Its always a female to lure a male

They tried with Kartik the elephant and failed, but it seems to have worked with T7, the nomadic tiger from Ranthambhore who landed up in Bharatpur!

The use of feminine charm to lure the "errant" male!

Elusive Bharatpur tiger netted
SUNNY SEBASTIAN
Truant T-7 lured by the recorded call of female tigers

The elusive T-7 which was ruling the roost in the Keoladeo National Park (KNP) bird sanctuary near Bharatpur for the past four months has been captured by the wildlife authorities.

The tiger, tranquillised by a team of experts from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Sariska Tiger Reserve and the KNP around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, was taken to Sariska by road an hour later.

Now T-7, a habitual wanderer who left his original home at the Ranthambore National Park for the Kaila Devi Sanctuary in the neighbourhood and later to Dholpur and Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, is heading for Sariska as per the announcement made last month by Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh during a visit to Keoladeo.

Difficult customer

Curiously, T-7, which proved a difficult customer for the experts during the past eight days, was finally caught after it was lured by the recorded call of female tigers. “We have been after the tiger since February 14, but it proved very elusive. Then we thought of trying this technique,” Keoladeo field director Anoop K.R., who was travelling with the caravan headed for Sariska, told The Hindu on Thursday evening.

“We requisitioned recorded calls of the female, and once I received them through e-mail, we played it on Wednesday inside the park at four different places on loudspeakers. To our surprise, the tiger responded and appeared from the thicket of juliflora some 100 metres away,” Mr. Anoop said.

WII's P.K. Malik shot the tranquillising dart and the animal immediately plunged into the thickly wooded area. “It was a great relief to find him unconscious across the road,” Mr. Anoop said.

The team on the spot, which comprised Sariska field director R.S. Shekhawat, forester Narain Singh and researcher Shubheep besides Mr. Anoop and Dr. Mallick, soon transferred T-7 into a wooden cage. The cage has been used earlier to shift big cats —five till date — from Ranthambore to Sariska as part of the now well-known rehabilitation plan for tigers.

Except for one, all other tigers from Ranthambore were airlifted by Air Force helicopters to Sariska. T-7 is the first tiger caught outside Ranthambore to be moved to Sarika, which lost a tiger CP-1, last year.

“Now T-7 will be referred to as ST-6 or CP-6, the sixth tiger to be introduced to Sariska,” said Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Rajasthan P.S. Somasekhar.

“We may keep the animal in one of the enclosures in Sariska for two or three days before releasing it in the park,” he said. “We hope it soon gets a real call from the three females there.”

A happy ending to this story. Lets hope T7 now to be known as CP6, will thrive in Sariska!

An escape story that ends sadly and badly

We saw the Top Slip elephants on our Pongal trip to Parambikulam. I asked if they were sad to be chained. I wonder which one of the magnificent elephants we saw was Kartik.

Elephant escapes from Top Slip camp, search on
TNN, Feb 24, 2011, 05.38am IST

COIMBATORE: A 35-year-old tusker has escaped from the elephant camp at Top Slip near Pollachi in Coimbatore district.

It slipped out of the camp on Monday night and is hiding in the bushes near Sethumadai, a little away from the reserve forest area. The tusker, Karthik is going through "must" and may have gone in search of a female companion, S Thangaraj, a forest ranger at Top Slip, told The Times of India.

Normally, the elephants at the training camp are not bound by chain at night. They're let loose in the forests. In the mornings, they return to the camp. "Elephants have never slipped out of the camp in the last decade," said Thangaraj.

The mahout and forest guards launched a massive search for the animal on Tuesday. They spotted him at a tribal settlement in Saralapathy near Sethumadai on Wednesday morning. When the mahout Murugan walked closer to the tusker, the animal ran deeper into the jungles. His female companion, Sivakami, and another tusker were brought in to lure him back into the camp. "But he is refusing to come out of the bushes," Thangaraj said.

By dusk, the "rescue operation" was called off. Now, forest officials are trying to trap Karthik with two other female elephants in the camp. "He relates well to our camp elephants Vijayalakshmi and Selvi. We hope Karthik will come back tomorrow," the official said.

Karthik was born in the Top Slip camp to Alamelu, who died a few years ago. When wild tuskers stray away from jungle, Karthik usually goes as a kumkhi elephant to drive them back. There are 20 elephants in the Top Slip camp.

Jumbo that escaped from camp gored to death by wild tusker
Radha Venkatesan | TNN, Feb 25th
Coimbatore: In a fierce territorial fight in the jungles, a male elephant which escaped from the elephant camp at Top Slip near Pollachi was gored by a wild tusker on Thursday morning. The 35-year-old camp elephant, Karthik, was found dead with multiple bleeding injuries at Saralapathy near Sethumadai, about 5 km from the scenic hill retreat of Top Slip.

“His body was covered with bleeding wounds. He was gored to death in a fierce fight with a large wild tusker,” Top Slip forest ranger, Thangaraj Paneerselvam told TOI.

Forest guards who had waited on the forest fringes to bring back the tusker to the camp, could hear loud trumpeting all through Wednesday night. Around 4am on Thursday, the trumpeting stopped.

“We knew Karthik was in trouble. But when we went into the jungles, it was too late,” Karthik’s mahout Murugan said. When a camp elephant strays into forests, it cannot co-exist with wild elephants. “A camp elephant is no match for a wild tusker. The tusker is fiercely territorial and will not allow camp elephants to invade his space,” the forest official said. Karthik was born in the elephant camp about 35 years ago and was a “kumkhi” elephant.

On Monday night, suffering from hormonal surges, he left the camp. Forest guards and mahouts launched a massive hunt in the jungles to locate him.

After a day-long search, they spotted him near a tribal settlement at Saralapatty. However, he refused to respond to the calls of his mahout. So, a female elephant, Sivakami, and another tusker from the Kozhikamudi camp were brought to lure him out of the jungles.

But Karthik stubbornly ignored the overtures of Sivakami and ran deeper into the jungles. On Wednesday evening, the forest personnel decided to bring two more female elephants to draw Karthik back to the camp. “Unfortunately, by this time, Karthik had succumbed in a terrain battle. The tusker which attacked him was also experiencing hormonal surges,” forest guards said.

Two years ago, two elephants in the camp fought a fierce battle and one of them died after suffering severe abdominal injuries. Last week, a tiger and a leopard died in a territorial fight in the Nilgiris forests.

radha.venkatesan@timesgroup.com

World Cup fever

There's been a lot of birding activity on the continent these days.

Up north in Bangladesh, did you see the Coppersmith Barbets take on the Indian Fairy Bluebirds, or were they aggressive and comical Purple Swamp hens?

At home in Chennai, a lack of imagination in plumage creation, meant that a look-alike team of Coppersmith Barbets flew in from Kenya took on the sleek and versatile Darters from New Zealand, and came out second-best.

Down south in Sri Lanka, a group of Blue and Yellow Tanagers were an unusual sighting, and thrashed a flock or Red Finches from Canada.

Last night, it was the turn of the Golden Orioles from Australia to dominate the athletic and bright Red Cardinals all the way from Zimbabwe.

More sightings will be reported soon.

February Rambles

Millingtonia bare

February-March

Birds perch

I stare.

Grand teak in seed

February-March

Leaves all mulch

earthworm feed.

Green replacing orange-gold

February-March

Tiered branch

Almonds in its fold.

Balcony birding

Coppersmith barbet - Megalaima haemacephala

The bare millingtonia

Bobbing head

Tuk, tuk, tuk

all day long.

White-breasted kingfisher - Halcyon smyrnensis

The bare millingtonia

Beak so sharp

Chakee-ake-ake-ake

all day long.

Stinging and biting hazards!

When Rom first visited Agumbe in the early 1970s he had some peculiar hippie ideas. He felt that all the trappings of the human world interfered with his ability to find king cobras. So, he discarded his watch and shoes, and stripped down to his loin cloth. Not the best attire for his first brush with the Devil Nettle!

He got it on his arms, chest, stomach and legs. “It was itchy painful,” he recalls. Hives erupted, and to alleviate the pain he dove into a pool. It became doubly horrendous and he jumped out again. That night he shivered uncontrollably. By the next morning, the hives had become depressions and the affected area was constantly clammy. For the following six months, any contact with water was enough to set off the ‘itchy pain' again.

Read more about the Devil Nettle in this delightful essay by Janaki Lenin. It is found in the Western Ghats. The Hindu : FEATURES / METRO PLUS : Innocent plant, deadly sting

I am glad we did not come across these in our walks in the karian shola at Parambikulam. The plant picture in The Hindu essay looks most innocuous!

While we did not get stung by nettle, a few of the group members had ticks on them, while others (including me) had chigger bites! Forewarned about leeches, we were resplendent in our leech socks, much to the amusement of our guides, who mentioned mildly several times, that there were no leeches at the moment since they had had a spell of dry weather.

On our return to Madras, I was absent-mindedly scratching my ankles, and looked down to see some red, mosquito-like itch marks. Sheila also said she had some and then husband and son also had these marks. However, we did not see any insect biting us, though we peered closely and examined our limbs thoroughly - I only found more unwanted warts and moles that I never knew I had!

Sheila's sister then mentioned to her that they may be "chigger bites", so off we went to figure out what this was (Google zindabad!) and discovered that chiggers were the larvae of a type of mite, and they were almost microscopic! To our relief (I had heard some worrying stories about tick bites and mysterious fevers), these were not ticks, and besides the itching, we could ignore it.

That is what we did - tried not to scratch, kept the skin clean, and now two weeks later, those little welts have dried, and the itching is gone.

Mites are arachnids, like ticks, but are much, much smaller, almost microscopic. Ticks are larger - I remember the ones that use to plague our dogs. If I'm not mistaken, ticks feed on blood of the host, while mites feed on lymph tissue, if they are parasitic. Ticks are also more troublesome in that they carry diseases, and so one has to keep a close eye out for them. Mites, it appears, lead to allergies, but many, (like the ones we were bitten by), can be ignored in that the discomfort is temporary and without any other implications.

Here are some other arachnids we saw in the Parambikulam area.

Argiope anasuja. Photo by Junior, with his 35mm Nikon camera and manual focus

The same argiope, taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix on autofocus. I struggled to get it into focus, as the camera "autofocussed on everything else besides this spider! Reminded me of Dr TPA and the Photography workshop I attended.

I first wrote about this argiope, when I saw it at the PWD park in 2009!

I think this is the Opadometa fastigata, with silver patches across the body

Gasteracantha geminata. A common spider of Kerala

And then we saw this "exoskeleton". Actually Pranav did, and showed it to all of us. So, the spider does not have an internal skeleton but one like an external shield. And when it grows, it bursts out of the old one and grows a new one!

I've often wondered why we find spiders on their backs, with their legs curled up. Check out this link for the reason.

Happy and free. Chained and sad?

As I saw the wonderful scenes of jubilation in Tahrir Square in Cairo, I once again appreciated my basic civil liberties. Would I rather live in chaotic, inefficient but democratic India, or controlled and advanced China? Would I enjoy being a princess in a gilded cage- like castle or an ordinary citizen free to roam the streets and markets of my land?

Similarly, would the elephants prefer the freedom of the forests to the luxuries of being fed and bathed (never mind the chains) of camp life? On our recent visit to Parambikulam, I saw elephants in the wild, and they were definitely smiling I tell you. And then, there were the sad eyes of the Top Slip elephant camp inmates.

A smiling mum and her baby, all mud bathed

To be wild and free

The sad face of a camp elephant. Why do their trunks and ears look so "scrubbed"?



Those horrible, horrible chains...like prisoners

It is no wonder that this elephant in the wild walked off into the forest on seeing us. They cannot possibly view us with ease. Click on the photo and look in the centre you will see an elephant

I dont like zoos and I dont like elephants in camps. The worst off are the temple elephants. I saw a couple of temple elephantsa few months ago...and my heart just went in to my stomach on seeing their plight. Instead of praying, I silently asked for that magnificent creature's forgiveness.

It is no wonder that in their collective unconscious these animals are angry at us...

Wild boars of Parambikulam

So, what is a social group of wild boars called?

"Sounders", says Wikipedia!

Everyone had good sightings of sounders of wild boars at Parambikulam. One lot trudged past our dormitory morning and evening, their snouts in the ground foraging for anything they could find to eat. They really do eat anything edible I believe - omnivores of the highest order!
Nice mohawk isn't it?
Occasionally, they would lift their snouts and sniff out our alien presence, which I thought was rather endearing.

They are fierce creatures, though, and I've heard stories of MNS members being charged by them. Sudhakar gave us a particularly graphic account of being stuck in a nullah within eyeball distance of one, with both man and boar wanting to flee. (He straddled the walls of the nullah and the boar went charging through the tunnel of his legs!!)

Wikipedia says:

If surprised or cornered, a boar (particularly a sow with her piglets) can and will defend itself and its young with intense vigor. The male lowers its head, charges, and then slashes upward with his tusks. The female, whose tusks are not visible, charges with her head up, mouth wide, and bites. Such attacks are not often fatal to humans, but may result in severe trauma, dismemberment, or blood loss.

The greatest headbanger of them all

Having just seen all those woodpeckers in Parambikulam crazily banging their heads, I thought this article was very well-timed!

Woodpecker's head inspires shock absorbers

"A woodpecker's head experiences decelerations of 1200g as it drums on a tree at up to 22 times per second. Humans are often left concussed if they experience 80 to 100g, so how the woodpecker avoids brain damage was unclear. So Sang-Hee Yoon and Sungmin Park of the University of California, Berkeley, studied video and CT scans of the bird's head and neck and found that it has four structures that absorb mechanical shock.

These are its
hard-but-elastic beak;
a sinewy, springy tongue-supporting structure that extends behind the skull called the hyoid;
an area of spongy bone in its skull;
and the way the skull and cerebrospinal fluid interact to suppress vibration."

Read the article for more details.

The Parambikulam poem

Frogmouths and hornbills I hoped to see
but the forest teaches you
that what will be, will be.

Parambikulam was our destination,
in our MNS Pongal peregrination.
Up in the Western Ghats is the sanctuary,
a hot spot of floral and faunal diversity.
A 450 year old teak called kanimara
A Southern Birdwing, I marveled at. The shola
Do we realize we have this treasure,
Its worth to us, beyond measure?

Lost New Yorkers and Naturalists seasoned,

a doc on sabbatical and a writer of fiction,

researcher retired, the children enlivened,

our MNS "herd', a local attraction!

Roshan amused us with snake lores galore

Rohan wanted idlis and puris, some more

Uttara yelled in the cold shower with "delight"

and Vish thought she was in a big fight!

Then, Selvam guided us to the frogmouth pair,
An endemic to the ghats, in their lair.
What an endearing sight they made
Leaf-like, in order to detection, evade.

That large, strange gape helps them hunt at night,

Below the forest canopy in quiet flight.
This Youtube video shows you the frogmouth, Sri Lanka
As also this post in my favourite blog from Gallicissa.

While Pranav continued his quest for crawlies,

Vijay thought we would have leech difficulties,

But instead, Mini had ticks more than forty!

Which her dad picked out, before they turned warty.

He also removed the dead rat from our loo

While Dhruva was revealing sides to us we never knew!

Meanwhile, Raji & Raji discussed music and dance

with Kamini, in this most unlikely ambience.

Outside the dorm was the Malabar Whistling Thrush
Its plaintive call heard from the brush.
An Asian Fairy Bluebird, and woodpeckers a plenty
Nut Hatch, treepie, barbets and hill mynahs, more than twenty!
And boars sporting mohawks, their snouts a-twitching
And Nilgiri langurs, their black coats, so fetching!

The gaurs and hornbills decided to keep away

though we looked hard, day after day.

Sheila was fascinated with all the scat

Porcupine, bear, boar and cat!

Mr Sivakumar's record shot did not help resolve the debate

was that Wagtail grey or yellow, my mate?

Shantaram and me made bird lists, meticulous

In this way, it was not left ambiguous.

Eighty two bird species in all we sighted

And tree names also were noted.

Memories of those vistas, I will carry with me

friends, family and happy camaraderie

forest, flower, bird, animal and tree

how I wish we could all let them be.

Let me learn to consume wisely

be responsible and not exploit blithely.

Clean air and freshwater free

For our children and grandchildren and all eternity.

Ten bird species I had never seen before -

• Pompadour green pigeon - what a lovely, musical call!
• Sri Lanka Frogmouth - I was so looking forward to this, and when I think about them now, it still amazes me. If the guide had not actually told me where to look, I just would not have seen them!
• Brown capped pygymy woodpecker - there were actually a couple in the trees just outside the dorm, so one morning I had my heart's fill of viewing them zipping from tree to tree.
• Great black/white-bellied woodpecker - what an amazing, spectacular looking bird!
• Heart-spotted woodpecker - brought a smile to all of us I remember, as he/she pecked furiously and went round and round the trunk, hanging upside down at some point, but still pecking away.
• Small minivets - brilliant flashes of colour
• White-bellied treepie - The white nape and belly, striking when it flew past
• Velvet-fronted Nuthatch - out in the forest, it kept disappearing around the tree trunk, but I had a good look in the trees outside the dorm as well. When my son first heard the name, he heard it as "natraj", and was amazed that the bird had such an Indian name!!
• Asian Fairy Bluebird - It posed for us, like some fashion model on the Vogue cover! With the sun falling on it, it was a brilliant view!
• Chestnut Tailed Starling - there was a tree full of them one evening.

Memorable butterflies

• Southern birdwing
• Jezebel
• Gladeye bushbrown

Parambikulam, here we come

Off we go, with the usual chaos of waitlisted tickets.


View Larger Map

Map of Parambikulam Willife Sanctuary

Here's what the Official Website of the Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary has to say:

Tucked away in the valley between the Anamalai ranges of Tamil Nadu and the Nelliampathy ranges of Kerala on the majestic Western Ghats is the Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary.This virgin valley that is the pride of Palakkad district is a glorious tribute to untouched nature.The reservoir harbours several varieties of aquatic fauna including mugger crocodiles that are often seen sunning on its banks.

Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary is the most protected ecological piece of Anamalai sub unit of Western Ghats, surrounded on all sides by protected areas and sanctuaries of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the sanctuary is endowed with a peninsular flora and fauna which are excellently conserved due to total protection and minimal human interferences. The sanctuary being a major ecological continuum from Peechhi to Eravikulam through Anamalai aids the large viable populations of wildlife. It is the home ground for different races of indigenous people who are as well an integral part of the prevailing harmonious ecosystem. The thick, opulent habitat of the sanctuary with ample water supplys make it an abode for wildlife and there by for tourist who can have treasured memories of animal sightings and that of being in the lap of mother nature

Western Ghats is one of the world’s 34 bio diversity hotspots. While considering the abundance of Wildlife and the adorable beauty of Nature, Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary is perhaps the most attractive piece of wilderness in the entire stretch of Western Ghats. Thus it is popularly revered as ‘Nature’s own abode’. It has a total area of 285 Sq. Kms.

I am looking forward to catching a glimpse of the broad-billed roller, hornbills and please oh please a frogmouth. The sanctuary is also home to the Tarantula spider, which doesn't live in a web, but in a burrow in the sand or in trees. I hope Pranav our insect wonderkid helps us spot one.

There are also 34 species of butterflies classified as "rare and endemic".

Lets hope the Pongal weekend works well!