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| 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. |
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| As we watched, it 'walked' rather jauntily across the road and up onto the gate, before flying into the neighbouring badam tree. |
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
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.”
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......."
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.
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| What caught my immediate attention was a fig species tree, growing all over and into the temple wall. |
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| 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. |
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| 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? |
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| The roots below and the temple were supporting this enormous canopy above. |
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| 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. |
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| I learned about murungai "Pisin" or the resin from the bark - supposedly a widely used herbal remedy for stomach ailments |
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| The Murungai trees on the road were in fruit, in abundance! |
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| 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! |
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.
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| 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!
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| Fresh leaves, dried leaves, I do spy light green, dark green, brown... and even a Lemon Pansy butterfly. |
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| Green circles, pink stars Brown sand and grey wall, and Amaryllis lilies, from afar. |
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| 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. |
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| And then today this happy surprise A single yellow spike of mustard. Overnight, did it rise? |
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Covid quarantine Morning coffee on the patio steps. Watching the Quisqualis fallen blooms Being disturbed by a buzzing. |
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Watched the way she shovels so powerfully front legs flinging the sand making tunnels laying eggs feeding larvae catching flies. |
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.”
I visited 2023 November, so it has been close to a year . 26th October 2024 8-10am To my delight, I discovered a skywalk across the Sarjapur...
