I initially thought this was Metanastria hyrtaca caterpillars, but I think they are actually Eupterote mollifera caterpillars.
Seen on our drumstick tree.
They were all crowded on the bark of the tree, in the shade in the day - when I first saw them.
8th September - Tree 1 5pm. Not much movement seen.
9th September Tree 2 - they were alive and one the move. Seemed smaller than the other tree caterpillars. I could not locate the caterpillars on Tree 1.
I will keep a watch on the tree - Hopefully, the caterpillars do nt completely defoliate the tree. According to the literature on the internet, these moths scrape and gnaw at the bark as well as the leaves. I did not see any leaves eaten up.
More as and when I observe.
12th September
Looks like both sets of Caterpillars are on one tree now!
Subsequently, for many days I could not locate them. Then I found some at the lower part of the tree, and some going to the base.
27th September
Hairy Caterpillars on one trunk and a bark gecko on the other.
The caterpillars looked worn and scruffy.
One liked like it was making its way down to the soil?
Hordes of cormorants fishing Sanjiv and Chitra birding Umesh joins and does the wowing Whimbrels and Curlews stalking Sagarika Thick Knee Spotting Cat's Claw flowers dazzling Fiddler Crabs emerging White browed bulbuls calling
Viji, the Turtle Girl from Chennai and other Women in the Wild
I discovered the pleasures of birdwatching quite late in life, and through birds I experienced trees, flowers, nature and the outdoors in a rather different way – I learnt to observe, I marvelled at all that I had missed and have new respect for all those who work so hard to protect, preserve and document all that binds us in this completely interconnected web of life on earth.
It was but natural, therefore, that I picked up Womenin the Wild to read. Edited by Anita Mani, this book is compelling both for the astonishing work done by the profiled scientists and the delightfully smooth and empathetic storytelling of the various essayists. In her introduction, Anita says of the women portrayed: “they are here because they have either had substantial impact on species/landscape conservation or because their work has contributed to the resolution of environmental challenges confronting wildlife in India.” In the same vein she mentions that, as an editor, she aimed to find authors who knew their subjects personally.
Editor Anita Mani with the Indian Pitta collection.
The Madras/Chennai connections to many of the women field biologists featured in the book made my reading experience more personal.
Anita herself grew up in Chennai. Schooled at Rosary and a graduate of Stella Maris, she trained and worked as a journalist, moved into the corporate sector and tech writing for a while, before going back to writing and publishing. She worked with a children’s newspaper before launching Indian Pitta, India’s first bird book imprint under Juggernaut. Anita says that learning about Vijaya’s remarkable journey and experiences seeded the inspiration for the book and the rediscovery of the sadly long forgotten birdwoman, Jamal Ara.
There are a trio of women from Chennai featured in the book: Vijaya, in The Turtle Girl, Divya Mudappa in the Canopy Crusader and Divya Karnad in Like a Fish to Water. India’s Wildlife Detective Uma Ramakrishnan’s family hails from TN and Vidya Athreya and Ghazala Shahabuddin studied at Salim Ali School of Ecology (SAS) in Pondy. Anita Mani observes in her Introduction that SAS and the Bangalore based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) created a channel for women field biologists in a big way and helped them build a mutual network and support system.
The Turtle Girl J. Vijaya, Viji as she was called, is part of the history of herpetology in India, and one only has to search “cane turtle” to learn about the impact of Viji on the species, their study and conservation. She cut her teeth at the Crocodile Bank with the legendary Rom Whitaker, and who better to write her profile than Zai Whitaker? Viji “discovered” the Crocodile Bank via the Snake Park one summer as a student at Ethiraj College, writes Zai, who was her senior by a few years, and came to know her closely as a colleague and friend. Escapades while trying to discover the mouth of the Cooum with her sister Prabha, collecting crocodile dung, dealing with men acting “fresh” on the Chennai buses, and the onset of the schizophrenia that brought a cruel end to a much too short life: Zai describes all this and more in a personal and poignant recollection of Viji’s life and work. Zai recounts in an interview that Viji was different, the key word was her passion. She loved the animals around her – the cats, dogs, monkeys and squirrels and also had a balanced scientific approach to her field work.
Divya radio tracks a brown palm civet in Sengaltheri, KMTR (1999). Photo by Dr. AJT Johnsingh.
Divya Mudappa’s journey towards understanding the historical and cultural context of landscapes in order to better and more effectively conserve them effectively is well told by Shweta Taneja, who was fascinated by her deep commitment to the terrain of Valparai. Divya spent her childhood in Madikeri and came to Chennai for her Bachelor’s in Zoology at Stella Maris. It was her volunteering with the Chennai Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSCTCN), that probably set her on a path to wildlife research that included moving on to a master’s degree from SAS Pondicherry, interning with Raghupathy Kannan and going through the heartbreak of experiencing degraded rainforests in the Western Ghats. Setting up Nature Conservation Foundation NCF with her life partner, working on the Stanmore patch first and then tying up with Parry Agro to restore the rainforest at Lower Paralai – every step brought learnings about the complexities of rainforests and their interdependencies. Shweta does full justice to the tribulations faced in this journey and the frustrations that almost drove Divya to give up.
Anita Mani herself chose to profile Divya Karnad, the Zoology graduate from WCC, who spent her childhood dreaming of a career in wildlife in 1990s Chennai, when STEM was the only respectable thing to do. She also volunteered with SSTCN, and then went on to National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore for her Masters, stayed with the turtles, working in the now famous Rushikulya beaches of Odisha, where her experiences with the fishermen brought home the truth that successful conservation has to include and involve the local communities. Anita evocatively describes the coastal ecosystems and fishing communities of Chennai, the social habits of seafood consumption and the genesis of Divya’s website-based intervention “In Season Fish”. Divya’s focus on sustainability in seafood is unique and remarkable and also very relevant to our city.
The Oaks Call her Home is one of my personal favourite essays. Neha Sinha writes about Ghazala Shahabuddin and the oak trees of Uttarakhand. Neha’s descriptions of Ghazala’s work with the oak forests and the diversity they carry in terms of bird life is a story of love, of a woman finding her voice in a patriarchal society even as she discovered her passion and stuck with it.
Much has been written and said about Raza Kazmi’s sensitive and detailed portrait of Jamal Ara, the forgotten birdwoman of India. Raza writes about his chance rediscovery of Jamal Ara via Jamal’s daughter Madhuca. Madhuca movingly recounts her mother’s struggles in marriage, her joys while in the forests and doing her wildlife research and her final battles with mental illness towards the end of her life. “A strict mother, a very private person, who loved to be in the forest. She wore green trousers and a green shirt in the forest, and at that time for a married lady and a mother to wear that was out of the question!” How a person with so much impact on government policy, protection and documentation of the biodiversity of the Chota Nagpur area besides being a gifted translator and short story writer, could have been so utterly and completely forgotten is disappointing and sad to say the least. As I discussed this with Anita, she wondered whether Jamal Ara’s gender and accompanying lack of self-promotion had led to her erasure from memory. Was it that she hailed from and worked in small town India? This anthology should be the start of the re-discovery and celebration of Jamal Ara.
The compiled portraits and profiles are a tribute to the successes of these women, a description of their journeys including some of their gender-based struggles. I also found appealing the generous sprinkling of tips for young women who may wish to follow their paths in wildlife biology. Divya Mudappa speaks of resilience in the face of challenges, Ghazala of the importance of sisterhood, Usha Ganguli of learning to be bold and Uma of believing in one’s self without guilt.
A common thread that will strike the reader is that women field biologists seem to bring empathy and emotion to their work. This helps them engage positively with communities which, in turn, positively impacts conservation and sustainability at the ground level. This is a book I will dip into time and again.
When we backbenchers meet, it is usually a cheery and noisy affair and this was no different. After ingesting the omelettes and dosais and coffee, we strolled out into the Boat Club lawns, only to have a crow's nest fall out of the tree and at the feet of Gayathree and Sagarika.
A set of crows cawed in consternation (I assumed) from the Neem tree above, staring at the nest which was thankfully without egg, and therefore we were in no ethical dilemma.
I admired the inner neat cup - I did not think the crow made a neat nest inside, having only seen the messy exterior so far.. I was quite taken in by the little cup with the thinner lighter twigs.
The stagnant Adyar river had many pairs of Ditch jewels, which is really not good news - they are usually around polluted waters - why I do not know, but they seem to love hanging around.
A Clubtail too, I spied. (I was quite pleased with my mobile phone via binoculars camera work.)
As we all dispersed to leave, we saw not one, not two, but a trio of Flamebacks going up a coconut tree. Such an unexpected delight, our Bhai was also exhilarated! Flamebacks are busy always, digging, drilling and hopping up in their odd two-footed fashion. May we never lose the joy of seeing these beautiful birds, and keep the sense of wonder in us always alive.
The Divi divi along the road was in full bloom, and I enjoyed standing under the tree and inhaling the fragrance and enjoying the "greenness" of the fresh leaves". Sagarika was busy with camera, muttering to herself - oh Tailed Jay, see there Swift, Pansy, I am not able to get a click...so many bees..." She was in full incantation mode. I was in Inner Peace state.
Friends and Nature make for a good therapeutic start to the day.
It is Beetle Week and I attended an online talk by the inimitable Geetha Iyer, whose breadth and depth of insights on biodiversity in general and insects in particular are pretty awesome, to say the least.
I learnt that 40% of insects are beetles, and these include those weevils that ate up my Kabuli channa last week - so well did they burrow and munch that all that was left was skeletal remains. (Never mind that I was banking on the said channa to feed some guests, and alternate emergency Plan B menus had to be thought of.)
Beetles are prehistoric survivors, crawling around even before dinosaurs stomped the earth, and from what I understood one of the secrets to their longevity on the planet is the hard elytra which keeps them safe from fungal and other attacks.
Geetha shared some fiction with beetles that I now have to read - The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe with a scarab beetle in it. This one sounded astonishing - The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals - EP Evans, lists a total of 191 animal trials, and it all seems quite bewildering. In one of the cases, weevils were taken to trial in 16th century France by winemakers.
And then there are flesh eating beetles - Dermestids - that are used by those who need to clean skeletons in their cupboards - no not politicians, but scientists and researchers! Geetha mentioned that these little creatures can industriously eat upto 5 times their body weight each day, and they are "efficient workers, do not damage the bones" and go about their business quite thoroughly.
This Tiger Beetle (Lophyra catena) was scurrying around in the sand in my mother's garden last year. They run real fast (so fast that they have to stop and reorient themselves every now and then, I read) and are quite difficult to photograph, so I am rather pleased at this picture with a mobile camera of these little carnivores.
This Leaf Chafer scarab beetle had sought the safety of the indoors to breathe its last. I am guessing they chafe leaves in plenty and are not a friend of the farmer.
This beauty I spied on a milkweed many years ago, in the TTUF park at Taramani peaceably chomping away. Leaf beetle of the genus Platycorynus
The Indian Green Tortoise Beetle was seen after a spell of rain in the same TTUF campus.
A Rhinoceros Beetle met its end, probably crushed underfoot.
Rhino beetles are kept as pets I believe. And in Thailand and Japan, Rhino beetle fights are a thing. I did not know this. there is even a card game called Mushiking. Rhino beetle fights are legendary - they are herbivores and harmless, but the males, push shove and throw each other in their fight for a male!
And then just to confuse people like me there are Jewel Bugs which look like beetles but are not, as against the true Jewel beetles.
This is a Jewel Beetle (
This is a Jewel Bug, it sucks and does not chomp and that is not an elytra - it is a scutellum. And see - there is no division in the middle, so it cannot split open, when they fly.
Sternocera chrysis), chomping leaves at TTUF, its hard elytra in full glory.
Another road kill. A gorgeous Flower Chafer Beetle did not make it across the road.
"In terms of movement, adults are considered some of the best flyers among beetles. They can hover above and land on flowers or fruit. When threatened by predators, they escape by either performing a rush take off or by falling toward the ground and then flying before impact. " Wikipedia
And now I am off - need to restock on kabuli channa, remember? (And next time those weevils come to feast, I shall take some pictures before subjecting them to capital punishment.)
Antheraea paphia, South India small tussore moth. Male.
Last moments of life - it lay there, moving feebly in the sun and breeze, and I marvelled at its markings.
I learnt from Bhanu that they are non feeding adults, with no mouth parts. These Saturnid moths mate, lay eggs & perish, their job done.
I drew attention to the moth, to all who passed by - some nodded in politeness, others hurried on, not moved by this beauty, I wondered how. An older man came and peered and nodded and marvelled at nature's creation. A young woman's eyes lit up at the word "silk".
I will be on the look out for eggs and caterpillars on possible host plants in the neighbourhood - Terminalia species, hoping the moth's cycle of life continues.
The pigs are an important food source for the Jarawa tribe.
"Andaman wild pigs are smaller in size with shorter limbs and a more compact body compared to mainland Indian pigs and what makes them unique is the higher oxygen carrying capacity of their blood.
Unlike domesticated pigs fed a controlled diet, Andaman wild pigs have a diverse diet consisting of fruits, nuts, roots, and invertebrates. This variety provides a broader range of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, potentially leading to a more complete protein profile in their meat.
Hunting the Andaman wild pig is culturally significant for the Jarawa, an indigenous tribe inhabiting parts of South Andaman and Middle Andaman Islands in India. Traditionally, a successful hunt of the wild pig signifies adulthood for a Jarawa man. These tribes are legally exempt from hunting restrictions imposed by the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, which otherwise attracts punishment of 7 years of imprisonment.
The enclosure provides a near-natural habitat for the species. Infants receive no specific external care. Generally, the female pig fed the young piglets which transitioned into normal diets as they grew.
The research paper also detailed the special attention given to diet so that the captive bred wild pigs maintain their natural protein values. The diet of captivity is diverse, including coconut, wheat bran, groundnut cake, jaggery, salt, tapioca, potato, and pumpkin, based on their nutritional needs. Leafy vegetables are added for nutrition, and water troughs are provided. The enclosure includes trees for shade, an open canopy area for sunlight, and soft soil for natural behaviours like uprooting and foraging. Deworming is also done every six months. "
It was 1030 by the time we exited the Park, and headedto the Chidiyatapu dive place - where we were to go snorkelling. The sun was high, and rather bright. The snorkelling instructors were from Kerala, bright and cheerful young lads, and some of us waded into the awaiting small motor boat in the cove, rounded the Munda Pahar beach, and went to the side of the islands where the coral reef was closer to the shore, and put anchor.
We we were told that the Crocs prefer the mangroves and were not in these waters.
Now Srinivas and Desigan were the ones with their phones and cameras - yet no pictures have they shared with me, and so I have no evidence of the beautiful blue waters, where I went snorkelling, every metre filled with new delights, multicoloured fish, and blue and purple corals that seemed to be regrowing on what looked like a lot of dead reef.
It was just beautiful - enjoyed thoroughly by Srinivas, Desigan and me. Sekar felt uncomfortable and returned quick and Umesh never did get the hand of breathing through the mouth.
We also had a bunch of young people from NIOT - learning scuba...and we had to wait until they all got into the water, including a senior white foreigner.
We we were all exhausted when we returned - I think it was close to 3pm when we had lunch, and Sekar and I just stayed in for the rest of the evening.
It was goodbye to Haddo in Port Blair,
and hello to this airport installation.
Back to Chennai after an uneventful flight - to this last bit of mirth.
This time, we birded in the reserved area and fields, below. Almost as soon as we got off our cars on the hilly roads of the forest, we saw an Andaman Serpent Eagle, sitting in solitary splendour, quiet, still; while we humans buzzed around with hushed excitement, not wanting to disturb it, but yet trying to get the best possible sightings and photographs.
Andaman Serpent-Eagle (Spilornis elgini) Brown, on brown. What a beautiful sight!
They are smaller than the mainland Crested Serpent Eagles, more brown, and with a single tail bar rather than two.
As we watched it suddenly dropped out of sight, gone in a nano second. Did it spot prey or was it getting away from us? It did not return to this perch.
Andaman shama (Copsychus albiventris) - sighted more or less in the same place as during my last visit!
As I watched, enchanted through my binoculars, the Shama moved from one branch to another - and continued its singing. Did not seem to mind us at all, it was too busy with its own daily routine. When it had to, it flitted away into the undergrowth, and so the Shama show ended for me.
Up above, a lipstick red beak whizzed past - a Dollarbird - the same thing happened at Kalatang too. But here, Suresh followed it to the same tree perch and photographed a pair.
The Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), with the round dollars on its underwings - quite mynah like, though those beaks are a giveaway. I read that they love the top of bare/dead trees.
These birds have a lovely "short" colour (to use saree parlance), with the sun causing the blue-black to shimmer.
We moved on from the hilly, forested road, to a track between farming lands. It was past 7 in the morning, and the sun slanted in from above the nearby hills.
A spider's nest created a lovely "kolam" on a wild plant.
By the side of the road, a happy jumble of weeds, including Touch-Me-Nots harboured grasshoppers and other little critters.
An Indian Wanderer rested on a leaf, that seemed eaten by caterpillars. I couldn't figure which plant - the leaves look a bit like my home jasmine plant.
Plume-toed swiftlets - we saw them everywhere, everyday. But here, there was a huge cloud of them. Squarish tail and white bellies - that's the extent of features I could identify - 10x binoculars notwithstanding - so swift are these swiftlets. Collocalia affinis affinis is the Andaman subspecies. It gets its name from a tuft of feathers close to the rear-facing toe - the hallux. So, the toe is not plumed, but it has a plume, if you know what I mean.
While the swiftlets flew, the mynas were busy with their nest building. I love mynas - they have so much "personality". They were busy going in and out with sticks and twigs - no time for us.
I watched with delight. Suresh clicked away - he has a whole series of pictures.
Jabili gently suggested we move on - to "walk a bit up an incline" - I later realised we walked about 200m! 😅
Monkey Jack trees all around.
We reached this point - that was Bada Balu beach down there.
This was where I was convinced that the Violet Cuckoo had some violet. We had seen it earlier, up in the canopy, backlit and dark - I was so unimpressed that I did not even add it to the list.
Editor Anita Mani with the Indian Pitta collection.
