Bright lights, loud horns, bold animals and insensitive glorified apes

Loud honking and over speeding by motorists are things banned in certain countries but in India, only the exact opposite seems to work. Some motorists have succumbed to the Periodic unnecessary honking syndrome (PUHS) and do this all the time. May be they will continue to do the same if put on a plane too! And not just that, they are rash and insensitive while driving about. This has led to many accidents and even communal wars in the past. This same insensitive attitude towards a fellow being gets automatically carried on even when they are driving in the forest areas. 

Traffic stopped for easy movement- pic seshadri

Firstly, there should not be public vehicles plying in forests but this cannot be helped and thus measures to reduce the impacts should be in place. This does not seem to be the concern of anybody. Vehicles inside a forest are a nuisance and one must witness the annual Influx of vehicles during the SMK festival in KMTR. The number of vehicles plying on the road are, simply put- astronomical. With local pressures, the roads are thrown open for pilgrims to enter the reserve at night and this, adds to the existing problem of road kills, pollution, dust and other effects. The people in rented or own vehicles will be in a maddening frenzy to reach the temple camping grounds and find a spot to live for the next 10 or so days. This annual migration happens almost up to 10 days before the festival itself. The roads are re done and everything is made easy to facilitate the easy movement of vehicles. The road shoulders are packed with mud and leveled so that the road can occupy a larger volume of traffic and traffic police are put in various places to regulate the people.

The drivers always are of the boorish sort and seem to think of someone overtaking them as an insult often chasing them and blocking their path. And on the other hand, honk their heads off trying to overtake the precursor. To add to this, all most all the vehicles have blaring music which, more often than not, out of tune and being played in cheap Chinese speakers which sound no different than a donkey braying in pain. Almost all vehicles ply at high speeds and people would have hung their wet clothes, from the Agasthiyar watterpallies (read Waterfalls) all over the vehicles. This whole thing is an eyesore inside the forest. The bright light is another impeccable hand of this four wheeled assassin on the run. The lights are so bright that I sometimes think it can reach the moon!

speeding vehicle at night- pic seshadri

All this, has a large implication on the forest and its dwellers. Most of the animals are nocturnal by behavior and those that are not are also forced into moving about in the night due to the train like movement of vehicles in day. When vehicles move in the night too, the animals are left with no choice. They have to either risk themselves from getting run over, stay put in one place without moving or get used to it!

Unfortunately, my observations during the night road transects seem to suggest that the animals have picked the last strategy. This is a bad thing for wildlife. Once they get used to people, it becomes easy for one to walk right up to an animal and shoot it point blank, capture them live or just tease them for the fun of it. The animal might also get crushed by vehicles as they do not bother to run for cover. We in fact had many instances which seem to suggest that the last one seems to be occurring. Many hard to see animals like the Slender loris,Civets, Mouse deers and even Leopards are seen right next to roads and they don’t seem to bother of the hundreds of speeding vehicles. We have many times experimented with shining the lights right on to them, honking badly and revving the engines so as to see their responses and nothing seems to make them run for cover. I even walked up to a mouse deer and shot pictures in macro mode! Another mouse deer was merrily feeding along the roads even as I was shooting pictures and revving the engine badly.

Un-fazed mouse deer Pic- Seshadri

Feeding Mouse deer Pic-seshadri

People who come to the pilgrimage are of course, insensitive to all this, some of them, stop to look for animals, some purposefully increase speed and try to run over animals (and even humans, especially those doing road kill surveys!) but most of them turn a blind eye towards these things. Others do not realize that their actions have or can lead to such behavior changes in animals which will be detrimental for wildlife. They will be more prone to getting run over, caught and eaten by poachers and so on. The problem here is clearly the attitude of drivers and those who come in the vehicles. Strict measures can and should be taken to control this behavior and honking should be prohibited in the forest. The speed should be regulated so that the animals if at all take the risk to cross, will get a little more time before they get hit and die without even knowing what hit them. We need to target this attitude of people and need to work on sensitizing them to their own actions which they seem to be doing without realizing the implications of it. Until things change, the animals of the Mundanthurai plateau and many other forest of India are victims of the sorry state of human mentality.

Eyes in the forest

Just to continue from where I last left, the camera trap was brought from the field station to be set up at the place of Sambar carcass. It was about 22hrs and by the time I could mobilize a team it was 23hrs. The team consisted of myself, Allwin- who has the notorious experience of doing camera trapping for years together in some India’s best tiger habitats and Chian, the young man who came into existence within KMTR and has seen the forest and its mystifying creatures in detail and is one man who anyone would want to take into the forest given his great cheerful company, willingness to go out of the way and work hard, insult primates by gracefully climbing the tallest of trees and of course for the knowledge he has accumulated in those 2 decades he has been in the forest.
So thus we left on a bike from Mundanthurai to Kariyar where we had seen the kill to set up the trap, picking up or rather dragging Chian along from the booth near the temple to come along and set up the trap may be on a tree so that no one would steal it. We reached the path leading to the kill and began walking stealthily but at a hurried pace. In the dark night, the path seemed to be longer that in was in day and every sound we heard made us stop and listen, lest we should walk into an animal and startle them (or us?) to death. As we approached the spot of kill, we could already smell the putrefying body and we slowed the pace and almost simultaneously, I spotted a pair of brilliant greenish blue eyes, quite distant from each other staring at us from a rock behind a thin bush on the right flank of the road, just about 10m from where the kill was. I switched over from a LED to a focus beam on my headlamp but the light was way too insufficient to reveal what the animal was. By then, I had taken a couple more steps when the eyes glittered again and this time Chian saw it too and pulled me back from going any further. He snatched the headlamp from be and began to shine at the spot and there it went again! The same brilliant greenish blue eyes! Just like sapphires in the pitch dark night of the amavasya (No moon)!
We stared at the same spot for about 20 minutes looking for a glimpse of the animal but except for a few occasional glances towards us, the animal never revealed itself. It was evident that Chian was in full control of the situation and he held me and Allwin back from proceeding any further. We began discussing in whispers as to what it could have been and also contemplating of barging in further and flush the animal out. It was sure that the animal was a carnivore looking at the distance between the eyes and the low height. It was not a dog because the eyes were a little far apart and more so, the behavior of seeing us and still being there- this sheer audacity comes only for two creatures; either the tiger or the leopard. The animal was clearly weighting its options and sitting there looking at us.
My idea of going further was washed down by the other two who were with me and it was now clear that we are not proceeding further. By then, we could not see any more eye-shines form the place, and may be the animal had moved and was looking at us from elsewhere. All of a sudden Chian who had the torch jumped up and was visibly shaken! Allwin who was behind him, put his arm over Chian’s shoulder to turn the light at something and poor Chian thought it was an elephants trunk and almost died of fear!!
We were now contemplating as to what it might have been and only thing was a young tiger or an adult leopard. Both apparently have the same sort of eye shine. Allwin with his experience of dealing with tigers, said if it was indeed a transient or a young tiger, the mother might be around and if we proceed further, we would be more or less dead if it decides even to jump on us even by mistake because, on the left was a rocky dried up ravine and on the right the animal. We had to walk right thru a bush to reach the kill and this was clearly not the position which anyone would want in the middle of the night!
Reluctantly, we returned being almost sure that it was a leopard that looked at us, I also recollected the eyeshine which I had seen the previous time I saw the leopard on the road which I have written elsewhere. So we returned to go set up the camera the following morning. The next daybreak came and went in finishing the other work we had at hand and by 10am, Myself, Rajkamal and John-another jungle denizen went to the spot with the filmmakers Kiran, Nagesh and Shashi.
They were doing a film on the Sorimuthian festival and a part of it was to film the research work we did during the festival. We went and clearly saw the pugmarks and droppings of the leopard on the road and tracks of it all along the kill. The kill was half eaten and john and myself did another post mortem for the documentary. The smell had become intolerable and everyone wanted to get out of there as early as possible. I sat on the culvert and gave a few small sound bites for their documentary after them shooting the post mortem and setting of the trap. I set it up under a huge rock and covered it with leaf litter so that no passerby sets eyes on it. This whole process took us more than 3 hours to get done!

We did a lot of mock animal movement over the kill to see if it triggers the camera and moved away only after making sure of that. By evening, it started pouring and I was afraid that the camera might get water into it, so myself and Abhisheka who initially spotted the kill went to the trail from Servlar to Kariyar with the intention of checking on the trap and just as we were about to start the walk, at 17 hrs, we met a rather old gentleman, an Ex-Indian Administrative Service officer in a SUV, who claims to be a keen lover of animals and a follower of the school of thought that research should and can be done during family trips and holidays and being a full time researcher to him is the heights of madness. What he means by research I would not know and dare not comment on that. He was concerned that we were walking in the forest at that time and asked us what protection we had, and we nonchalantly said that we have nothing to fear and just before we departed, he claimed to have seen a sambar kill in the stream. I acted dumb and sounded enthusiastic to know about it. I acted like a moron who knows nothing of the forest and this pleased and boosted his enthusiasm and his assistant, explained to us that it was a pack of dogs and might come to eat on the kill. We both sounded excited and quickly bid farewell and kept walking at a fast but constant pace.
We saw some pugmarks of leopard on the trail and some birds, but otherwise there was nothing exciting until we reached the place of the kill except that the sky was overcast and it pour any time. As we walked down the road, we heard the yelp of what sounded like a dog. It crashed into the forest. We never saw what it was. We waited silently for 10 mins and I went to the kill. It was eaten up further and all of a sudden, I did not seem to see the camera! I had camouflaged it so well that I myself could not see it in the fading light of the dense forest.
The camera triggered when I walked past and I checked if it was in place, no water had got in and realigned the focus of the camera as the kill had moved. All the while we were looking out for the mystery animal which called. Dholes- as we knew had calls like a whistle and they are fondly called “Whistling Hunters”. This yelp of a dog made us think that a stray mongrel from Kariyar was stealing meat from the kill but in that case, we should have been able to see it as they would try to chase us instead of them running away. Darkness fell soon and we moved on to take the bus down to Mundanthurai and reaching by dinner time. Over dinner, we discussed this with Rajkamal and Saleem and both of them were not sure of such a call. It was decided that myself and john go the next day morning at day break and remove the camera trap. Having the reputation of being a self claimed gentleman, I offered anyone who was interested to come along and Jahnavi, Rajkamal and Smrity wanted to come. Since Smrity was new to this field and had not seen a kill, I told her to be ready at 5 am and I would pick her up on the bike from the dormitory.
Morning came and the usual rush to use the loo was on and like Saleem says the sight of half naked chaddi clad men was a common sight the first thing every morning! Managing to freshen up, I left in a hurry with john to pick Smrity up who stayed in another dormitory exclusively for ladies of the team. On reaching there, I could not hear a sound and there was no activity, I knocked the door and no one opened. Jahnavi and others in another room knocked too and no one opened. So much for being a gentleman, I left with john and went straight to the trail to recover the camera, if it was there that is.
The same quick stealthy pace was on and as we reached the kill, I saw two wild dogs bolt across the road giving the same yelp I had heard the previous evening. One step closer and two more bolted to the hills on the left of the stream. Both of us were awestruck! What a way it was to begin our day! We rushed up to collect the camera and the kill was almost eaten, it was dragged quite away from where we initially saw it and the camera, fortunately was still there. The dogs, were in the forest, some 50m away and I guess they were looking at us and wondering at our antics!
I pulled out the SD card form the trap, inserted it into my camera and saw the images and lo behold! There were images of myself testing it, a short while later 4 dogs and in the evening I reappear to check the trap and then the spotted master takes over the stage of this perfectly eternal drama of life which ends with dogs coming over at night. The leopard was indeed feeding on a kill made by dogs! Though I could see only previews of the thumbnails on my camera, I was pleased and so was john. We were out of words and on clouds with numerous nines!!
We rode back, John relived Chian who was at the booth all night and I took him to do the road kill survey on the way back to Mundanthurai. Chian was excited and he kept reaffirming the decision of not walking into a death trap. Road kill survey done , had a quick breakfast and filled in about the situation to whoever was there and then went to the dorm to see the footage on a computer!

The sequence of events was so beautiful that I was indeed full of joy seeing the drama in the shadows of the night. The dogs came about 2 hours after we set up the camera, one came then another and joined by two more, they were visibly fidgety, which is expected being the road and lot of people walking to and fro. They fed till about 1630hrs and then they see something up the road and all run. This must have been the IAS officer passing by in his jeep. Then, within 15min the dogs are back on the kill only to run when I reach there. The video shows that the animal was feeding half a minute before I reached! Exactly after 10 mins, I appear on the frame and after 2 more hours of me leaving, the majestic leopard walks in elegantly and begins feeding on the kill for about 2.4 hours up until 21 hours. Then there is a gap of 1 hr or so and the dogs re appear, they are far less fidgety then they were in the day and are playful as ever and one fellow also comes and sniffs the camera! The majority of the kill is eaten up in this time. The infrared camera records all this without the animals even knowing of its existence! The dogs feed till about 0031hrs. None of us knew that dogs come out and feed in the night! By 0400hrs the dogs reappear and feed until 0600hrs where I go and scare them away! All this was beautifully captured in 5-15 sec clipping coupled with pictures! With this whole experience, we learnt that dogs come back to their kill; Leopards do sneak in and feed when they have an easy meal at their disposal and wild dogs yelp like dogs too!! And of course, they come feed even at night! All this was entirely new for the whole team and all of us were simply enthralled by the whole sequence of events that led to this set of (personally at least!) wonderful natural history observations over two days.
(I have put some images below and All images and Copyright rests with ATREE team, KMTR.I put two clippings but they dont seem to appear!)

The dog about to scoot seeing SUV

Yours truly checking the trap

The spotted master

Dholes back in action

If some of you were wondering what happened to the lady who was to come with me, she came to the dorm with a scared and a sorry look on her face when we all were seeing the footage. Lucky for her that I was too happy to be angry like I was that morning when she dint turn up upsetting the entire schedule and she apologized for absconding and said she never woke up as there was no alarm clock! I guess the missing of the dogs taught her a lesson and hope she will never miss a time set for work again!

Death of a Sambar

It all began with Jahnavi and Abhisheka walking into the kitchen at Mundanthurai after the early morning surveys to monitor birds and animal occupancy in forest along roads. They had seen a kill- a fresh one at that, so much so that they had even seen the blood trail! This, is something nice to hear about when there are an approximated half a million people camping and moving about near the Lord Sori temple inside KMTR and the Sambar was found dead about half a kilometer from the road on the way to another major tourist attraction the Banathirtham falls. They were walking on the trail from Servlar to Kariyar and this kill was in a dried up stream bed next to a culvert. They set eyes on the blood trail and Jahnavi thought that someone beheaded a chicken and carried it along. Then, when they walked some 300m, they came across this kill and got pictures from the road and came back to camp.

Saleem, Rajkamal and I, who were there at the camp eating food, were very excited to hear about the kill. We immediately wanted to go have a look at it but we had other work lined up and had to shelve the plan. We however tried to figure out what had killed the animal. They had not seen tracks around and none of us were sure of what had killed it. Whatever it might have been, we were all sure it would come back. In the back of my mind however, I was pretty sure that the kill, if fresh and visible from the forest road would have been taken by some tribe living in the forest and was somewhat reluctant to go take a look. But afternoon came and then things changed. Myself, Rajkamal, Saleem, Eric, Abhisheka and Jahnavi decided to go take a look at the kill in any case. The path was already littered with human excreta and my doubts of seeing the kill became stronger but to the contrary, we reached the place and there was this dead sambar with its stomach split wide open and some gooey green stuff sprayed on the rock next to it. It was the first time for all of us and it sure did look a little gross. But being biologists, we had to pack such feeling aside and go ahead to take a closer look at what had happened and immediately picked out the pug marks of dogs and what seemed to be of a leopard. The animal was badly mutilated at the ears, tail, eyes dug out and the stomach was completely ripped apart and disemboweled. This was clearly the doing of a pack of dogs but to make our case stronger, myself- a self made jack of all and saleem- expert wildlife rehabilitator got to work with a pair of plastic bags over my hand and began observing the animals neck.

Saleem and myself observing kill, Jahnavi, Abhisheka, Eric and Rajkamal out of frame. Pic by Rajkamal

Pic by Rajkamal

 If it were to be killed by a cat, there would have been puncture marks at the neck where the animal breaks the jugular vein or snaps the neck with its weight. But there were none. Further investigating, we wanted to see the other side of the neck to make sure there are no punctures on the neck and it took me a hard pull and push of 15 minutes to flip the animal over! The animal was still warm and the blood gushed out like a burst open pipe! The neck was clean, apart from a few scratches there was nothing of interest to us expect for the “Sore patch” which occurs in all sambars in summer. This is a patch on the lower neck which becomes bald and starts to bleed and gets infected. This was a mystery, or I guess it still is. But what I had heard and from what is saw, it seems that the horrendous “ticks” bite the poor animal on its neck where it simply cannot lick itself ( nor can humans!) and the bites itch and the animal rubs it too much causing an infection. We in-fact saw 2-3 large ticks were still biting. The other interesting thing which stuck us was the Millipede feeding on the blood of this sambar! Never had any of us seen or heard of such a thing. Eric began searching for his dung beetles and rajkamal began getting hair samples from different parts of the body for having a reference collection and I flipped back the animal after taking the measurements of head, back, feet, etc

The stomach was full of flies and wasps; they were all busy with one purpose- lay eggs. While the flies did so within the body, the wasps with their scary looking jaws cut up the carrion and carried them away. Some of them, like us humans, bit more than what they could fly with and would crash land to the ground. I managed to flip the carcass over and we could see that the animal’s intestines were pulled out but it was punctured before removed causing the green spray of its gut content. The content indeed was phenomenal amount! And it had a lot of Terminalia chebula fruits in it. It had just rained and the weather was hot and humid, this coupled with the stench and exercise of lifting a 200 kilo animal made me sweat all the water and body salts! While all this was happening, a passing Kani tribal forest watcher stopped over and gave his expert opinion of it being killed by a Tiger. We all nodded our heads lest he would be un-happy and carried on with our work.

Within about 20 minutes of our arrival, we could build up on what exactly had happened. The kill was done early that morning and the actual attack had happened about 300m from there where the blood trail began. The animal was attacked and the stomach was bitten off by a pack of Wild dogs- these whistling hunters of the forest are ruthless and begin eating their quarry even before it is dead often attracting the ire of horribly disillusioned animal rights activists claiming to be hard to the core conservationists. Some of them, ex government officials whose name I will not take, claim that these horrid dogs eat up all the chital and recommend they should be shot!

 The Dholes as they are called kill unlike the cats by eating the animal where ever they can get hold on and it might have so happened that the stomach was opened some distance away and the sambar somehow escaped the clutches but ran and fell into the stream where the stomach burst open and the animal died due to loss of blood or shock. The dholes had just then began to feed when the two researchers walked and must have scooted on seeing them approach. And that would explain the partially eaten body.

Saleem wanted to sit over the kill and see what animal came to eat but weighing out our options, myself and Jahnavi decided to go fetch the camera trap and set it up instead. The situation reminded me of the great hunter turned conservationist Jim Corbett where he would see such kills, more often than not that of a fellow human and sit over it to shoot the deadly man eater. The same was with the Kenneth Anderson of south India. How much of what they said was true, I would not comment but only that in our case, this was a sambar killed by dogs and we were curious to see what happens when an animal is killed in a forest. This was a golden opportunity which is so rare to witness in one’s life. So it was decided to get the camera form the field station and after a round of tea in an old lady’s shop and a round of nonstop story full of lies from the local forest official myself and Jahnavi headed on the bike to singampatti. We stopped enroute at the lower camp to fill in on this situation to Dr Ganesh who was in Bangalore on some other work and to ask permission to set up camera and of course to make him jealous! He was invariably excited and gave a go ahead to set up the pretty expensive and new digital camera trap which detects heat and records video on to a Fash card!

So thus we went to the field station that night to find it locked. Ruthammal who has the keys was in a church on that Sunday night and she wouldn’t come till the next day morning. We then went to the new field station and there, the watchman was about to retire for the day and we woke him up and got the camera, ate a quick dinner at Chettys, bought new pair of batteries and set back to Mundanthurai at 10pm! And reached in record time of 1 hour! What happened next is more interesting and adventurous that what I have told above and will remain as suspense for now but I shall write about it in the following post. Until then, I shall keep you in the dark like we were until we saw the images of the forest at night as captured by the camera trap!

The Dark Knights; Rulers of the jungle nights!

Every year, as the Adi Amavasai arrives, researchers from ATREE begin preparing for the annual Sorimuthian festival. The preparation is more than what the people of Alangulam, from where half a million people come into KMTR and camp for over ten days in the name of Lord Sori. And as the story goes, one who visits lord sori once will keep coming every year after that! I guess sori has not spared the researchers either and It so is happening that I myself have been attracted by his un-fore seeable power to pay my due respect to this lord whose name in literal translation means itching! (Sori= itch/allergy).

Sorimuthain temple before pilgrimage on banks of Tambaraparani river

This year, a new entrant was inducted to the team trying to change the camper’s attitude towards conservation under the theme “Be better ancestors”. With the past three years, a team of us had gathered information on road kills, occupancy of animals, water quality analyses and social surveys. This year, we decided to have the same and add to the database we have to see the long term impacts which is what makes sense than a short term view of the whole madness. Having inducted myself to the field of road ecology a couple of years back, I was responsible for the documentation of road mortality of animals and hence, it was decided that the new entrant will carry out the study before the festival and my good self and soul was tied up in a mess at Pondicherry for a couple of more months. Smrity, the new volunteer, was overwhelmed by seeing the datasheets and protocols and was good to go in the field. I managed to convince two more of my classmates and roommates to bunk classes and come to KMTR in order to get trained in monitoring road kills and other projects which was planned.

Bunking a class is not so difficult and the week end saw us in KMTR measuring road length and laying plots along it to record road kills. This seemingly insane activity of searching millipedes in plots along roads to see the impact on their population drove all of us a little bit crazy. After figuring out the best method to count millipedes the new volunteers were trained in recording road killed organisms and by evening, the cold curd rice packed in morning went down our parched throats with the hurting feet in the cool waters of Servalar river. Having done this, and due to the incapacitated team with only one bike for four of us, I made my two classmates, Vivek and Tapan to board a bus and go back to our field station outside the reserve and before I followed the bus, I realized that I could as well do the night transects on the road leading to the temple as we used to do every year.

So I and Smrity were traversing the 5 km of road at a slow but controlled pace with a dim LED headlamp to spot the eye shine of animals. This method, we figured over 3 years of experience was way better than the huge hunting spotlight the department uses to catch eye shine and I am quite happy with the success of our method. Soon, the tourist vehicles exited the forest the roads were calm once again and except for a few bikes; there was no activity on the roads. With dusk the forest became silent and we began to see all sorts of wildlife starting from Chital, Sambar, Mouse deer and Pigs. It was almost 2000hrs when returning, I spotted the bright red eye shine of the Selnder loris. May be due to the change in angle of light, smrity never saw it and the animal moved.

 We rode on and on reaching about 100m from the Mundanthurai dormitory; I spotted something on the road at about 70m. it did not seem like a pig and I accelerated to reach the animal and breaked barely 10ft from it and to my utter surprise it was a full grown leopard! It was about to cross the road and on seeing me took a huge leap into the forest and this leap carried it about 6m away from the road into the row of trees!! The jump is something that will remain etched in my eyes for the rest of this living life!

Our joy knew no bounds and both of us were jumping on the bike itself like tourists do! The leopard, now back to where it came form was crouching in the grasses and I could clearly see the green eyes and I quickly  entered the sighting into the data sheet and moved intending not to bother the animal any further. Smrity, who was stepping into the forests of Western Ghats, must be considered very lucky. It took me 5 years of walking and walking in the rugged mountains to set my eyes on this majestic creature of the jungle and this city slicker lady saw it on the first day in forest!! Both of us, pitied my two classmates who were on the bus and decided to rub things in by not telling them about the sighting immediately.

On reaching the Mundanthurai dormitory we decided to go on Servalar road and do the surveys there and soon, half way to Servalar, I spotted an owl take off from the tree next to the road. And on shining the torch, it became evident that it was not the brown fish owl but something else, I was for the next 10 minutes of so, guilty of blinding the animal with my spotlight headlamp and the bike headlight in order to get a clear look at the bird. And lo behold! It turned out to be the Forest eagle owl- Bubo nipalensis!!! This sighting to me was more treasured than that of the leopard. It has taken almost a decade of bird watching to set my eyes on this beautiful forest owl.

This was the end of my survey as it began to drizzle and we had to head back as we had quite some distance to cover to reach the town and we headed back to Kallidaikurchi where I had asked my classmates to wait at the chetty shop. The survey was in no doubt a very successful one and it clearly indicated the fact that with no vehicles on roads in night, animals do move about a lot. Some might here argue that this post would influence others to go into forests on bikes and cars for thrill which would disturb the forest and I completely agree with their concern. But I am no body to decide and as far as I am concerned, it was with certain responsibilities that we did this survey and it requires permits to enter forests in day time itself, let alone at night. But going beyond and looking at the bigger perspective, I feel such things are necessary to make a difference, I have strongly believed that good science is what matters in making a change in conservation and for this, causing a little disturbance is not going to be harmful. In fact, with the results of previous years, we were able to convince the forest authorities to close the road at night until 3 days before the festival, compared to the 10 days earlier. This to me is something of significance and I would really not bother if someone goes into forest in night and look for animals. I still believe that going to see animals in day time itself would disturb them anyway so why bother?

The king of kings!

Snakes, world over are feared worshipped and respected for their sheer majestic appearance, venom and beauty. Be it a tiny worm snake or an anaconda. This mix of respect and fear has made the snakes feature in the mythology of many nations but more often than not, the fear has caused people to beat them to death on sighting one, irrespective of being harmless or venomous. These are creatures that have a very special place in nature but also in my heart. Having the influence of snakes in my name itself, this does not sound surprising. There was a point in the little time that I have managed to live where I feared the snakes more than respecting them and shared the intention of the numerous men of clubbing one to death at sight! It took many hours of snake shows on TV and holding a tiny watersnake shoved into my hand by the “Snake shyam of mysore” to get over the fear and start caring and respecting these snakes.
The respect grew and I had this dream of becoming a herpetologist! ( I also dreamed of being a pilot, soldier, philosopher and what not!).Though that I am not sure of having become anything yet, I am quite happy that I have been able to stick around with nature and wilderness and witness these gentle creatures in their own world and have had numerous encounters with them both dead and alive in a couple of years- and even got bitten by a rat snake once! With this fascination, respect and whatever you want to call it of snakes standing the test of time, I wanted many more encounters and experiences which would make this little life on earth a worthy one to live. And there is one snake which I always wished to see and know more about like any other snake lover at least in India. The legendary King cobra.
This snake, being the longest venomous snake in this big and wide country is on the hitlist of anyone who loves these cold blooded seemingly mis-evolved creatures. The highly venomous yet gentle and majestic snake, seldom seen is an important predator in the evergreen forests and is restricted to parts of the Western Ghats and the forests of Orissa and further east. With human encounters being far and few between, the respects this snake gains is phenomenal and is called with equally respectful names in colloquial terms.
It is the only snake to build a nest and eat other venomous snakes, it can pump in enough venom to kill a full grown man 20 times over and can grow up to 15 ft and as thick as a human fore arm! And there is no anti venom for this snake in case someone gets bitten by these clever and bold snakes.
My first encounter with this snake was in 2007. I was a volunteer with Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bangalore and was part of a team monitoring the presence of tigers and their prey in the forests across the Western Ghats of India. Balehonur in central Western Ghats is one place where the snakes are seen and while returning from field work to Shimoga district, we happen to see a thick snake crossing the road. It was so long that I could not see its head or tail but the body was covering the whole width of the road. We were able to take only a couple of pictures before the snake moved into the thickets and we never got to see the head. A round of discussion and pouring over field guides proved it to be his majesty himself!! (Or must I say her?). That was a seemingly un-exciting encounter with this majestic snake but none the less, a great sighting. This incident has been now refreshed with an even better and an unforgettable experience I had a few days back in 2010 in Mundanturai. With the campaign asking people to be better ancestors during the Lord Sorimuthian festival in KMTR coming to an end, I was packing up to leave to Pondicherry and had just finished the much needed shower which had not seen me for almost 4 days when I heard my colleague Prashanth bolting into the dormitory and asking for Rajkamal. Having not seen him for few hours, I asked what was all the excitement about and Prashanth managed to utter between catching his breath that there was a huge snake in the Servalaar river and it was just seen getting washed away in the water. And going by its monstrous size, it seemed like a king cobra.

I had this little confusion in my mind for two reasons- one the snake was not to be found in the deciduous habitat in Mundanthurai and the other was the reluctance to go out in search of a snake wearing shorts and bathroom slippers! However, the snake got the better of me and in a few minutes it had us both running after it after I grabbed my binocular alone assuming my camera battery was completely dead! The bridge across the river had already gathered the policemen manning it and the discussions were on about the snake, how big it was and other stories blown out of proportion. A quick chat while scanning the bank for the snake with Anthony of the Papanasam bus service revealed that they had actually seen the King and were not lying as I had thought in the back of my silly over confidant mind. The urge to see it again made run across to the other side of the river and soon prashanth and self were on the other bank after a fast bolt with Smrity following us at a rather slow pace. On the other bank, we started having discussions of how the snake came to be there and it became clear that the snake was possibly washed down the river from the upper ever green forests beyond servalar when the dam was opened. If this were to be true, I guessed that the snake would, on reaching the bank rest for quite some time after the exhaustive swim in the cold waters of the river. Being cold blooded, this sudden exercise would have drained the battery of the snake too and it would wait for quite some time to recuperate from it. Soon, the bank saw us traversing looking for the snake and being over cautious as to not step on the tiered snake and the numerous human dung piles. We spent a good 15 mins in search of the snake and there was no luck. We got down closer to the bank when a bunch of people bathing further down the river started shouting and we were there in less than a minute to hear that the snake had just went past them. They were so afraid that they did not even tell us if the snake went in water or on land. I crashed thru the thorny shrubbery followed by the other two and began looking for the snake. Another 15mins were spent in a seemingly futile search for the elusive snake and I turned back and told prashanth that the snake must have gone and there was no point searching further and as I was getting late to leave to Pondicherry in a short while, we turned back with Smrity following us 50m away. While cautiously walking avoiding all the shit, in one corner of my eye, I saw something move and it was indeed the king. This huge snake was right next to where we had passed a couple of minutes earlier and all the three of us had missed it. My joy knew no bounds as I was seeing this snake thru the binoculars with close focus and was staring right into the eye of this huge snake which indeed seemed to be of monstrous proportion.

The king cobra shot by me with smrity's small camera

The eyes of this snake immediately attract all the awe and respect it duly deserves and I had an overdose of adrenalin and ushered prashanth and asked smrity to come quickly. While prashanth spotted it in a jiffy, smrity could not and I had to hold her by her head and show the snake! All three of us were almost going berserk with the amounts of excitement and I snatched her small camera which seemed like a flimsy toy in front of this huge serpent. Stepping closer to the snake well into the biting range, I began filming the snake with her camera in which I did not know where the controls were. One thing for sure was that I was shivering of both the excitement and the fear the snake generates when one stares into its deep dark eyes.
Having wanted to kick myself for not taking the camera which I always hang around my neck even when eating, I cursed my good self and kept one eye on the snake and the other on the viewfinder and after a while the snake, in water, started moving and that is when the length of the snake became evident! It was not less than 12ft! It is indeed simply amazing to see such huge snakes in the natural setting and such experiences are some of those which keep the energy burning and the enthusiasm going.
The video was shot and the snake moved and so did we, as we did not want to die of adrenalin overdose and more so wanted to leave the snake alone to get back to its senses. The bathing family who had seen the snake was all huddled together and was overwhelmed at our courage, tenacity and sheer defiance of the fear to have gone after this snake and photograph it!
Soon a round of video showing and correcting their versions of the story began and prashanth realized that he, In spite of being over cautious had stepped badly on shit and decided to discard his pants, shoes and socks. On reaching the bridge, the policemen and Anthony of bus service were happy to see us back alive and to see the video of the “Raja naag”.
What followed was an endless round of bragging and showing off and this I shall not mention here. The only thing worth mentioning was that just that morning, I was cribbing to Saleem that I had not seen a single snake this season and thanks to the best wishes of Lord sorimuthian, I was bestowed with the sight of the king himself!
The fate of the snake however remains unknown as the river leads to another dam and if the snake floats into it, it’s pretty much dead. If it does not and decides to cross over into the evergreens, it would still be pretty much dead thanks to the numerous roads and heavy vehicular density on them.
whether the sighting is a blessing to me by Lord sori or a curse of doom to the snake, I do not have answers.

Forest trails- the story tellers of the jungle

It is easy for the inexperienced eye to easily conclude “Oh these forests have no animals” when they don’t seen any animal. Contrary to their notion, the exact opposite seems to be happening to a person who knows to read the tell tale signs animals leave behind and unfold the story that would have been enacted by the denizens of the jungle. Picturesque descriptions of such stories in forests have been excellently narrated by Jim Corbett and Kenneth Andreson in the numerous classics they have written. Most of the stories they encountered seems to still be the same for any keen observer who steps into the forests especially on to the jeep tracks or beat roads as it’s called.

Recently, as a part of accessing the impact of Sorimuthian pilgrimage on the forests; a team undertook extensive occupancy surveys along the roads near the main road where there is vehicle movement. Teams of 2-3 individuals walked on these roads and documented any signs of animal movement in its various forms from Hoof or Pugmarks, excreta, scent mark, scrape marks etc on the ground. Each such encounter invariably had some small little story to tell and was indeed one of the factors which kept the enthusiasm going in doing such thankless and seemingly monotonous work.

On one such survey along the famous “Puckel’s path” our team comprising of Abisheka, Dr Ganesh , Samuel and Seshadri began a survey at around 1530hrs, rather late in the evening. We soon encountered a lot of evidence of Chital and sambar and were having this gut feeling of sighting some or the other animal like the Sloth bear, which had been previously sighted by Rajkamal on the same trail. At some distance away from the main road, we came across fresh, beautifully preserved pugmarks of a sloth bear who had very casually ambled along the road which was laden with fine clayey soil brought in by the recent rains making it perfect for imprinting the human like paw in it. The marks seemed so fresh that for a moment, we all looked around to possibly catch a glimpse of the bear which might just be around the corner! The bear had walked on the road for more than 100m and all of a sudden, we saw pugmarks almost one fourth the size of the adult and realized that the bear was accompanied by its cub. The cub, as per the discontinuity in pugmarks, had come almost all the distance piggy back and had got down and walked with its mom for a short  distance before they had turned into the forest and disappeared in the mix of grass and thorn scrub. Such are among the countless other stories that lay wait to be stumbled upon by passing naturalists with keen eyes to decipher the treasure locked up in form of signs and clues!

Wish I were a monkey!

Little did I know what I was getting into when I agreed to work in the Forest canopies. “Climb trees?”, “What do you mean?” would be the obvious response of any person who has never climbed a tree before even in the wildest of dreams! And needless to say I was no different.

Soon enough, I was in KMTR, with the harness around the waist and busy climbing up the trees in search of epiphytes. With some initial hic ups I managed to attain the comfort level in climbing trees but the hurdles to carry out the work were aplenty and as a matter of fact were taller than the trees themselves!
One day the assistant does not turn up, the other day the bus does the same and yet another day, the bike has a puncture! If none of these happen, the rain gods decide to be kind enough and burst open the clouds; thus singing an end to the work in the canopies.
With time on my side, I managed to overcome these hurdles to some extent and managed to partially finish the work and each day was invariably associated with a lot of exciting things be it the sheer contiguity of the forest canopies or the sightings of the canopy dwellers up close.

After having seen much of the diversity of life up there, I always kept wondering “why do so very few people work in this field of canopy ecology?”
Of late, I have been having experiences which seem to answer my question.
In this context, I would like to share a day’s experience which almost shattered my will to work in the canopy. The day started with a wonderful sunrise and a clear sky which was a very good indication that rain gods still in deep slumber and soon myself, Mutthu- my ever smiling assistant and Mythri- an enthusiastic undergraduate who volunteered to assist me in the work, went to the field to sample trees and what followed was one of the worst field days if may say!
First, the rigging which was done a few days back was not proper and in the effort to set it right, myself and Mutthu attached a karabiner to the free end of the nylon thread and hauled it up only to see it dangling up the tree stuck in the thick undergrowth of the selection felled forest. A hard thug and both the thread and my palm got effortlessly cut. With a heavy heart, we set to rig the tree again using the sling and it took six hard tries to finally get the thread up there with more than a dozen cuts on my palm while trying to pull the misfired thread from the understory.
When we finally got it up, the climbing ropes were quickly hauled up as we had lost more than two hours in getting the most critical part of climbing right. But we realized that the ropes were inclined in an angle and impossible to climb up and my brilliant self decided to use the laws of gravity and attached the harness itself to the rope to the hauled it up thinking the weight will drag the rope towards the bole of the tree due to gravity .But with the understory, the rope decided to defy the laws of gravity and stayed half way up the tree! No amount of tugging seemed to even budge the rope and poor muthu had to climb a short tree with calamus all around to pull the rope back to ground.
All was set and we were relived that things were in place and soon realized that the thinner ropes used to haul the rope and my backpack were so badly entangled in the leaf litter that it took a good one hour to unwind the mess but meanwhile, Mythri managed to climb up the tree.
After four hours under the tree, we finally made progress with Muthu and Mythri up the tree and me half way up. On reaching the top, we were rewarded by some excellent views of the Black eagle at eye level and the Mountain imperial pigeons flying out of Syzigium trees below us and I was also able to record calls of a canopy frog. But bad luck seemed to have climbed the tree with us, as soon as I reached up and sat down to write; the pen slipped off from my pocket and went straight down! We would have ended up writing with a marker pen if not for Giby who popped in to see how we were doing and generously sent up a pen. With a lot of branches to sample for epiphytes, we were comfortably seated on the tree for the next five hours, living on bananas for lunch and a little water. Coming down took a good one hour. The packed lunch of cold idly, equally cold sambar and stale chutney was finished in no time and later, we spent a good two hours in the night un-entangling the rigging thread.

Though the mess we had been into was largely the doing of the new nylon ropes which coiled faster than a constrictor, coiling the thinner strings beyond easy un-entanglement, I too had a considerable role to add to it due to some foolish ideas like sending up the harness itself up!
Such experiences are one of the many difficulties in accessing the canopy and carrying out rigorous research activities are surely one of the deterrents which has since long kept many people off the forest canopies and those who have pioneered this field of ecology were for sure driven by the taste for high adventure, beauty, diversity and complexity of interactions which take place within it.

At a snails’ pace!

Snails are often used as a rule of thumb to mock at the pace at which an activity or an event is occurring and when I would encounter snails of various kinds in the canopy, I used to wonder as to how long it would have taken for these slow moving creatures to reach the tree tops about 25m above where they usually live and what makes them travel so high.

No doubt that the decaying matter on the forest floor is comparatively higher than the canopy soil organic matter, something must be up there which makes them do the epic journey. And once on top, they seem to be equally at home among the moss and organic matter collected in the forks of the numerous branches radiating from often big trunk- may be this small patches offer more nutrition than the ground litter. I have often encountered these snails in the canopy and generally un- common on the floor. On would easily think like I did that the time taken by the snail to come down (if at all it does) would also be at an equally slow pace. However, I was proved wrong when I came across this strange and unique situation where the snails seemed to have seen us canopy people going up and coming down on ropes and learnt from it (or is it the other way round?). With amazing stability and dexterity, this snail was coming down from the tree top on a single thin strand of slimy mucous, like we rappel down on ropes! Though it would take days to reach the top, they seem to have evolved and adaptation over time to come down rapidly as if they too understood the Newton’s laws of gravity and it seems that an evolutionary adaptation, at least in this case has not been happening at a snails pace!

Leech (ate)

You walk with chappals in the forest? What about the snakes and leeches?
I’m sure many of us would have heard or perhaps asked Drs Ganesh and Ganesan when they are out in the field-be it the evergreens of Kakachi or the wetlands in search of birds and paddy fields in search of rodents and owls outside KMTR. They seem to be at ease taking a walk through the forest in “Hawaii” chappals. And to the above question, both laugh it off saying “well, we have been doing so and are still around!”
More than snakes, which are pretty few in numbers in the rainforests, one should be bothered about the zillions of leeches which seem to spring out of nowhere soon after a light shower. I have been witness to both of them being attacked if I can say, by not less than a couple of tens of leeches at any point of time and they unassumingly pull them off as and when they happen to stop to observe something and more often than not, Dr Ganesan carefully removes the bloodsuckers and puts them in the forest rather gently!

It so happened that when we went on a trek on Green trail with Dr Tor. Dr Ganesh, in his usual attire of chappals got a generous share of blood donation done by the middle of the day while others were protected by anti leech socks and Snuff powder. On reaching a stream, TG decided to put the ecosystem services of nature to good use and dipped both legs (one after the other of course) in the stream and to much of our amusement, not less than 200 fishes came and feasted on the blood which had clotted and dried all over his feet and in no time, his feet were as good as new with no sign of blood whatsoever only to get back to the bloodied condition in a couple of minutes later.
Though I must say I have seen Dr Ganesh with shoes at some point of time, I have never seen Dr Ganesan with shoes, both in fact say chappals are better to pick out leeches as and when they climb and are comfortable to walk with. To me however, having been brought up if I can say with camouflaged anti- leech socks when in a forest; walking with chappals, let alone Hawaii chappals sends shivers down the spine and more so, on the thought of scratching the wounds of leech bites like a rabid creature for not less than a couple of months thereafter.

Seen it Killed It.

Have you not seen a cobra? You roam around so much in forest how come you have not seen one?

A question many would ask when I claimed not to have seen a cobra in the wild. Having handled and seen various venomous and non venomous reptiles till date, I somehow never had this chance of seeing a spectacled cobra, let alone handling one!

 Yesterday, Tapan, my roommate in the hostel came all excited into the room carrying something in the book.  Known for not having the habit of exchanging pleasantries, i went directly for the book and asked him what was in it.

 lo behold! A small cobra between the pages of the book!

As I saw the seemingly lifeless snake, many things went through my mind as to how it died, how he found it and the way he had carried it to the room! One by one, all the questions were answered through systematic bugging if I may call it; Parallely pulled out my camera to photo-document the snake. He very picturesquely and emotionally explained how a cyclist passing on the road ran over it (intentions not known!) and how himself and Sharon, a senior stood helplessly watching the snake writhing in pain and doing death rolls like crocodiles until it lay still on the road where it was run over – in front of Pillai Vinayagar temple (what a place to die I say!! It would go straight to heaven!). Another passing ecologist confirmed the snake to be dead and safe to pick up following which, tapan got the snake to the room between the leaves of his book.

 Partly listing to tapan and cursing those idiotic people who do such harm to these harmless snakes, I kept shooting the snake holding it in my hand, for a moment something told me the snake was not dead but kept the thought to myself not telling it to vivek or tapan. A while later, I dug out a forceps from my bag (Pandora’s Box if one could call it!) and forced open the jaws of the juvenile snake, a clear examination of the teeth tongue, breathing tube etc were done and observed with a lens and the length measured with a thread. The cyclist had neatly gone over the head and jaws were almost sealed. 

 I wanted to take some more pictures of the eye before calling it a day and put the snake down. The next moment the snake came alive! Started coiling and writhing in pain, each time rolling on its back and doing loops. Tapan’s joy knew no bounds! I quickly started a video, also debating with vivek on “humane” ways to put an end to the snake’s misery which was followed by a heated argument followed with Tapan - a true die hard activist and optimist wanting to release the snake and let nature take its course where as us, practical optimists who knew the snake was suffering and would not make it in the wild.

Not being one of those to listen to others opinions, me and vivek decided to kill the snake ourselves. By the time, the death roll was over and the snake fell motionless again, the only movement happened when I picked it up again, the death roll went over again lasting for about half a minute after which there was no movement. May be it breathed last that time, but to ensure the misery has ended, I got some cold water from the freezer and put the snake in it into a specimen collection vial. In a few minutes, the cold blooded snake must have met its end for it dint seem to move. Much against the will of my room mate who had found it and got it to us…

A round of post death ceremony for the snake and a couple of classmates observed and paid their last respects to “Naagaraaja” with which, we kept it in for the night only to hand it over to Sharon the next day who wanted to put it back to Mother Nature after showing it to friends.

Having felt happy myself to have done some good, I continued with the days work not worrying about the snake but got a shock when another senior of mine pulls out a snake from his pocket and shows me the same snake and tells “Look, Cobra”!!

How it exchanged hands and ended up there I wouldn’t know! Not do I want to!

Not bothering much of the snake, me and vivek asked him how he found it and how it had died-

“Someone found it, it was impaled with something in the neck”

 I did want to pretend to curse the one who killed it and portray myself as a good gentle caring soul…But decided not to, for reasons not worth mentioning here.

So much so for seeing and eventually having to kill my First Spectacled cobra!

Kalliveli-A dry baked wetland

After much of dilly-dallying as to go birding or not, myself and my classmates decided to give an open invite to our classmates to go birding to Kaliveli wetland. The last minute inputs from the seniors in college saying that the place is “Papad-dry” and we could not see any bird did not quite dishearten us and nine of us left at 0600hrs from the college only to end up waiting on the ECR till 0700hrs for the bus, generally with blaring music to come by. When one finally came, he asked us to get down at PIMS and said the tank was a kilometer from there. On reaching PIMS, we were told by a local “Chai-shop” owner that the wetland is some 5 odd km from there (it wasn’t so much though!) and arranged a share auto to go there. Nine of us got in and reached the tank by 0900hrs. Having fixed the autowallah for our return trip, we set off into the vast wetland. Where the water was, no one knew!











A small orientation to a couple of new inductees to the world of bird watching was facilitated and the strict dos and don’ts were made clear. The place, as our dear seniors had told, was indeed dry to the core and of the many miniature tanks carved out into the flat wetland only one had water in it, a pair of grey herons, sandpipers etc greeted us. A lone pied kingfisher female sat there for over one hour watching nine of us scampering around watching the birds with just two binocs to spare!
By around 1000hrs, a lone falcon was seen taking off with something in the talons and as it was against the sun, we were able to get only a short glimpse of it before we lost sight of it. A little later, a flock of eleven spoonbills came in from the NW part of the tank and began to descend, before everyone had a good look at them, someone pointed out at another flock of large birds soaring in the sky, soon binocs exchanged hands and the birds were identified as painted storks which were gaining height on the thermal, which I guess were in plenty! By the time the birds were identified, the spoonbills were nowhere in sight! We could not have seen them even if they landed in this huge wetland.
After a frugal breakfast of biscuits and water, we seemed to have made progress by covering some distance only to be stopped by a pair of Kentish plovers among 30 red wattled lapwings in the dry grass. Another good half an hour was spent with this very obliging pair of birds.
By 1100hrs, the sun needless to say, was beating down our backs and the new inductees were starting to squat on the ground whenever the group stopped- the first indications of wanting to return started to show!











Having pestered them to continue walking, we did a loop in the baked, dry tank (don’t know if it was the tank bed!) which was about 1km and reached the place where we were supposed to be picked up by the very friendly autowallah. Having bargained with him, he agreed to drop us to the university and this time, he had got a friend who very obligingly offered to take us to another wetland with lot of birds. Something told me that he was not all that a nice chap and I declined the offer saying we were really hungry and wanted to return. My suspicion came true when we got down, the autowallah a local, living near the wetland offered to take us on a bike the next time we go and also gave us pin point locations as to where to see many birds. On further questioning- “I go there with guns to shoot birds” came the reply. He also told that the place is a bird reserve which attracts a lot of “Paravais” when it is full of water. I am not quite sure if he meant the taste!

A shield tail and an awful stench!

Shield tails or Uropeltids as they are called are one of the few snakes which are rarely seen and easily missed due to the unique character of burrowing into the leaf litter rich soil of the forest floor. These relatively small snakes are evolved to lead a life in the underworld- eyes almost not seen, the head narrow pointed and sharp, the body smooth and glossy and the tail has a shape as if it was unassumingly cut off with an axe and this is how it gets the name as shield tail.
I came across three species of these non-venomous snakes and in two of the occasions, they were seen lying on the road soon after a heavy downpour and on one occasion, it was dug out from the rotting leaf litter when we were in search of snails. The snake which was later identified as walls shield tail was very quick in disappearing into the litter mass while the other two on the road, did not have the evolutionary advantage of burrowing into a thick layer of asphalt!
The snakes one yet to be identified and the other known as the Pied bellied shield tail which were found on the road were needless to say picked up for photo documentation and give them a second life by releasing them into the forest away from speeding vehicles. On both occasions, I ended up having a nauseating feeling due to the pungent scent in the urine of the snake which is known to be an anti predatory trait developed over the years. The smell, strong like that of garlic and rotting meat in addition to a weird smell which cannot be put in words took a bucket of water and a good lathery soap to ward off. So good was the evolutionary trait in those snakes that it effectively worked on creatures which try to save it from death too!