall NIOT campus ringed by trees that are taller still. While many of the bird sightings happened on this road and the terrace of his four-floor apartment complex, he also ranges around the neighbourhood, heading into streets nearby where nature plays peekaboo with civilisation, giving a fleeting glimpse of its largesse. The entries in the sheet locate each of the streets around his hearth where sightings happened.

The trees that rear up majestically on the NIOT campus serve as cradle for newborns of big waterbirds, which include the black-headed ibis, spot-billed pelican, Eurasian spoonbill and members of the heron and egret families. Though the nest-laden trees — in the breeding season — are out of range for his telephoto lens, Sundaravel has managed to freeze frames touched on the edges with heart-warming domestic scenes of parent-birds leading their young out on trial flights.

An almost permanent collection of water adjacent to the campus functions as a play school for fledglings. These are only the predictable factors his viewfinder is accustomed to. Unexpected feathers are often known to flit across that lucky eyepiece.

Out of the hundred, around 10 would be rarities. The others are regular residents, migrants and local-migrants, notes Sundaravel. No sighting can compete with any other, as each brings with it its own unique insight, with some even completing patterns.

Over the last two years, he has seen the Asian pied starling take ownership of the space, from just one breeding pair to at least four pairs now. The sighting and documentation of these breeding pairs etch a curious picture of the species' range expansion into Chennai, a recent phenomenon attested by other sightings from birders from other parts of the metro. Not long ago, northern Andhra Peradesh was believed to bring up the southern bounds of this species' distribution range in India.

There have also been sightings from home that are not exactly grounded. In the hours after cyclone Nivar (November 23-27, 2020) had crossed the coast, an Amur falcon crossed his path, its journey to its faraway wintering grounds in southern and east Africa evidently rescheduled and rerouted through Sundaravel's "airway", by the weather system. Interestingly enough, Sundaravel saw the obviously-windblown Amur falcon, winging far above his apartment complex, at the exact moment that he was discussing sightings of storm-tossed and windblown pelagic birds with this writer. Excusing himself, the birder dropped out of the call, and returned to announce his "windfall".

The best patch-birding day for him arrived this year on April 3, when he watched two rare warblers that are passage migrants in these parts — the large-billed leaf warbler and western crowned warbler. These birds had invited themselves to his apartment, and the unlikelihood of those visits makes one wonder if birds do wise up to human ways: And that these two were probably aware of the excel sheet in Sundaravel's laptop.

Another passage migrant, one that is discovering new pitstops in Chennai, the chestnut-winged cuckoo features in Sundaravel's coveted list.

Other notables on the patch-birding list include the gray-bellied cuckoo, red-necked falcon, sooty tern, cinnamon bittern, black bittern, yellow bittern, Caspian tern, lesser cuckoo, Asian brown flycatcher, garganey, long-tailed shrike, brown shrike, wood sandpiper, marsh sandpiper, western yellow wagtail, Blyth's reed warbler, citrine wagtail, rosy starling, fulvous whistling-duck, striated heron, pheasant-tailed jacana, Indian paradise-flycatcher, white-browed bulbul and an elusive and awkward skulker, the blue-faced malkoha.

Ambika 

Urban Wilderness Walks - by Yuvan

A wonderfully meaningful intervention by MNS spearheaded by Yuvan, Kalpana and Vidya.  Just putting it down here for my future reference.

CPB%20Journal%202021%20%u2014%20Urban%20Wilderness%20Walks

By Yuvan

In the last two weeks of August 2021 something happened, perhaps for the first time in Chennai’s history.

Life science students from two women's colleges conducted Urban Wilderness Walks (UWW) in 25 different localities across the city. From Avadi to ICF, Perambur to Pallikaranai, Triplicane to Thiruvanmiyur – the publics in these places, young and old, were guided into experiencing urban spaces through the lens of ecology and biodiversity.

UWW is an internship I am conducting through the Madras Naturalists’ Society for colleges in Chennai. As I write this essay, the first batch of 27 interns are almost at the end of the programme. The dream of this internship is to give young people the experience, skill, and knowledge to be anchors and facilitators around ecology in urban spaces. The dream of this internship is to create a city-wide network of young naturalists, communicators, resource-people, and see if this might in some way shift the city’s culture towards that of deep eco-literacy and belonging; to get the public enmeshed in the care for this unique landscape and bioregion. As part of the course, students document place-histories by engaging with people in their localities, survey and map trees, document biodiversity using citizen science portals, come on field sessions in the different habitats of Chennai, learn teaching and active-learning pedagogies, create their own nature-education material, and of course, create experiences/walks for public in their localities.

After the first set of walks, I met all the interns to listen to their experiences and write down some of what they were sharing. Pavithra conducted her walk in Lloyd’s colony Royapettah, and she said, “I’m quite amazed by the interest shown by all the participants. They were bombarding me with questions…. we saw kingfishers, house sparrows, chalky percher dragonflies, touch-me-not plants and butterflies like the bluebottle, common mormon and emigrant. They were overwhelmed because it was their first time seeing all these”. Faustina, who conducted her walk in Aynavaram colony said, “I really enjoyed working with kids and teaching them. They kept asking questions, and tried to fill the activity sheets I gave them”.Yamini decided to organize her walk for the governmentschool children of Lakshmipuram.She highlighted the children’s keenness towards discovering new species in their neighbourhood, and their almost natural interest in the biodiversity around them, but also noted that they did not have the right kind of opportunities to further their interests. Keerthika did her walk at the Indian Coach Factory (ICF), and she spoke of how she “enjoyed the parts which were not actually planned for the walk, but eventually occurred. For instance, moments like identifying a mushroom, seeing an unknown insect and using a guide to identify those”. At the end of the course in October all of them conducted themed-walks in their urban localities – tree-walks, insect-walks, bird-walks, wetland-walks, dragonfly-walks, nature-journaling sessions and so on. 

Cities are hotspots for trade and economics; or cities are ‘inverted mines’ as my friend and anthropologist Maria Faciolince from the Curasao Islands puts it.

The vision of the UWW is to ask - What are the most relevant articulations and narratives to tell people and children during this time? - and come up with cultural retellings emplaced in the living world. ‘Walk’ is a formative word in Urban Wilderness Walks.

How we choose to move has the potency to shape the world around us.

I go to Elliot’s beach often. I go up till the shore in the mornings, watch what the fisherfolk have brought in, ask them how the seas are, the winds are, then walk North till the Adyar river’s estuary to see its life and flow. The residents and corporation have got used to car-free Sundays on the beach’s promenade. If you visit here on Sunday mornings between 6 –.9 am the road is used by dog-walkers, joggers, zumba dancers, skaters, placard-holding campaigners, balloon-sellers, yoga-doers, frisbee and badminton players, tender-coconut sellers. This promenade on a Sunday morning is a beautiful example of a tiny ‘open-city’, as theorized by sociologist and planner Richard Sennett. The density of people is high and diverse. The street transforms into a social space – because it ensures slow movement. There are many kinds of social mixing and great face-to-face interaction between people who otherwise might never meet in ‘class’ified urban societies. There is talking, laughing, arguing, debating, gossiping, and making. A richness of life which dissipates once the vehicle barricades are removed after 9am.

Elliot’s promenade is a small example of a ‘walking culture’ or a culture of slow movement. In such a place, neighbourhoods are designed for people, not vehicles – quite in contrast to how modern urban spaces are planned. Elliot’s beach helps me imagine how and if walking, and other forms of non-motorized slow-movement, could be a predominant social behaviour. How might that influence city planning? There would be more trees for shade.More parks and benches. Would they be socially, ecologically more inclusive spaces? Yes, I think so. There would be cleaner public toilets at more frequent intervals. More small and diverse kinds of shops and economies would thrive, rather than a few massive mega-malls. In places like Kullu and Amritsar one gets a glimpse of what this might be like, where several of their roads are permanently barricaded to cars. 

In places of slow movement, we would know the names of more of our neighbours. Public spaces would be spaces of creation. More leaflitter would fall on the ground. Grass and brush would grow more densely on the waysides – bringing bees, butterflies, sunbirds and skinks into our daily speech and imagination. Trees would live longer. Frogs will be heardIt is at the pace of walking that our body immerses in the many levels of connection to the living world. 

Human interaction has evolved to happen on the horizontal plane. Our experiences occur primarily on the x-axis. Which throws a question to the other strange fallacy of urban planning – verticalization. Stacking us one on top of each other has the strange effect of increasing density while reducing relatedness and relationships.

My friend Siddharth Agarwal often says that walking “disarms” you. I watched his extraordinary documentary earlier this year, called Moving Upstream Ganga. It is perhaps the first of its kind taken in India. Siddharth walked 3000kms, between June 2016 to April 2017, starting from Ganga Sagar in West Bengal and finishing at Gangotri in Uttarakhand. As he journeys, he interacts and records his conversations with the riparian communities.He stays overnight in people’s riverside huts and documents the challenges they face due to ‘development’ – which, on a river, means building of barrages, bridges, canals for larger vessels, and river-linking projects. His film made me think about how many campaigns demanding, and possibly achieving socio-political change happens on foot. I know that my own feeling of belonging to Chennai and deciding to put roots here came from walking through its landscapes and street-scapes. I think, an active citizenry is always, or at least mostly pedestrian. 

That made me wonder, that if by the age of 10– 12years each child could recognize a hundred plants and trees of their city and locality, how that would change the culture and politics of urban living. This is not a large number. Psychologist Allen Kanner's studies show that an average three- year-old American child can recognize a hundred brands, and almost 300-400 brands by the time they are 10 years old! These numbers maybe a bit lesser in India, but still, imagine.

An amnesia about trees is ironic in a landscape like Tamil Nadu. It is difficult to navigate ten kilometers on its map without entering a place named after a tree or a plant. Take the names of localities in Chennai for instance -Alandur (Alam - Banyan), Veppery (Vepam - Neem), Perambur (Perambu - Cane), Panaiyur (Panai - Palmyra), Purasaiwakkam (Purasu - Palaash), Teynampet (Thennam Pettai, thennai - Coconut) and so on and on.A few months ago, I attended a talk by a Karthikeyan Paarkavidhai who spoke about the trees in the Sangam literature. He quoted lines from Tamil Sangam texts, indicating the possibility that the famous city of Madurai may have come from the word Marudhai/Marudham - also a Tamil word for a vegetation type around water bodies. Interestingly, the highly descriptive and poetic Tamil nature-writing in the Sangam period rose almost a millennium before the first religious Tamil texts. 

A study of Tamil place-names shows how trees and local vegetation have been deeply rooted in people's collective imagination across this wide landscape. I posted this on Instagram, and my comments were filled with names of similar such places from across the world that had names inspired by trees. Bengaluru, somebody said, is named after the Benga tree – Pterocarpus marsupium. Palakad in Kerala from Paala tree – Alstonia scholaris. Pranay, a friend from Telangana, told me that his native village is Vasalamarri – Vasala being beams of wood and Marri being Banyan. A person from Maharashtra began listing names of villages from his state - Pimpal-gaon(sacred fig), Vad-gaon(banyan), Ambe-gaon (Mango), 'Bor'dara, Palasdari (palash valley), Umbre (fig), and so on. 

Similarly, it is as difficult to traverse any direction of Tamil Nadu’s map – or maybe as the trees example brought out, any map – without crossing places named after waterbodies. If you are from Chennai or TN, think of all the place names which have the suffixes – eri, thangal, kulam, odai, and so on.The Urban Wilderness Walks initiative hopes to bring back into Chennai’s culture its ecological histories. It takes inspiration from Nizhal’s tree walks, Jane Jacobs, Richard Sennett, and Anne Hildago. From the Wildflower safaris British writer Lucy Jones takes her young daughter on, on her sidewalks, and from the lake-conducted by Arun Krishnamurthy from Environment Foundation India.It takes inspiration from Robert Macfarlane’s Old Ways and Siddharth Agarwal’s Moving Upstream and from Maria Faciolince’s collective cartography project. From Sandip Patil’s vision and work for pollinator friendly urban streets and Marine Life of Mumbai’s shore-walks. From the toxic tours conducted by my friend and mentor Nityanand Jayaraman, who for decades has been showing the public of Tamil Nadu the violence of large corporations on people and environment, and several such initiatives on footwalks. 

Ocean's 6: Real life Planeteers - Young MNS members learn about the coast and teach us all

 

Gastropods, bivalves

hermits and jellyfish

currents - wind and water

Swales and dunes

fishing and fisherfolk 

Shore Walks for all.

"let the beach teach" - Sara Mohan

"Our textbooks do not tell us about home - the sea next to us." - Yuvan

KYC - Know Your Coast

A coucal

Along with the new rivers streaming down in Thiruvanmyur, Sekar and I spied a coucal. He did, first, actually.  Unusually for this bird it was down in full public view on the road. Most often skulking away in the undergrowth or canopy it was my morning walk's moment of delight. 

As we watched, it 'walked' rather jauntily across the road and up onto the gate, before flying into the neighbouring badam tree. 

I had heard it the previous day and so to actually see it was a rather pleasing vindication of what I had heard!

A first time in all these years.

Bee-eaters in the sky today

 It is Vijayadasami today.  A day to start/renew.  And here I am saying hello to my blog again.  

My morning terrace walk today - learned about Squid Games (South Korea's version of Hunger Games) and saw two Green Bee-eaters in the sky.  The Bee-eaters did a couple of sorties and were gone, sadly.  The parakeets stayed, and a young crow fixed me with an intense and curious stare, following me, up and down the terrace before it flew away out of boredom.

The skies are full of Wandering Gliders, moving east to west, from the coastline, across the city, and made me wonder if that's what had attracted the bee-eaters.  

The Wandering Gliders never cease to amaze me, coming with the monsoon winds every year, and moving ceaselessly and tirelessly.  I shot a long video of their gliding and wandering on the beach.  It doesn't make for good viewing or sharing, because they are in and out of the frame in a second, and there are these tiny squiggles moving across the screen.  I marvelled at their two sets of wings, sometimes beating in harmony and other times out of sync for some reason.  Lift?  Velocity?  Hover?

Solving A Dragonfly Flight Mystery

Dragonflies adjust their wing motion while hovering to conserve energy, according to a Cornell University study of the insect's flight mechanics. The revelation contradicts previous speculation that the change in wing motion served to enhance vertical lift.

The Cornell physicists came to their conclusions after analyzing high speed images of dragonflies in action. The insects have two pairs of wings, which sometimes move up and down in harmony. At other times the front set of wings flap out of sync with the back set.

The physicists found that dragonflies maximized their lift, when accelerating or taking off from a perch, by flapping both sets of wings together. When they hover, however, the rear wings flap at the same rate as the front, but with a different phase (imagine two people clapping at the same speed, but with one person's clap delayed relative to the other).

The physicists' analysis of the out-of-sync motion showed that while it didn't help with lift, it minimized the amount of power they had to expend to stay airborne, allowing them to conserve energy while hovering in place.

The research will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of Physical Review Letters. The authors are Z. Jane Wang and David Russell.

Sept 2007

Waders arrive

Experiencing Pulicat in Kelambakkam 

The Hindu

Sept 19th 2021

Prince Frederick

For local birders, the ruddy turnstone is a “Pulicat bird” — period. The winter migrant keeps its date with the lagoon with almost monsoonal punctuality. Birders flocking to Pulicat for its stone-turning performance do not have too many cancelled matches to rail about.

The winter migrant does put in an appearance on a few other sections of the coast around Chennai, but it is just what it is said to be — an appearance, fleeting and unpredictable, on this winter and off for the next three. So, ruddy turnstone occurrences around Kelambakkam are received with the excitement that surrounds breaking news.

In the early hours of September 12, when Sundaravel Palanivel and Sivakumar Shamugasundaram began exploring the Kelambakkam backwaters and adjacent sections that are ecological extensions of it, for signs of early migrants, they did not have the ruddy turnstone on the list of probables.

Not that the species has never before been recorded on sections of these backwaters. However, on the question of being attractive to the ruddy turnstone, Kelambakkam backwaters’ record looks deplorably poor when juxtaposed with Pulicat’s. The chasm is as wide as the difference between Dilip Doshi’s batting averages and Virat Kozhi’s — so you get the picture.

When the day had sunk on the landward side, these two birders were mighty chuffed to have experienced Pulicat south of Chennai. Sundaravel Palanivel uploaded a checklist on which were parked three ruddy turnstones. The surprise did not begin with this species; nor did it end there. The biggest of those wow encounters was a flock of around 60 lesser sand plovers.

It was the size of the flock that made the birding duo feel being whisked away to Pulicat.

“We had the sense of encountering all the Pulicat birds. Besides the ruddy turnstones, terek sandpipers are readily associated with Pulicat. We found three of them on that Sunday trip,” says Sundaravel.

“It is a great pleasure to observe early migrants, especially when you encounter them in an unexpected place. There was much human activity not far from where the birds were. But these waders, not in the thousands that one would expect them to see later, did not seem affected by it. We could observe them go about their business from a good distance. The sand plovers, pacific golden plovers, terek sandpipers, the lone curlew sandpiper, the busy turnstones and the godwits were all a pleasure to watch and record,” is how Sivakumar describes the experience of watching an impressive number of migrants as early as September.

While the list put up on eBird clearly has a whiff of Pulicat, one has to go through the entire season to arrive at a reliable picture of whether the Muttukaddu-Kelambakkam-Kovalam backwater ecosystem can “sustain” the Pulicat experience through an entire season.

In fact, one has to be at least a couple of more winters older to be wiser in this matter. Meanwhile, it would help chew on an observation made by birder E Arun Kumar, who has done synchronised bird surveys at Pulicat for the last three years for the forest department.

Arun Kumar notes: “Sometimes, around the Kelambakkam side, you will get to see the ruddy turnstone because of the presence of the estuary at Muttukadu. Sometimes, the birds regularly sighted at Pulicat during the winter season are sighted around the Kelambakkam backwaters. They use it as the stopover point: At Kelambakkam, you will not see them for a long time. They will stay for just two or three days and then move on to Yedayanthittu estuary and Mudaliarkuppam backwaters or to Pulicat. When they come to Pulicat, they would stay on for months. In contrast, Kelambakkam would be just a pitstop. As Pulicat and Yedayanthittu are relatively untouched by development and are more expansive habitats, the species that are sighted at Kelambakkam will be found there in larger numbers . To give an example, you will see a few Pacific golden plovers in Kelambakkam, and thousands of them in Pulicat. In fact, the Pacific golden plover is also known to head to freshwater lakes which was corroborated by the sighting of 40 Pacific golden plovers at the Mamandur freshwater lake last wintering season.”

Urban Wilderness Walk - Thiruvanmyur

29th August '21

In July this year, MNS launched a project called Urban Wilderness Walks, an internship for college students, with the goal of creating more nature educators in the city, and creating a kind of snowball effect for increasing connect to urban wilderness in the city of Chennai.  Spearheaded by Yuvan and  Kalpana, it is an amazing initiative.

Kalpana explained in the MNS bulletin -   

"The internship was begun with the aim of creating a community around biodiversity appreciation and study through training people in planning and conducting periodic urban wilderness walks in their neighbourhoods. The 27 interns, mainly from two womens’ colleges in Chennai - Stella Maris College and Womens’ Christian College - attended field sessions at Perungudi and Kotturpuram Urban Forest and participated in activities curated by M. Yuvan as part of their training module. For easy identification of common urban fauna, each intern received a copy of Preston Ahimaz’s “A Guide to Some Urban Fauna of India” as well as the Field Guide for identifying Common Birds, published by NCF.

As a first step the interns checked out their residential localities from the perspective of conducting wilderness walks, chose a suitable trail for the walk and invited people to participate in the walk. Inspired by Yuvan’s activity sheets they designed their own to suit the chosen trail and surroundings. The result - delightful activity sheets and unique activities formulated to engage the walk participants. Fun activities were created and implemented – estimating the age of trees by measuring tree girth, colouring insects and birds on activity sheets, drawing leaf shapes, drawing food chains, urban flora and fauna bingo, identifying birds through calls, making bird sounds, enacting commonly observed behaviour of animals, checklists for biodiversity observed on particular trees, open ended questions...the list goes on......."

This hybrid orientation - online and offline - culminated in a series of walks by the interns in their areas - Pallikaranai, Velachery, Thiruvanmiyur, Adyar, IITM, Mandaveli, Royapettah, Triplicane, St. Thomas Mount, Washermanpet, Madhavaram, Perambur, Ayanavaram, Mugappair, Aminjikarai, Kolathur, Virugambakkam, K.K. Nagar, Ambattur and Avadi.....  I attended the one conducted by Keerthana in Thiruvanmyur, along Kuppam Beach Road.  

Each of the interns made lovely little posters like this one on the left that I received.   

The previous night we had heavy rain, and it was a slushy walk to the starting point which was near Bhavani medai.  It was a small group that started the walk.

It is the end of August and the "Mayflowers" are in bloom, I loved the colours on this one, all washed and bright.  It is unsurprising that the British brought this tree in, so attractive and graceful.  As we were finishing our walk, we also saw one that had fallen in the overnight rain - the shallow roots once again evident.

My big learning was the approximation of a tree's age - Four feet from the ground, measure the girth in centimetres and divide by 2.5!  This Rain Tree near the fish market, was around 90 years old, then! As old as my father!

My next discover was courtesy Usha, who added to the walk with a small detour into Teachers Colony and and ancient Shiva temple there.

What caught my immediate attention was a fig species tree, growing all over and into the temple wall.

The Shiva temple houses the samadhi of Siddhar Bala Ramalinga Nathar who used to worship here, centuries ago.  It is all bricked and plastered now, so it was difficult to imagine its antiquity.  There was a lovely Nandi as well.

Took a picture of the leaves of this fig, which was not a Peepul.  Was it the Rock fig - Kallala tree?  I doubt it, as the edges are not wavy and nor are the veins pink. More like Icchi maram, or Talbot Fig?

The roots below and the temple were supporting this enormous canopy above.

In the compound was the second ancient tree - a Peepul - that we measured, and this emerged as 110 years of age! It was a glorious sight, since it had grown unfettered and unimpeded, with a uniform all-round canopy.

I learned about murungai "Pisin" or the resin from the bark - supposedly a widely used herbal remedy for stomach ailments

The Murungai trees on the road were in fruit, in abundance!

A small roadside guava was in flower too

We continued up Balakrishna road- with its Australian Acacia trees and Bauhinias.  We saw a bunch of sparrows flitting through the trees, a few sunbirds, heard a Koel and some red vented bulbuls. A screechy parakeet flypast up above too.

Cotton stainer bugs species scurried in the undergrowth as also large black ants.

We turned west on First Seaward road, and saw the beautiful Jamun trees.  Of course the area is dotted with Neem trees as well.

It was an interesting and enjoyable morning, and we parted ways, wishing Keerthana all the best for her future walks as well. As  Usha and I made our way home, we were filled with positive energy, as a morning walk is bound to do.  Never mind the sweat of course!

Who would imagine a peacock in the neighbourhood?!

 Aug 31st 2021

Walking past our eastern windows, I look out in my usual post-lunch habit of looking at the teak tree in our neighbour's garden, for the Drone on the hunt, or the bulbul calling, when I saw a large something on the wall of the neighbour's terrace.  I look again, and there stood a peacock, surveying the territory!

While I scrambled to get my binoculars and rouse the family to this unusual sight, it stood on the parapet, gazing down at the dog below, and almost seeming to wonder as to what to do.  It was calm and unhurried and strolled up and down the parapet.

Then it hopped down into the terrace and surveyed the ground for fallen neem fruits, which it seemed to eat.  I noticed that his tail feathers had not grown out as yet and also that there was no other peafowl/hens around.

In all our years at Thiruvanmyur (25 plus), this is the first sighting of a wild peafowl in the neighbourhood for me.  My brother had seen a peahen in May at the height of lockdown.  Through the lockdown, peafowl have been sighted in various TN cities, quite regularly. 

On the 27th, NBR neighbour Rags had messaged that he had seen one in the neighbour's garden - just flew in from nowhere!  We continued to see it in and around our building for the next three days, and then it  flew on.

Doing a walk on the parapet

I learnt that males get their feathers after say 3 years, so this was probably below that age.  I was reminded  of another day, in Manas where I had most recently seen the peacock dance for his mate.

Every forest trip in India for me has a peacock memory, and here was this young chap right at my doorstep!

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)