A Jacana start to my birding year

 5th January 2022

My first birding outing of the year with Umesh and Srinivas.  They picked me up before 6 am, and with masks, binoculars and water, we went down OMR to explore(for me first time ) the rear of the Perumbakkam water body, close to where the International Village School is located.

As we wound through the roads of the colony that is well, developing in marshland, there was much muttering and exclaiming from Srinivas and Umesh, as they remarked how even more plots have gone, and walls have come up where there was none before.  Habitat loss in front of our eyes.

We reached the border of the lake at around 615, and dawn was just breaking.  

There was nothing much by way of water bird life here - the water was deep - and so we moved further west, where we could see the edge of the marsh.

We walked through an (as yet) empty plot, with a bunch of these puppies following us.  A couple of them took a great fancy to my sandals and pants, tugging at them, in mock play, before losing interest and then chasing each other!

Srinivas then went even further west, on a road with large craters, and mountains for manholes - some motocross GP skills on his part - which was the local facility for the construction workers, who were involved in their morning ablutions and were quite startled by this strange threesome, who had cameras but were not taking selfies.

This part of the marsh had less water and so the waders and jacanas were out in full force.  I have never seen so many jacanas at one go!  Hundreds upon hundreds.  
 

Open-billed storks also were in plenty, flying overhead in formation

As we scanned the marsh, Umesh and I argued about the difference between a pylon, post and pillar.  If you are wondering why, he grumbled that I was misdirecting him by wrongly misidentifying these important markers, here he was staring at the pillar when I  should have been saying post, etc etc.  (Not that he missed anything, he was "just saying". )

A purple heron greatly improved the drab concrete scenery

The complete list from this Classic Farms side is here, compiled methodically by Srinivas, down to the last wagtail.

We drove back to the familiar northern side of the lake after this.  A road that was familiar to me two years ago, when we used to bring the NIFT students on a nature walk.

This was a favourite spot, always, with cormorants, kingfishers and pelicans, which would usually delight the students.  This time also, the shrub was full of activity.

There were Northern Pintails everywhere - swimming in the waters, preening on the edge of the lake and sunning and sleeping further up on the banks.

We drove a bit further down and caught a meditating purple heron, and a Pipit walking on the wall/bund.  

Blue-tailed bee-eaters delighted us with their aerial swoops as they caught insects and came back to their perch.

Look at the colours!

Complete list of the lake northern front here.

We then drove into the ELCOT area, where more surprises awaited me.  Last time during the bird race, we had walked in, only to be stopped by the guards, who were not very impressed with our birding activity.  However, going in, in a car, is perfectly acceptable it seems. So in we went, and stopped near the water-filled plot, which I hope will not be developed.

 A Little Egret seemed to pose for us, its breeding plumage fluttering in the breeze, its yellow feet clearly seen

A bunch of Fulvous Whistling Ducks first caught our eye, paddling in the water, behind the egret.

And as we scanned the banks we saw Wigeons and Shovelers a plenty.

And just as we were about to leave, a group of Garganeys came swimming to the bank.  

I was seeing migratory ducks after a couple of years of Covid-lack-of-birding.  I am hoping this year is an improvement on the last!  The Elcot list is here.  

Many thanks to Umesh and Srinivas for this little outing, and hoping for many more.  Some dragonflies later, we headed back.  A customary stop for samosas - my offer of digestive biscuits was sneered at - and tea resulted in babblers being added to the list! 

An article in The Hindu

Wetland bursting at the seams with jacanas?

The water levels have dropped in the northern and southern extremities of the Perumbakkam wetland, and both the pheasant-tailed and the bronze-winged are making the most of it

Pheasant-tailed and bronze winged jacanas at the Perumbakkam wetland on December 24, 2021. Photos: Prince Frederick

Prince Frederick

When a family member tends towards corpulence, it hardly registers in the mind till their drapes start bursting, the buttons flying with the muzzle velocity of a firearm. Equating resident birds with the close-of-kin, birders are beginning to notice that the Perumbakkam wetland is bursting at the seams with jacanas.

On the southern and northern extremities of the wetland, water has drained hugely and noticeably — respectively — exposing vegetation the pheasant-tailed and bronze-winged jacanas take to, with their never-ending jacanidae toes. They are making the most of it — particularly the pheasant-tailed jacana.

Not many days ago, when birder Gnanaskandan Keshavabharathi scanned the expanse, mumbling numbers, his tally of pheasant-tailed jacanas stood somewhere around 200. He had also counted nearly a dozen bronze-winged jacanas. Counting independently on another day, birder Sundaravel Palanivel’s arrived at a guesstimate: a whopping 400 jacanas with much of that number being racked up by the pheasant-tailed jacanas.

Either way, the jacana presence is monstrously high. Juveniles, particularly of the pheasant-tailed, make up a neat percentage of the gathering. There are also pheasant-tailed togged in their delectable breeding colours and extended sickle.

A stray thought enters the frame, altering the picture. Having guzzled water through November, the Perumbakkam is now somewhat akin to a lung whose fluid build-up is being cleared slowly. The draining is massively incomplete, with the central sections of the wetland still retaining pools of water.

Ornithologist V Santharam notes that this could be a temporary phenomenon resulting from cramped lodgings. Once the water recedes from the other parts, and the wetland gets more accessible to them, the jacanas would be more spread out. When that happens, the sense of mammoth presence would also diminish.

It could well be that the jacanas had been present earlier too in such impressive numbers, but were never shoehorned into small spaces with favourable vegetation.

The ornithologist brings yet another perspective to the jacana-dominated picture. “Congregations of jacanas are not unusual. If they have juveniles now, they must have finished their breeding a little earlier. They probably have different breeding schedules. May be post-breeding, they are congregating at a place that is relatively safe and they have enough food.”

Among the many things that stand out in the tightly-congregations of pheasant-tailed jacanas is cantankerous infighting. Every other second, two jacanas would go up in a flurry of quarrelsome and unruly feathers.

Santharam explains: “They defend small territories within which they can enjoy exclusive feeding rights. I have seen this with rails and coots — they also have a strong territorial instinct. In contrast, waders are migratory; they come here and find the food to be abundant and they go about their business quietly. These resident birds are more specialised in their feeding, looking for things in vegetation, and it is not an easy kind of food to access, and probably, they need to have some space to themselves.”

The original jacana congregation point

V Santharam, ornithologist and director of the Institute of Bird Studies at Rishi Valley, recalls how jacanas ruled the roost at two jheels in North Chennai — back then, North Madras.

“In the 1980s, we used to go to the Manali and Madhavaram jheels (famously known as the twin jheels). we used to access it from the Manali side. I do not remember the bus route — we used to take that bus from Burma Bazaar and it will drop us right at the village, and from there, we would walk about 200 metres and we would reach this place. We used to go through the village and then go into a mango orchard. There would be the shallow waters in front of us, full of lotus leaves — we used to count, most of time, 150 to 200 jacanas. And together, these jheels would be just one-tenth the size of the Perumbakkam wetland.”

A morning at the estuary

Early start today!  Went off to Adyar Estuary to bird - part of AWC.  Arrived at 630, to find a huge gaggle of bikers, all headed to the Broken Bridge, uhh!  Syed, Sagarika, Gayathree, Gowtham, Rohith - two spotting scopes.  Ran into Yuvan and Aswathi as well - and as a result got myself a copy of the Coastal Fauna of Chennai, put together by them - 160 species that you would commonly find.

The walk on the sand was filled with land mines - defecation free my foot - sigh!  

Some beach combing before arriving at the estuary.  Besides all the human waste (literally), and flotsam, that included slippers, cartons, thermocol, flower garlands and what not, were various fragments of creatures.  Many dead OR turtles too - I saw 3! I believe the SSTCN has suspended their public walks due to COVID.  I hope they are still collecting those eggs.  Now there is only a TN hatchery.  

 

A washed up Spiral Babylon snail shell - A marine gastropod mollusc once lived in it

Another sea snail - Murex tribulus, with all its spines that protect it from other predators, while it happily feeds on other molluscs.

The Common Moon Crab that has no Wiki page, goodness! I love their paddle like feet, supposedly helps them disappear into the sand in a trice.

Japanese sponge crab, with the pink pincers

And then we arrived at the estuary mouth

Regular recreation spot is the broken bridge

Magical morning, with the sun shimmering off the water

Pelicans, egrets, crows and humans a plenty.  Smaller flocks of plovers that were too far away for me to see well.  Spotting scopes very much needed.

While Rohith counted the Redshanks, I admired the waves of sand left behind at low tide.

The crow kept an eye on me while pretending not to, as it fed on a fish. 

This Little Egret balanced on this water weed endlessly meditating on the waters.    Fishermen fished, and shoals of small silver fished jumped in the air.

I was fascinated by the little egrets fishing on the water’s edge.  New behaviour seen in 2022 for me.  I couldn't get enough of them.  As they kind of squawked at each other and the crows - seemed rather grumpy, though they kept feeding!!

Many of them had their breeding headgear kudumis, flapping in the wind, quite cutely. 

A Caspian Tern flew overhead, Pond Herons skulked in the mangroves, and cormorants alternated between drying themselves and periscoping in the water.  And then it was time to head back, and as we walked back, there was a lot more to see in the undergrowth just outside the TS walls!

My first hoopoe of the year, busy ferreting in the mud, with its long beak, White-browed bulbuls in pairs, calling loudly, reminding me of a gurgling stream, bee eaters gliding across, Prinia occupying the high perches and singing, a purple sunbird glinting in the sun, parakeets and spotted doves.  The butterflies were beginning to sun themselves, tawny fosters, a blue tiger, and large Crimson Rose fluttered by.

Sagarika and I malingered as usual and were the last to wind up and head home.  Sun, sea and sand, and I had worked up a good appetite - a Mysore masala dosai was a good way to end it.

Parakeets

 

Rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri) - female and a juvenile, judging by their lack of the rose-ring.

The one on the right was feeding the scruffy one on the left

Rose-ringed parakeet
but they were not ringed,

mother and chick, my gaze they meet.

Everyday they screech and whizz by

a green flypast,

red strong beak, my oh my.

Excitable and grumpy, scrumpy and plumpy,

they gather together

on badam tree, colours funky.

Bulbuls and munias, barbets I see

mynahs and crows, more than twenty three.

And now a peacock has been added to the mix

My balcony birding

gives me quite a kick and a fix!

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.”