by M Krishnan
I have seldom photographed animals from a hide. I have often used treetop hides overlooking a forest pool or path to observe wild elephants in safety, unknown to them, but taken very few pictures of them then. And at the Guindy National Park around the Madras Raj Bhavan, I felt the need for a ground-hide to study the native blackbuck and the introduced chital closer than I could otherwise.
I need not explain why I felt this need, except to say it was for evidence to substantiate my reasons for chital thriving in places into which they had been newly introduced, to the detriment of the native herbivores. Preliminary reconnaissance disclosed a further problem. It was no use setting up a groundhide at a selected spot. At Guindy, men are constantly moving about and the animals, while used to human proximity, keep their distance and shift ground frequently. I needed a portable hide.
It then occurred to me that with a modification of what I wore in the field, no hide was necessary. Over the years I have acquired the ability to stay still and to move, if I must, in slow motion. My stained and patched brownish green trousers and bush-shirt were inconspicuous, and if I had a light, wide-brimmed hat from which a veil could be hung, to mask my face, that should do. A khaki soft hat, such as some policemen wear, seemed best, and I bought one at a second-hand clothes shop. Then I consulted an acquaintance who had worked as a sempstress, for the veil, and she advised not a fixed veil, but a number of slipknot nooses around the brim from which thin green twigs could be hung, for better camouflage and to enable me to see through readily. This she was kind enough to stitch on herself, and armed with my new headgear, I set out for Guindy after lunch.
By 3 o’clock I found a promising spot, with no men near and a flat stone at the foot of a wood-apple tree to sit on. The ground in front was bare and brown with sparse patches of low herbage, but there were some tall bushes. A soft-haired, leafy twiner with a sticky white juice festooned two of the bushes: it was in fruit, hung with long, green, paired follicles along its pliant coils—obviously, a plant of the Aclepiadaceae (Pergularia daemia, as identified later). Taking the hat out of my handbag, I collected lengths of the twiner complete with follicles, so that the twin fruits would stabilize the pendent veil of their lengths. Securing them in place, I put on the hat and ensconced myself on the stone slab.
Soon it was apparent that I had overdone things a bit. The hanging greenery in front of my face was too closely spaced and in the way of clear vision, even of easy breathing, and the twiner had a strong, foul smell. Thanks to the slip knots, this could be easily remedied, but as I raised my hand to do so, five chital came into view, feeding steadily towards me—three adult hinds, a young stag in velvet, and a half-grown fawn. I froze, and watched.
They were both grazing and browsing, cropping such ground vegetation as there was, and feeding on the foliage of some bushes: they were partial to the follicles I had left behind on top of the bushes, standing up on their hind legs to get at them. By now they were very close, and I wondered when they would spot me. Then the hind in the lead trotted right up and snipped a follicle off my hat, and at once the rest joined in, tugging at the fruits from all around so that the hat stayed miraculously wobbling on my head. Then it fell away, and at once they scattered and bolted.
Chital are short-scented. How was it, then, that from so near they had failed to notice my sweaty man-smell? Had the stronger smell of the fresh-cut twiner masked it? I do not know the answer to these questions. I never tried the experiment again.
I made an early start on elephant-back, so as to be at the expanse of up-and-coming grass in time to see what was feeding there, but on the way we chanced on a huge lone bull gaur and followed him for almost two hours. It was nearing noon when we reached the slope lush with fresh-grown tall grass. There was no animal to be seen, but something had fed there quite recently. There was a darkish furrow in places going up the sea of bright green grass tips. It was Maasthi, my mahout and companion, who noticed this first and pointed it out to me.
We went a little way up, for a closer look. It had rained in the night, and the ground was moist and impressionable. The unmistakable, so-human footprints of a large sloth bear zigzagged up the rise, and alongside the track the grass had been bitten off in sheaves. I remarked to Maasthi that the bear must have had quite a feast here. He shook his head.
‘Bears do not eat grass,’ he said.
I assured him they did, and that I had seen them feeding on fresh grass with gusto. Maasthi had great faith in my knowledge of animals, and had often consulted me when in doubt—he had also told me things I did not know, which I subsequently found to be factual. He knew perfectly well that I would not make a positive assertion unless it was true, but this once he was unable to accept my authority. He said that I must have seen what I had seen elsewhere, not here—here, bears did not eat grass.
I asked what animal, then, had guzzled the tall grass here so zestfully—there were no other tracks on the ground, not a single hoof-print. However, I did not argue the point further. I was already feeling peckish, and it would take us an hour and a half to get back to the rest house and lunch. We decided to be at this pasture early next day.
And when we were there next morning, the bear was also there, busy with his breakfast. For a while we watched from behind a thick-boled tree. He was facing away from us, but we could see him quite clearly. He fed choosily, taking his time, selecting a tussock of tender grass and bending its top to his mouth with a paw to munch it up. I was keen on a photograph if I could get one, but had to get closer—he was already halfway up the rise. Not following in his wake, but keeping to one side of it, we moved the elephant up, and at once he began to hurry. He had his back to us still, but had somehow sensed our presence. I called a halt so as not to panic him, and he went right up to the bare, stony top of the rise and stopped. He still faced away from us, and did not turn round to look, but bending his head low down so that the crown almost touched the ground, looked at us from between his legs! For nearly a minute he stared at us like this, and then went down the other side of the rise at a bobbing run to vanish into the forest.
Maasthi turned to me in utter puzzlement.
‘Would we have seemed upside down to the bear?’ he asked.
Late in the year, when cyclones hit the south-eastern coast, I was at Point Calimere in a tiny cottage on the beach. Very late one afternoon, it grew suddenly dark, black rain clouds blotted out the sun, and a high wind sprang up. By the time I could close and bolt the door and the two small windows, the storm was upon me.
Torrential rain beat down on the steep tiles, thunderclaps crashed overhead and the wind’s voice rose to a banshee shriek. Not a drop of water penetrated my retreat, built to withstand the elements. My food was being brought from outside, and I could not hope for dinner, but I thought this primeval fury could not last all night, and sat down stoically to wait. There was no let-up, and by four in the morning I fell asleep to the strident lullaby of the cyclone.
A hammering on my door awoke me, and when I opened it, it was bright outside and 7 o’clock already. The forester was there with a flask of hot coffee and a substantial pack-breakfast. I was feeling famished, but ate sparingly, for it was important to go out at once to see what damage the vegetation and animal life had suffered. The forester vetoed the outing: there was an almost overpowering wind blowing just above the ground, and he had experienced considerable difficulty getting to me.
He was lath-thin and insubstantial: I was almost twice his weight and in hard condition. Picking up a light 35 mm camera, I ploughed my way to the sea.
I have never known anything like that two-level ground-wind. Up to knee height there was no stir of air, and then till well above one’s head there was an almost solid blast of faintly sibilant wind, repulsing one. I had to lean into it to force my way through. The sea, flat and placid at Point Calimere, was calm again, but it had run amok in the night. The wreck lay scattered high up the shore, shellfish, squishy molluscs, broken-up crustaceans, bits and pieces of long-dro
wned wood, and small fishes—nothing large and, surprisingly, no seaweed.
I was astonished at the way the vegetation had survived the cyclone’s violence. Trees and bushes here are tough and flattopped: they had bowed their crowns to the raging wind, and except for twigs and branchlets torn off and flung around, had escaped unscathed. The ground vegetation was unaffected: in places, ephemeral little pools had drowned it, but the sand would suck in the water by nightfall.
Round a bend, I came upon a pair of jackals scavenging on what the sea had thrown up, and seeing me they decamped into the bushes. A little beyond some two hundred brown-headed gulls were sitting tight on the wet sand in a long row, all facing the air current, waiting for the wind to die down. They ignored me as I passed very close by them and took some pictures. Further still, I came to what had been a little bay the previous day, now scooped by the storm into a miniature lagoon extending far up the shore and about seventy yards across. The opposite bank was topped by ground vegetation and through its tangle I could just glimpse what looked like the heads of some large seabirds.
The sea at Point Calimere is quite shallow for quite some distance from the shore. A few days earlier, I had spent an hour standing waist-deep in the sea, photographing the assorted crowd of gulls flying around the incoming boats for the guts of the catch being tossed out. I had been sternly warned by the fishermen not to be so foolish—there might be stingrays in the shallows that could inflict a fearful injury.
Far out to sea, I could see dolphins circling and occasionally leaping up into the air. I had seen them here in the sea many times, always too far away to be clearly watched. There was nothing else in sight, and I wanted to have a look at the birds on the further bank before turning back.
To go all the way round would be progress through the buffeting wind, but I could easily wade across. I walked into the water, which came only up to my knees, and then to my waist, and was halfway through when I was suddenly almost shoulderdeep in it. Evidently the storm-tossed sea had dug into the sandy bottom here, and it was best to get out of the trough: holding my camera at head height, I turned round. Something long and live and heavy brushed gently against me in the water, and I stopped dead. Again something long and thick brushed my back, hardly touching me. Then the dolphins were swirling around me, in a whirligig of joie de vivre.
There were half a dozen of them, circling at high speed and skimming the surface now and again to throw up an impetuous spray. I just stood there, holding the camera pressed to my head, utterly spellbound. These were common dolphins, eight-foot long and sleekly streamlined, steel-grey on top and white below with a yellowish streak along the flanks, and the jaws in a beak armed with teeth that could probably bite through one’s arm. I felt no fear—only amazement and wonder. Then, as suddenly as they had come, they raced away, far into the sea. I have seldom felt so thrilled.
These dolphins are the only wild animals that have a strange affinity to humanity. Right from Greek mythology to Mediterranean tales there are accounts of their friendliness towards men. I had read these accounts, and thought them only charming legends.
1997
G
Gnu or wildebeest: Large antelope of East
and South Africa with buffalo-like head,
hairy mane and tail. Genus: Connochaetes
GNU
The gnu is sullen and morose,
his horns are like a buffalo’s,
his tail is like a mare’s:
he fiercely roams his native leas
and charges everything he sees
from hills to harmless hares.
And woe betide the hunter who,
with careless aim, has shot his gnu
not in a vital place!
The only way the charge to flee
is swarming up the tallest tree
within the nearest space.
Nature’s Miniatures
15
A City’s Bird Life
Thirty years ago, we moved out of a crowded part of Madras to the house that my father had built in Mylapore. No one consulted me over the move, for I was the youngest of the family, but I remember the occasion and the sense of pioneer adventure it gave me. My father had chosen this spot after much cogitation, as the likeliest to offer peace and space to his retirement.
There were a few bungalows around, and many groves and fields in between. Our road, or rather the section of it that held our house, was the northern boundary of an oblongish area, the other three sides of which were also closed in by roads. I am tempted to draw a map, but words will do. The tramline and a row of houses formed the eastern edge. The southern edge was more or less lined with residences, and a new colony (to which we belonged) was coming up on the north—but the west was still wild.
The triangular, south-western half of the oblong was a series of paddy fields, coconut groves and pastures, with only two small churches and a ‘mutt’ to break their continuity. I use the past tense from a regard for accuracy. I live in the house that my father built, and the locality still retains its oblongish shape, but it is chock-full of construction now, built up ruthlessly with just sufficient space between for secondary roads.
In those days I used to wander around with a catapult in my hand and a jackknife in my hip pocket, feeling every inch a settler in a new land. There was a pond on either side of our house and a much larger one on the southern periphery—all these are filled up and built over.
My neighbour’s compound was a miniature jungle. In it there were mongooses, palm civets, snakes, tortoises in the pond, even a starry-eyed blackbuck, though I must confess that it wore a collar. Beyond, further west, were the paddy fields, coconut plantations and scrub, which jackals visited after sunset and where quail were not uncommon after the rains: once, I saw a hare here. It is all concrete and metalled byroads now, and squirrels and rats are about the only wild beasts one can find in it.
It is of the bird life of this restricted, oblongish area that I write. The title, with its wide scope, is misleading, but perhaps I may justify it by a brief, necessary mention of the rich avifauna of Madras. It is curious but true that Indian bird lore has grown up around the cities—‘Eha’ in Bombay, Cunningham in Calcutta and Dewar in Madras have contributed much to its literature.
It is a mistake to think that cities hold few birds, and that these are mainly dark and metaphorical in character. From a varied knowledge of the countryside, I can say that parts of Madras are quite as bird-filled as the country can be, even today. Adyar is still an ornithologist’s paradise; one could name other localities in the city’s purlieus, but what I should stress is the fact that the part of Mylapore I live in was not less plentifully favoured with birds, and that even now there are birds here.
Birds, with their wonderful powers of adaptation and airborne freedom, are less immediately affected by colonization than terrestrial fauna. As a boy, I got to know the birds of this area the hard way, with little help, and my recollections of them are trustworthy.
What changes do I notice? With the disappearance of extensive woodland (provided by contiguous, tree-stocked compounds), meadows and inundated fields, certain birds have also gone. Spotted doves, ioras, magpie-robins, fantail flycatchers, the Brahminy mynah, hoopoes, king-crows and the grey shrike (the thorn fences and pastures are no more), cattle egrets, pond herons, the common kingfisher (the smallest of the tribe) that used to frequent the ponds—these once common birds have left the place, and few of them come in again, even as stragglers.
Other birds are in the last stages of departure. Orioles and bulbuls, somehow never plentiful even in the old days, and beeeaters and rollers, belong to this class. For the rest, the birds that were here are here, but in much reduced numbers. I think it would be best to group them in some manner before telling you of them: classification is tedious, but unclassified, profuse listing can be worse.
First, the stray visitors, the birds that come in by chance or mischance. Naturally, it is not possible to be specific about t
hem. Night herons visit my area occasionally, though they have no roosting tree near here, as they used to have. On moonlit nights I have heard lapwings, but I have never seen them.
A few years ago my son found and captured a pitta in a recess under the ancient wood-apple tree in my little garden. This was late in April, but obviously the bird was a migrant, for it was in an exhausted condition. Pittas visit Madras during the winter, and have been known to stray into outhouses, but I had never before seen the bird in this locality. We felt quite touched that this beautiful wanderer should have crossed so much outlying construction to find sanctuary in our modest little garden.
Another vague group belongs to the skies. In spite of the law, the skies do not belong to anyone, and have been little affected by our congested architecture. But it seems reasonable to conclude that birds sailing and soaring day after day over a particular locality find the pastime worth their while, that the lesser fauna of the place and its isolated bits of waste provide them with prey.
Except for swifts, and occasional intruders, these sky-birds are all birds of prey, that is, birds that live on anything from vegetable refuse to insects, lizards, squirrels and small birds. In this reckoning of aerial fauna, I leave out the early morning and late evening skies, through which many flighting birds pass.
There is surprising variety in the birds of our diurnal sky—besides the ubiquitous pariah kite, there are Brahminy kites and eagles whose flight suggests power in reserve, scavenger vultures on dazzling, graceful wings, hawks, even an occasional peregrine.
About a furlong from my house there is the last patch of nature in these parts, a small, grassy field, fringed with a wide border of thin scrub, with a strange grove of dead and decapitated coconuts at one end. This is the beat of a kestrel, scanning the mean scrub for insects and small fry, from its hovering stance in the air.