A belated salute to the vulture

http://www.ivad09.org/wp/

Sept 5th was Vulture Awareness Day, worldwide. I missed that date, but better late than never.

My previous posts on the vulture highlighted the crisis that this scavenger species face in India. A depressing situation to say the least. And to think that at one point in time not so long ago, there were plenty of them even in the cities!

Egyptian vulture seen at Bharatpur - Photo by Carthic
Egyptian vulture seen at Bharatpur - Photo by Carthic
Egyptian vulture seen at Bharatpur - Photo by Sripad

Why the worry, they are just scavengers aren't they?

Well yes, of the most efficient type. They feed on dead carcasses, and rid us of carrion and rotting meat. Their stomachs have some kind of special chemicals that do not make them sick when they feed on putrid meat.

Just imagine, if our garbage collectors did not visit even for a couple of days. Now that's the situation - piles of uneaten, rotting meat, spread of disease and the growth of feral dogs and rabies.

The BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society) gives the whole background and status of vultures in India and Vulture Rescue works throughout Asia to help this species.

An Action Plan for Vulture Conservation was announced by the Central Government in 2006. Captive breeding centres in some zoos, Non-diclofenac carcasses in special feeding sites, are being attempted along with the ban on diclofenac.

There's been some success reported in the captive breeding programmes.

The Reconciliation Ecology blog has a nicely written opinion piece on the success of the condor programme in the US, and what lessons we in India can lean from this.

I only hope that these pictures I have posted of vultures are not my last sighting of them.

A new bird in town

The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Fulvous Whistling duck sighted at Pallikaranai

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

See that brown duck, he's not supposed to be here. This is Pallikaranai marsh, a wetland in Madras, and that brown bird is a Fulvous Whistling Duck. According to the experts, this is a first sighting for Madras!

Its visit to Madras was captured by MNS member Skandan. While we were all getting excited and celebratory by Skandan's report in our e-group, the coots don't seem in the least bothered, and the black-winged stilts in the foreground seem to be largely ignoring him.

Poor chap, here he's come from some far-away land, and nobody to give him a half-decent welcome. Now, if it was Bharatpur, it would be a different matter altogether.

Well, I bring up Bharatpur, because I went all the way there, (along with Skandan and others), and we saw Mr Fulvous' extended family - (I assume they are distant relations, the lesser whistling teals.)

Its like finding Toblerone in the local grocery store nowadays, when once they were symbols of your travel to distant and exotic foreign lands. Globalisation, I suppose.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

So now, I need to learn how to tell a Greater Whistling Teal from a Lesser. The latter is below. Gorgeous aren't they?

The lesser ones that we saw in Bharatpur, did whistle a lot. They would take off as a flock, whistle away as they did a sortie and then land noisily back among the red azolla.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna javanica

Photo by Carthic - Dendrocygna javanica

Well, its do with the streakings and the size. The larger, is larger (well, but naturally,), and also has more white streakings on its sides. The Fulvous Whistling Duck is supposed to have a distinct, dark black line down the rear neck.

So, now I need to go off to Pallikaranai and see if I find Mr Fulvous still there...after all, one has to be hospitable to visiting guests.....maybe a Mrs Fulvous has joined?

Fulvous Whistling Duck - videos with their calls - Click on the link.

The day's surprises continued....

It was not done with. Skandan and Sripad, then also witnessed a David-Goliath kind of battle. The courageous black-winged stilts (David), took on a black Kite and then some crows, chasing them away, as they fiercely protected their little chicks.

Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt chasing a crow
Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt taking on a Black kite

Update - 20/7/09

Of course, the sightings led to much excitement, and many MNS members trooped off to Pallikaranai to see the new bird in town.

Chitra wrote in that she saw around fifteen of the ducks (so it was not a maverick couple), as they flew overhead, crossing the road, and heading north. She also reported that the marsh was teeming with avian life.

spot billed ducks, pheasant tailed jacanas, grebes, coots, BWS, glossy ibises, and the fulvous whistling ducks, along with the usual pelicans, painted storks, egrets, moorhens, purple herons, we also saw three bar tailed godwits one male in breeding plumage (reddish upper body), blue tailed bee eaters, ashy prinias, and black kites

I dragged my husband off and had a quick look-see this morning. We did not see the "stars" of the show, well in any case not well enough to identify...there was a distant bunch of brown ducks.

But I did not mind, because I added two more to my lifer list - Pied avocets and Pheasant-tailed jacanas!

The Pied Avocets have a lovely black-and-white wing pattern, which is captured in this photo by Abhijit Avalaskar so beautifully. I enjoyed watching them take off as a flock, and then come and settle down in the water. When they rested, they were in the background, and I could not see their markings all that clearly, but when they were in flight, it was oh-so-clear.

I cam back home and read a bit about them. They seem to have interesting feeding habits with their long slender upcurved bill, but they were too far away for me to observe this, but I did hear their "high-pitched kleet call" (Salim Ali), as they took off in flocks.

My first encounter with a jacana was at Dungarpur in December 2008, when an immature bronze-winged jacana had me foxed, with its spidery legs and walk-on-leaf spryness.

This time, I was prepared. There were these four spidery-legged birds poking about in the mud, with a long elegant tail, like as if they were in coattails! It was a dull and cloudy day, and these pictures dont do justice to a rather interesting looking bird, with a touch of yellow on its neck.

Sangeeth VS has taken a lovely close-up picture of the pheasant-tailed jacana here.

We then saw another two in the water, holding their tails up, as if they did not want to get them wet.

We wandered around for a while, seeing coots, black-winged stilts and dabchicks by the hundreds, and pelicans lining the electric pylons. There were so many bee-eaters, flashing past us, or sitting on the reeds. Then there were the large purple swamp hens and the smaller moorhens, the solitary purple heron, and a few white ibis. every now and then a black kite would glide overhead, and the ducks and stilts would all get a trifle nervous.

The cars and motorbikes zoomed by, honking impatiently and oblivious to all this lovely bird life.

About Pallikaranai

Pallikaranai is a freshwater wetland, situated in Madras/Chennai. I guess in the old days it served to keep the city's groundwater charged as well. Then came a few years of poor rain, and the city realtors and developers decided it was a jolly good idea to build in this marsh - how could we let such prime land go to waste.

On the other side, the city Corporation also decided to use it as a garbage dumping ground.

Choked from all sides, the birds fled. Citizens got together under various banners to reverse the trend, and there has been some success. The High Court has ordered that garbage dumping and burning in the area be stopped.

According to a report in the Times Of India, though, a High Court panel says garbage is still being burnt at Pallikaranai. The Chennai Corporation has been asked to reply to this charge by July 29th. Lets hope for the best.

Also, the remaining undeveloped areas have been notified as a Reserve Forest, and I noticed that the protective fencing has increased slightly.

These small steps have already brought the birds back. I do hope it continues!

Featured in I and The Bird #105.

Bharatpur Photo extravaganza

Here are some links to photo albums of MNS members, who have uploaded their choicest (is there such a word?) pictures of our Bharatpur visit.

Carthic's lovely shots of the geese and ducks

Sripad's gallery with great jackal and owl pictures

Skandan's portfolio from Bharatpur and Ranthambore!

Mr Ramanan sends us his photos via email, and so maybe I should develop a special set for his photos?

Encounters with the Nilgai

My abiding memory of Bharatpur is the misty mornings as we set of on our cycles.  Visibility would be low, but the air would be filled with bird calls - duck, geese and lapwings.

The lanes would vanish into nothingness, and at times we would not be able to see the other members of our group who were just ahead or just behind.  

I think the beauty (and probably the cold!) of the mornings affected all of us, as suddenly we would all lapse into silence and just look, greedily drinking in the sights and sounds of the sanctuary.

The lovely road past Shanti Kutir is not used that much by visitors, and has some nice twists and turns, and along with the chill in the air, and the hanging mist, it suddenly reminded me of a scene from an old Sherlock Holmes novel.  Only somehow there was nothing sinister about the setting!

Nilgai was the most common type of antelope we saw, though there were some chital and sambar as well.   With no large predators in Bharatpur, the Nilgai have no security concerns, and are thriving well.  We would often come across herds of females and young ones, like this.  they are the largest antelopes in Asia, and are common in north India, though for me from the south, it was my first encounter.

 
Their brown coats give them a good camouflage in the dry, tall grass.  The females were my first sighting of the Nilgai, and I wondered why they were called a Nilgai - or blue bull - there was not a hint of blue!  

It wasn't long before I saw my first male Nilgai, though, and what a handsome creature it is!

As big as a horse and called Boselaphus tragocamelus, they look like creatures from the magical forest around Hogwarts!

All I needed was to see one fly, for the image to be complete.  Alas, that was not to be, but the members had close encounters with them one time or another!
Photo by Mr Ramanan

Mr Ramanan was almost knocked down by one male Nilgai as it came crashing through the undergrowth on one side of the track, and quickly lumbered through on the other side!  He did get this beautiful photo though, as it stood, all ears, ready to charge off at the slightest threat.  

The insides of the ears have a distinct marking, and the adult males are usually off on their own.  A single lone female is unusual, as is this photo by Sripad, where the pattern on the hooves are so well seen.

Photo by SripadOn one occasion, as Divya and I followed Sripad and Carthic, (or was it Skandan?), a male Nilgai emerged on to the path from the marsh on the right side behind the pair of riders in front, and ahead of Divya and me.  We stood stock still, and there was a period of eyeball-to-eyeball contact, before it dashed off to the left of the path, only to find its way blocked by undergrowth.  At this point, it panicked and charged back from where it had initially come, and then we heard it sloshing through the marsh, probably grumbling at us all the while!
I dont know whose photo this is, but its not mine!Oh yes, and like rhinos, Nilgai have interesting toilet habits - they have a centralised dropping area, like what you see below!  So if you want to see one of them, I guess all you have to do is hang around one of these spots!  They all have to go at some point dont they?

Now I could not bring myself to finish this post with that picture, So I have this magnificent photo by Carthic.

Photo by CarthicHow could people actually hunt these handsome creatures?  And that too for "sport"?  Okay, they are not endangered, but would any sane person want to hunt them?

Why am I ranting?  Well there are scores of ranches in Texas that advertise Nilgai hunts, as a pastime and sport.  (Do a google - there are scores of them.)  Yeah right, some sport, you have a gun as long as his body and what does he have - just strong legs to run, and run and run.  

I have this nightmare that one day, all this senseless killing and mindless hunting will be reversed upon us, as the animal kingdom gains it karmic revenge....

In India too, they can be hunted.  They are not endangered.  And as they run out of space to graze, they come into farmlands to graze.  In Rajasthan and Gujarat, Nilgai have become a menace to farmers.  But given their resemblance to cows, they are not killed, reportedly, though in these states you could hunt them I believe.

An article on the Nilgai by the Wildlife Institute of India,  writes, 

Although there has been a reduction in the overall range of nilgai, the existing populations seem to be doing fairly well. This is largely because of they are a protected species under the law, and more importantly the protection they acquire from being considered sacred due to their resemblance to domestic cows. Moreover, gradual degradation of dense forests into open scrub and thickets, increasingly bordered by agricultural fields, has offered favourable habitat conditions for the increase of nilgai numbers. Invariably, in such situations, nilgai become serious pests as crop raiders and a major issue of human-wildlife conflict. Possible solutions voiced include a selective culling programme linked to licensed hunting permits. However, throughout the range of the nilgai, most farmers are Hindus, and in Rajasthan and Haryana, many of them are Bishnois, a sect that rigorously protects all animals. Bishnoi farmers prefer to tolerate the raids on their crops rather than permit the slaughter of nilgai. So it is highly unlikely that any scheme to cull or ranch nilgai either for hunting or for local consumption will ever work in India (Kyle 1990). This attitude may however change, when the number of people living off the land increases, when the local people begin to believe nilgai are vermin or a source of meat. Relocations of problematic nilgai, for the time being, seem the safest solution.

Another example of the human-animal conflict, which can only get worse with time.

Is there a humane and sensible solution?

(To start at the beginning of the Bharatpur narration, click here.)

The bird that craved for a ramp

Darter, Snake bird, Pambuttara, Anhinga melanogaster...but to me it will always be the "fashion model" bird!  The waters and trees of Bharatpur are full of them. So "common" were they, that after a couple of days I stopped looking at them. Can you imagine, such a gorgeous bird, and I wouldn't give it a third look.
Photo by Mr Ramanan
A fashion critic could write," She had a lovely long neck, and the black silk saree 
with its beautiful white embroidery stood out under the ramp lights."!!  (The only thing is I dont know if its a she or a he!)

Isn't the photo above amazing?  All the features of the bird - its long snake-like neck, dagger-like bill and the wedge-shaped tail feathers - have been caught so well!

Photo by Sripad They adorned the trees all over, catching the sun to dry their wings. Everybody got great shots of these birds, and as I wondered about their vanity, Mr Chari gently mentioned that they were drying their wings because unlike water off a duck's back, the Darter's feathers do get wet, as they dive into the water in search of fish.

So it is that they spend their days, alternatively diving for fish and drying their wings!
Photo by Carthic

By the end of three days, I was able to do a pretty good imitation of the bird - ask Sripad!
Photo by Mr Ramanan
They are loners, hanging out on the trees alone, which is how we saw them most of the time.  Click on the photo to the left, and see its feet - duck like!

Carthic captured another unusual pose of this bird, as it stared into the water looking for fish.  Its got special neckbones that allows this almost unnatural-looking posture.

Photo by Carthic

Bharatpur
My photo of an Immature!

One mid morning, we came across this Darter, with an abnormally white neck. Old and grey I thought, but it was actually young and immature!!

Its the same bird, folks!

These shots are of the Snake-bird in the water.  It swims with its whole body submerged, looking like the periscope of a submarine!

As it swims, it keeps a keen eye out for the fish, which it chases with speed, shooting its bill out to spear and catch the hapless fish.  When we visited Dungarpur, in December, we saw this piece of hunting action.  The pictures below are from Vedanthangal.

Photos by Sekar
Salim Ali mentions another interesting feint.  If surprised while perched on a tree, it drops down through the branches, almost as if shot, into the water, surfacing at a safe distance.

They are found all over India - where's there's freshwater fish fish there's likely to be a Darter as well. 

Update:

On reading this, Mr Ramanan sent the following great sequence, shot at Vedanthangal. He adds:

As you have narrated about the hunting sequence of the darter, I thought I can share some of it here with you.The darter, unlike cormorants that hunt in flocks, hunts alone using its beak as a weapon to pierce the fish and bring it up. As it has to swallow the head part of the fish first, it tosses and sees that the head goes into mouth first. After feeding, it spreads its feather to dry and also cleans it beak as it contains lot of oily secretions derived while swallowing the fish. These all are 'ACTION SHOTS' for a greedy photographer like me. I have some of them here, which I have photographed at Vedanthangal on various occasions.

Exactly as we saw in Dungarpur!  Thank you Mr Ramanan!

(This is part of a series of posts on a week spent at the Keoladeo sanctuary, in Bharatpur Rajasthan.  To start at the beginning, click here.)

The Baya weaver and other discoveries

Here are the birds that I saw for the first time during the Chennai Bird Race. The Baya Weavers were in a palm tree

A Baya Weaver
Photos by Sekar

, on the road to the Vedanthangal sanctuary, after the turn-off from the highway, before the temple.

The tree was full of these birds and their nests!  I've seen empty nests before, close to Pulicat, but this was the first time I saw the birds and the nests in use.  We saw a couple of males who have a lovely yellow cap and breast during breeding, but I think this one is a female.

Mr Baya is rather industrious.  He weaves this nest from paddy reeds and other grass.  He also has a regular harem, with several wives and a separate nest for each one!  Now the interesting thing is, he weaves several of these halfway (like the one in the picture) and then has to await approval of the Mrs!  A prospective Mrs Baya comes along takes a look inside while the anxious male waits outside.  If she approves of his weaving skills, she occupies the nest, completes it, and then lays the eggs inside, taking full responsibility of incubating them! Then, our cheery Mr Baya goes off and looks for more wives with more half-finished nests!!  

What interesting lives in my environment, and I didn't know about this until now!  The finished nest has a passage that goes upwards into the egg chamber, and its so secure that snakes cannot get at the eggs.  Click here for more details on the nest and some great pictures and drawings of completed nests.

Glossy Ibis
Photos by Sekar

The Glossy Ibis was my second new "discovery" at Vedanthangal, actually in the fields surrounding the protected sanctuary. This is the adult in breeding plumage, and the sun caught the colours quite spectacularly.  

The Glossy Ibis, if I'm not mistaken, is a winter visitor, and a glamorous one at that.  As I watched it, intent on feeding in the fields I had this image of a serious and ponderous gent all dressed up for a music kutcheri but more interested in the newspaper in his lap!

Painted stork
Photos by Sekar

The slow, stalking movements take away from my pre-conceived image of grace! Quite similar to the painted stork, so beautifully captured in this photo taken within the sanctuary. Such lovely colours and such an elegant pose - like a fashion model on the ramp, but then there's an awkwardness to their gait and a certain silliness when they clack their beaks that takes away from the image!  Maybe thats why Ranjit Lal christened the Prime Minister in his Crow Chronicles as Pinky Stink Tainted Storkji!

I am reading the book, set in Bharatpur, and the bird personalities are so apt, that I think I'm going to write a couple of posts based on that book!

And late in the evening, I finally saw a Common Hawk Cuckoo, also known as the Brainfever bird!  In Kanha, in the summer of 2005, they called out to us, from all over the forest, but maddeningly, I never did get a good sight of them, as they hid in the foliage, or took off just when I sighted them.  So, four years later, I look up into the foliage, and I saw a juvenile just sitting there, quietly.  No call.  I would've missed it entirely if I had not glanced upwards.  They call mainly in the summer and are largely silent in the winter.  

Sripad's got this great shot as it feeds on its favourite food - hairy caterpillars!  

Brain-fever bird

For more of Sripad's bird race pictures click here.  

For more of our pictures from Vedanthangal, click here.  

The obliging monitors of Bharatpur

The Bharatpur story starts here.

Every now and again, we came across these large reptiles that obligingly posed for us, as they basked in the winter sun at Bharatpur. I thought they we re fascinating to look at. They look a hundred years old, with all that folded skin and dinosaur-like appearance!

The Indian Monitor, I think its called.  Its one of those ancient survivors - the species dates back several million years, I read somewhere. Around three feet long I would estimate that the one we saw were.  I think thats the average size of this variety.

All the ones we came across were solitary, and thats how adult males seem to hang out.  Not fond of company it would appear!  

After a while, this one got a bit annoyed and irritated with all the clicking and commotion and kind of walked off in a huff, into the bushes!  Its walk is clumsy and deliberate, and a sitting target I would imagine for poachers and hunters.  The eat all kinds of other insects and small creatures like frogs.  I do wonder if they form the food for some other creature.  I think their young are vulnerable to being eaten by larger birds and such, but I cant imagine anything wanting to eat one of these adults - would be terribly leathery dont you think?!

Photo by Sripad

Sripad got a good shot of its head.  See, its smiling for the camera - or is it a grimace?!

I saw the tallest flying bird!

The Bharatpur narration begins here.

The Sarus Crane - a common resident of north India, a bird I had not seen so far, and one that I will always remember when I think of my first trip to Bharatpur.

For seasoned naturalists and bird watchers, these birds are really no big deal, found as they are in agricultural fields, something like a cattle egret or a pond heron, in the south, I think!  But for me, it was my first time, so indulge me as I take you through my first views.

It was mid-morning, and a bunch of us stood around because we had seen a lot of raptor activity to the left of the road. Two Marsh Harriers circled in the sky, and then we spied two vultures perched in the tall grass, right at the edge of our binocular vision. Just the top of their heads were seen. And among them, was also the reddish head of a king vulture, which suddenly took off and sat on a dead tree, further away. As we trained our binos on it, through the corner of my eye, I saw something large (I mean really large) go gliding through the air, flying rather low, across the road to vanish behind the trees on the right-side of the road/bund that we stood on.
"Wasn't that Sarus cranes?", I exclaimed, but since everyone else was concentrating on the raptors, they seemed to have missed it and looked at me rather dubiously. Anyway, in order to check it out, just-in-case, we went to a gap in the bushes on the other side, amd the pictures you see on the left, are what we saw. A pair, (they are usually in pairs) some distance away, feeding in the marshes!  The pictures on the left are the view we had with the naked eye.  Clicked with my little automatic Sony Cybershot, I even went around a tree further down the road, to see if I would get a better shot. One lives on ambition and hope!
I realise that birdwatching would be no fun absolutely, without a good pair of binos.

The camera is optional really, but without a good pair of binocs, I would not have seen these large birds in their full detail at all, and all the several kinds of ducks would have looked the same.Thanks to my husband, I have a grand pair - 8x42 - that serve me well, and I enjoyed the red head, with the little bald patch on the top of these Sarus cranes.
An inquisitive Nilgai poked her head out from the back, wondering what the fuss was all about.

And now that I have got that account off my chest, and showed you my efforts with the camera, let me also show you some lovely pictures from the cameras of Mr Ramanan and Sripad.  This series of pictures that follow are pieced together, from two or three different instances, and so the light differs.

But, they give you an idea of what I saw through my binocs.  These 5 ft + birds are famous for pairing for life, and participating in a courtship dance.   As I watched through the binocs, the pair were busy digging vigorously in the mud for insects, roots and other such food.


Photo by Mr Ramanan

Suddenly, the larger bird (the male) stalked up rather purposefully towards the female, who spread her wings.  While we along with Mr Ramanan saw this view, 
Photo by Mr Ramanan

Sripad was at another point, and this is what he saw!

Photo by SripadPhoto by Mr Ramanan
Photo by Sripad
Photo by Mr Ramanan

And as our racket increased, off they went, to quieter locations, away from us gawking tourists.  What a life for these stars, never a moment away from the flashbulbs and cameras!!
Photo by Mr Ramanan

So, it was that I did witness the courtship dance of the Sarus cranes, but I think it was the off-season abridged version, not the full show reserved for the breeding season!  I believe, when it is the season, both partners have an extended, elaborate circling and flapping wings option, and lots of bowing and scraping!  Must be some sight.

Below, the National Geographic short video on the Sarus Crane.  Its shot in Nepal, and talks about the crane conservation efforts there.  If you can tolerate the atrocious accent of the voice over (it annoyed me greatly), its quite a nice, short video, and you get to see the chicks, and the nesting habits, as well as some moving shots of these big birds.


I found the article, Working with the Sarus Crane, by K S Gopi Sunder fascinating and educative. Mr Gopi Sunder's efforts to follow the birds and pretend to be a crane make for amusing reading, while at the same time throwing light on their nesting behaviour.

I have one question, and its been nagging me ever since my return. These birds are monogamous and pair for life, so what happens when one of the pair dies?

Update:
This post is included in I and the Bird #93: The Compelling Nature of Birds hosted by Vickie Henderson.