Pongal at Point Calimere - The ubiquitous Brahminy Kites

Continued from the feral horses.

Brahminy kite, with a fish in its mouth.

They were everywhere, on the trees, soaring above in the skies, over the water, in coconut trees, on electricity poles, by the fishermen's boats, and even on roof tops!

I have never in my life seen such a congregation of brahminy kites!

At the pumphouse

Again, with a prey - seems to be a lizard.

Mr Ramanan says:   "They are fearless when they steal fishes from the fishermen which was evident even when an auction of fishes took place among thirty odd people, they pierce the crowd fearlessly and take away the fishes. 


But they really failed when they chased a feeding young one of sunbird as it flew very close to one of the fence made out of thorny materials of a house. Whereas in the pumping house, which pumps sea water to the saltpan, the Brahminy Kites hovers and wait for as and when the river terns catch the fish which comes out of the salt water from the pump, it chases them and using its legs, hit them at the back so that the river tern drops the fish which can be easily taken away by them as it success rate of catching the fish compare to the river tern is less."

Mr Ramanan's photo - at the pump house, the marauders!

Photo by Mr Ramanan.

 Rags captured a brahminy kite flying at dusk, and another fabulous shot of the kite fishing.

Continued.  Next, Waders, where art thou?

Pongal at Point Calimere - the feral horses in the grasslands

Our first views of the feral horses, in the distance across the waters of the wetlands.

Last year, I saw wild asses at Kutch, and I loved them!  I was intrigued at the prospect of the wild/feral horses that are present at the Point Calimere sanctuary.  Sure enough, we bumped into them, on our very first evening outing in the grasslands.

The first herd, had the sun behind them, and we saw them silhouetted, and the scene reminded me of a watercolour painting.

Further along the track, there was another herd, much closer, with the light behind us, and it was so nice to see horses without saddles and stirrups, and the foals, oh they were the best!

A second bunch

Observe the one in the centre right, with the white "naamam" and read on below.

Feral horses are domesticated horses that have either been released in the wild or have escaped.

Mr Ramanan had this to say: "A decade back Point Calimere was known as a small fishing village where one could see only 30 odd fishing boats at the jetty. But now there is a lot of development and the road leading to the village is full of houses on either side of the road and up to the boating jetty. 


The Point Calimere sanctuary situated on the eastern coast of India near the Park Straits, Tamilnadu, is the only place where one comes across wild horses in India. In those days the horses were branded on the back with the initials of the owner and according to the locals whenever their service was required they were caught and utilized for transporting salt from the saltpans!


Once the area was declared as the sanctuary, the owners had no right to retrieve the horses and hence they became free/wild horses. On our recent visit, the owners name was missing on the grazing horses, and so they have became really "wild", which is visible from their characteristic instincts."

 Only the horse with the "namam", seems to still carry some branding on its side.  This herd then is fairly new to the "wild".

Photo by Mr Ramanan - is she pregnant you think?

There are feral horse populations across the world.  The Mustangs of the US are from domestic stock.  Australia has a huge number of these and they are called Brumby.

According to Wikipedia, there is another feral horse population in Assam (they roam in the Dibru-Saikhowa national park), and they are descendants of army horses that escaped during the second World War!

Photo by Mr Ramanan - This was my favourite (and the youngest) foal I saw.  

Mr Ramanan's unusual finds in our city

The Hindu : Photo op:

Orange-breasted green pigeon. Photo: Ramanan Padmanabhan

Photo op PRINCE FREDERICK Ramanan Padmanabhan studies and photographs the great horned owl at the Nanmangalam Reserve Forest. While trekking through the scrub jungle on the morning of August 31 and searching for his favourite bird, he was greeted with a rare sight. It was an orange-breasted green pigeon.

A senior member of the Madras Naturalists Society and a wildlife photographer, Ramanan identified the frugivorous bird straightaway. “The lone bird was feeding on scrub fruits and when I drew near for a clearer view through the lens, it glided into thicker greenery to avoid detection. This is a camouflage technique typical of this pigeon,” recalls Ramanan. This is the first time anyone has reported sighting an orange-breasted green pigeon at any reserve forest in and around Chennai. “This bird is found in the evergreen forests of the Western and Eastern Ghats,” says Ramanan.

It's interesting to note that two months later, the birdwatcher had another rare sighting — this time, it was a dark-sided flycatcher perched on a rain tree in his backyard. “The dark-sided flycatcher was sighted at 3.30 p.m. on November 3 on a raintree at Shastri Nagar. Despite an unrelenting downpour, the bird was busy pecking at insects and it took up different perches on the same tree. From beak to tail, the flycatcher was around 13 cm long,” says Ramanan. For two more days, he sighted the bird on the same tree and, when the skies cleared up, he snapped a few pictures of it. “The dark-sided flycatcher is a long-distance migrant: it breeds in Siberia, Mongolia and travels to the western and eastern Himalayas during winter,” says Ramanan. Commenting on both sightings — confirmed as first-of-their-kind in Chennai by the Madras Naturalists Society — naturalist V. Guruswami says: “Through sustained observation and research, we arrive at the geographical limits of birds. They may exceed these known limits, but this fact often goes unnoticed. It takes bird enthusiasts to spot these birds, when they ‘stray' off their known haunts. The dark-sided flycatcher is an arboreal bird. But for birdwatchers, who are in the habit of looking deeper into canopies, this bird is often not easily sighted. The orange-breasted green pigeon is essentially a hill bird and found in the Eastern and Western Ghats. Habitat destruction can scatter such birds and can be one of the reasons why they are seen in places other than their known homes."

The dark-sided flycatcher. Photo by Mr Ramanan

Mr Ramanan is no stranger to readers of this blog!  And so I am doubly delighted!!

Nelliyampathy - a mammalian photo essay

All photos by Mr Ramanan during the MNS trip to Nelliyampathy - Oct 6th to 9th.

Malabar giant squirrel- Ratufa indica - keeps an eye on Mr Ramanan!

Gaur - Bos gaurus - largest cattle species.  (Photo by Mr Ramanan)

Would you like to share the fruit with me, Mr Ramanan?

No?  Oh well, I cant wait anymore!

 "The MNS lot are here!"

Lion tailed macaque - Macaca silenus - endemic to the Western Ghats

Sunbirds

Mr Ramanan saw these sunbirds as they came seeking nectar to a male papaya tree, at Gandhigram.

As he sat watching their antics, Mr Ramanan also witnessed the resident cat stalk and kill one of a group of babblers that was feeding noisily off some grain. It caught the babbler by its wing, and just like its larger cousin the tiger, bit into the neck with its canines, bringing a swift end to the bird, and resulting in much indignant calling and cawing by the other babblers as well as the crows in the vicinity.

Male Purple-rumped sunbird. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Male Loten's sunbird, with the longer, curved beak. Photo by Mr Ramanan.

The female sunbirds are olive coloured, as seen here, as they picked up nesting material.

This was a sunbird's rather untidy nest I came across at my mother's home some months ago.

The heron that blinked

I learnt about the nictitating membrane in birds from these fine photos by Mr Ramanan.A nigh heron with a fish that looks too big to swallow! Fish are always swallowed head first, and its a skill learnt by chicks at an early age. I've seen darters and pied kingfishers tossing fish deftly, before swallowing them head-first. (Photo by Mr Ramanan)

Photo by Mr Ramanan. The heron has swallowed the fish. Do you see its eye? Now look at the next picture.
No, its not a case of removing "red eye", its the heron's nictitating membrane having covered the eye! Photo by Mr Ramanan

Click on the picture and zoom in, and take a close look. This thin protective membrane is an extra protection that birds, fish and reptiles have, (we dont). This translucent third eyelid closes and opens horizontally across the eyeball, clearing dust, moistening the eye, protecting it in some cases from extreme conditions.

So, for example, owls while out hunting would keep this membrane closed and eyelids opened, so as to keep their eyes moist for better vision, but (quite literally) keeping their eyes open for that scurrying mouse or hopping frog.

It seems that the little pink bit of membrane we have in the corner of our eyes is a vestigial nictitating membrane.

A Kutchi summer - Day 2 - snake skins, an empty den and theIndian courser!

Continued from Day 1. My son's narrative continues.....

The next day, I was woken up(again) to go for tea, which I left to the very last moment, in order to get some sleep. Drowsily refreshed after the cup of coffee payasasm (Recipe: Coffee with as much sugar as will dissolve), we set out once again, with the same Jeep mates. This time, I quickly occupied the front seat along with Arun uncle, with whom I ended up chatting with until we reached our first destination. Thankfully we were spared the endless wastelands and were instead taken to a marsh or swampland where there was a largish water body

Said marsh with flamingoes in evidence.

Once again the cameras were out, fighting for supremacy over the length of their lenses. A spotting scope was also in attendance, for those who had the misfortune of not bringing a pair of binoculars. Once again a great many Flamingoes were spotted, and they soon took to the skies, their privacy shattered. I turned back thinking there was nothing else to see, only to hear the naturalists excitedly chattering about some bird, that to my eyes looked like a duck. I gave up all hope of even attempting to identify all the birds in the water body and after seeing the moorhen, purple heron and the shovellers, I went over to the vehicle to sit and watch the bird watchers watch time slip away. I was low on film for my camera, and this added to my discontent.

The same marsh, with the Nikon.

Another water body awaited and so were the many Stilts, egrets, coots and a congregation of cormorants.
Photo by Mr Ramanan. The cormorant congregation.
A cobra had also used the place for a changing room and left behind remnants of its old body.
The snake skin

Suitably sated with birds and creeped out by snake skins, it was decided that we would head home, when suddenly our jeep driver cum guide swerved off the road and onto a miniature plain. Vehicle stopped, he whispered “Indian Courser”. At once, every person in the vehicles was agog, searching for the well-camouflaged courser. For many of us, it was a first spotting, so it was exhilarating. And I, being me, usually would not have bothered, but I feel happy, now that I think back about that moment. Maybe, now I will start paying closer attention to the finer details of bird watching.

(My mom mentioned later that it was a first for her too. We saw a pair and a couple of chicks, which of course she found cute! And oh yes, Suresh uncle tried to stalk behind them, and the more he moved the more they moved away, in a kind of scurrying manner! We didn't get any picture of the coursers.)

A breakfast to suit our joy awaited us and nobody held back from gorging. The usual pre-lunch naps took place, this time along with people washing clothes. In the Kutchi atmosphere of less than 0 humidity, the clothes dried within a half hour. Lunch eaten, a spurt of post lunch packing took place, with washed clothes being neatly, or otherwise, put away. My mother, suitably surprised that I was washing my clothes, quickly put out her own clothes after washing.

See the clothes drying besides the room!

A Shikra in the tree that I spied close to our room

The pre-evening ride tea break was slightly subdued, with an assortment of members wanting to bunk. In the end, as the jeeps were getting filled, the very same members who had expressed an aversion to coming on the evening ride ended up climbing in themselves. The evening ride, sadly, saw us back on the dusty Rann. The same asses greeted us again and nothing new of interest seemed to pop up. What a strange habitat indeed!

Wild ass again!

One by one, all the jeeps had starting problems, easily enough rectified. We visited an active saltpan, teeming with birds even though the water was nowhere near potable. After a while, the jeeps and the "elephant" united at what was supposedly a fox’s dugout.
An abandoned fox den. Or was it inside, waiting for us to leave? The previous day, we had seen a momma fox and baby in the distance near a bund, and the mother scooted off, while the bay vanished down a similar hole. My mother's jeep waited patiently for a while, but it never poked its head out.
Disgusted at its absence, we all headed back to our safe base at Dasada to get ready for another train journey to Gir. On the way, we stopped to collect salt crystals that had fallen off the salt lorries and to photograph an owlet, safely ensconced on a cable.

The owl as seen by our "kutty" Lumix. Fading evening light.


The very same owlet. Photo by Mr Ramanan

A short while from this owl, all vehicles pulled over, no reasons given. Then the "elephant", which was usually at the front, showed up. ‘Clutch problems’ it seemed. So the gearbox was opened up, and the drivers, not ones for subtlety, starting whacking away at it with a hammer!

Needless to say, those who had studied engineering were shocked at this cavalier approach to the gear system. The drivers didn’t seem to care, though and they had the problem soon resolved actually!

When we returned, an anxious Vikas, who had dozed off and not woken up in time for the ride, wanted to know if we had seen anything interesting. Our somewhat lukewarm 'no's seemed to cheer him up, though.

At the resort, dinner and another journey awaited us, though these were looked forward to, since Gir and the lions was sounding very promising compared to the vastness and emptiness of LRK. After dinner, we all stuffed our bags into the back of a bus and hopped in ourselves for the ride to Viramgam station, where we were to catch our train to Veraval, the train stop for Gir. At Viramgam, I hopefully looked around for a shop selling film rolls, but all I found was a jielbiwallah and another selling paan and Coke! Oh well! Ration out the one remaining roll for the lions I suppose.

That very same night, our very own CSK were playing Pune and Vijay uncle wrote CSK off saying that Pune would thrash us. This was playing on all the CSK fans' minds as they nervously checked for updates on the phones that had internet. Finally, the train arrived and we boarded. Mummy, Ramanan sir and his family and Me were in the same enclosure, which lent a slight sense of relief that we had at least another set of fellow MNSians for company. The ticket collector came by, vastly amused, as he had gone from compartment to compartment, and all the tickets he was checking at Viramgam seemed to be Madrasis going to Veraval!!

Listening to the trains rattling along, I dozed off to the thought of another long day.


Day 3: On to Sasan Gir!

Flamingoes - Experiences in the Kutch and at Pulicat

The Kutch adventure began with the wild asses.
Laurel & Hardy shadows

In 2008, I saw flamingoes in the wild for the first time at Pulicat. Later that year, Mr Ramanan, took some lovely photos of these ballerinas in pink.

But still, it was a thrill to see them at the Little Rann, in April this year. The LRK is a breeding ground for them, and we saw little ones without their pink, and we saw both Lesser and Greater flamingoes. We saw them near the salt pans, we saw them in the last remaining waters in the wetlands.

They fed, and called noisily and took off in large groups, filling the skies with pink.

LRK. In formation! Junior captures them in flight with his analog camera.
LRK. Photo by Mr Ramanan, caught in a rare moment when they were not feeding!
LRK. The rest of his buddies had taken to the skies, protesting against our getting too close to them. But this one stayed back and stalked proudly up and down, posing for us. Photo by Mr Ramanan

The same fellow.
A juvenile, feeding single-mindedly.

We returned home with our stories and pictures, only to be bested by Skandan and company's experiences, right here at Pulicat!

They were privileged to witness the Flamingo March! I had not heard of this, until I saw these videos. They are the ritualised courtship breeding displays of the flamingoes, and generally precede breeding.

So then, does that mean these flamingoes are breeding in Pulicat in the middle of summer? Maybe not.

Adeesh Shivkar writes, in his post on the flamingoes of Mumbai that,

The lesser flamingos before leaving the shores of Mumbai to their breeding grounds…..perform a spectacular display that is rivaled by none…...Even if you do not get any images…...its an amazing experience to just watch this…

So does that mean these flamingoes of Pulicat will now leave? I am hoping that Skandan and friends will keep me informed!

The Kutch encounter with the fashion king of Dasada continues here.

A Kutchi summer - Day 1 - Searching for the wild ass

Seen on the wall of our room at Rann Riders

From Chennai to Ahmedabad by the Navjeevan Express ...two whole days on the train, when will we have faster trains in India? Junior is armed with ipod...without headphones. Just as I have a good laugh, Pritam also sheepishly announces he has left his behind too. Prasanna saves the day...she has a set and Vish is mightily relieved. (He took ownership of those headphones for the next whole week I should add. Thanks Prasanna!)

Arrive at Ahmedabad at 7:30 at night, to the heat and dust of Gujarat in the last week of April. 36 of us from MNS. Board our buses for Dasada (Point B on the map) stopping for dinner at a wayside Dhaba, where there is no Gujarati meal - only a Punjabi thali!


View Larger Map

SH18 takes us past lorries and more lorries. Going where? Mundra port? Its past midnight when we trundle into Rann Riders, which would be our home for the next few days. I am sharing with Prasanna and my "little loris" Vikas. Junior is off with Vijay and Pritam.

We are to be up at 5:30 the next morning, (actually the same morning, isnt it?), and i was sure that there would be many absentees for the morning ride. How wrong I was, even Junior was up and ready!!

The Little Rann of Kutch is a salt marsh and when I was in high school, I remember being fascinated by the markings we had to do over the Kutch peninsula, those dotted lines symbolising the area being under water for certain periods of the year, post-monsoon. I learnt that more than half of India's salt comes from here.

When we went, it was bone dry, as is typical of the summer months, and it was hard for me to imagine this whole stretch under shallow waters! What a treat that must be, and no wonder its a paradise for migratory birds! We do need to go back post-monsoon, I tell myself.

Here's a clip of the landscape, and some wild ass and a nilgai we saw.

The lunar landscape is the only home to the Indian Wild Ass, called khur. As I jolted along under the Kutchi sun, I could not help but be amazed at this strange country I live in, grinding poverty all around, and yet a safe home for the wild ass.

Here are some absolutely wonderful photos taken by Mr Ramanan

Photo by Mr Ramanan. With the sun back-lighting them, this herd provided ample photo ops for all the shutter bugs!
Photo by Mr Ramanan. Notice the little black patch where the leg joins the body

Photo by Mr Ramanan - They run quite fast, we saw them gallop along with the jeep, and were doing a fair pace.

I wondered where they would reside during the rains. It seems they stay on the little elevated sandy scrub parts, called bets locally.

Next, the Flamingo experience.

The brainfever bird

I received this lovely portfolio from Mr Ramanan, and had to put it here, for posterity.

The brainfever bird, heard so commonly, elusive to sight.

Common Hawk-Cuckoo (Hierococcyx varius) - Photo by Mr Ramanan

Like the Asian Koel, it is also a brood parasite, and also has a maddening, repetitive call, heard in the monsoons. They lay their eggs in babbler nests.

The story goes that during the hot summers and just as the monsoons set in, the call of these birds used to drive some of the colonial Brits to madness, as they battled delirium and malaria, and the bird's incessant calling!

Freedom fighters of a sort?!

Sub-adult - Photo by Mr Ramanan
The same sub-adult with a caterpillar - their favourite food. Photo by Mr Ramanan

According to Wikipedia,

Common Hawk-Cuckoos feed mainly on insects and are specialised feeders that can handle hairy caterpillars. Caterpillar guts often contain toxins and like many cuckoos they remove the guts by pressing the caterpillar and rubbing it on a branch before swallowing it. The hairs are swallowed with the caterpillar and are separated in the stomach and regurgitated as a pellet.