Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

__________________________________________________ _____________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : INDIA'S NATIONAL BIRD : The Sunday Statesman : 31 January 2016
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

PEACOCK

" NOTHING official and irrevocable has been decided yet about the choice of a bird emblem for the nation, but there seems to be no reason to doubt that the peacock, the bird tentatively selected, will be the final choice. No other Indian bird has better claims to the honour, as already pointed out in this column long ago. This note on the National bird is, therefore, not too premature but this is highly miscellaneous sort of note: I am writing of the peacock not only as a Jungle Fowl but also of its traditional cultural associations in India, particularly in South India where it is held specially sacred.

Peafowl are not limited exclusively to India. The Indian species, Pavo cristatus, is also to be found in Ceylon and in Pakistan (though Pakistan is, for all purposes of natural history, a purely artificial territorial division): in Burma there is a different species with a pointed crest.

According to classical Tamil, Peafowl belongs to hill jungles. They are essentially birds of the sparse deciduous forests that clothe our lesser hills, though in places (as in the Deccan) they are to be found in the flat scrub as well. They are thirsty birds need to drink everyday, so are never found far from a stream or pool.

Like many other game birds, peafowl are polygamous and are usually to be found in parties consisting of a grown cock and a few hens. At times, these parties may associate in a drove and at times (especially during the cold weather) separate small parties of cocks and hens may be seen: I have even seen single cocks in the jungles. The sexes are different to distinguish during infancy. At one month of age, both male and female chicks have crests and behave very similarly, nor there is any marked difference in size between them. At one year, the superior size and much more iridescent neck of the cock begin to assert themselves, and the train (this is not the tail but consists of the elongated coverts above the tail) begins to develop; the train is not fully developed till it is two or three years old.

The spectacular courtship display where the iridescent "eyes" of the ocellated fanned-out are exhibited most tellingly has never failed to impress man - though often enough the hens, for whose benefit the performance is presumably staged, remain totally indifferent to it! From time to time the displaying peacock vibrates its low-held wings, and shivers the great erected train-fan so that the vivid glinting greens and blues of the "eye" dissolve in a shimmering haze of brilliant colour, a dazzling effect that no art can improve upon.

In countryside traditions, the peacock does not dance only in courtship -- when the bird's heart is gladdened by the first showers after parching summer it dances in joy and welcome. Naturalists may pooh-pooh this pretty fancy, but I have seen captive peacocks indulging in a full-dress display when no hen was around and the only inspiration seemed to be the freshness and coolth of the early rains or of a cloudy monsoon day.

Incidentally, Lorenz and other observers that the display may be inspired by an object on which the bird's affections have been fixed -- and the object may be a tortoise or even something inanimate! The grown hens do not, so far as I know, indulge in the display but sub-adult hens may. Naturally lacking the essential train, such juvenile displays (whether by male or female sub-adults) are unostentatious.

Peafowl are long-lived. I am unable to cite offhand any reliable record of their longevity, but captive birds have lived in good health for years: probably their "expectancy", as the life insurance people put it, is around 20 years. But infant mortality is high and is compensated in nature by free breeding.

Unfortunately, no thorough study has been made of the natural mixed diet of these birds. Grain of every kind (including bamboo "seed"), flowers and leaf buds and tender green shoots of plants, small reptiles (lizards and snakes) and many insects are included in their natural diet. Once I witnessed from behind the cover of rocks, a bevy of peafowl feeding, rather inefficiently, on swarming winged termites issuing from the earth in a gauzy, impetuous mist. What impressed me then was the wild and improbable beauty of what I saw. What captive peafowl eat is no indication of their natural diet -- I have seen a captive hen eating with obvious gusto both sliced carrots and fried groundnut, neither of which is part of the wild bird's fare.

A captive peacock may be belligerent, and will not hesitate to attack men. The peck can dent one's flesh and the bird also flies up at one and ans strikes out with its spur, inflicting deep gash. I have not been attacked by a peacock myself, but seen others being routed by the bird. In a wild state, peafowl are surprisingly shy of men -- they are positively terrified by the men, as, no doubt, they have good cause to be. True that the tradition-bound Hindus will not harm peafowl, or suffer them to be harmed, but it is no less true that in India peacock pie is by no means a dish known by emperors. Even the eggs laid in a clutch in a scrape on the ground under cover of some bush are highly prized.

The keen sight of peafowl has been commented upon by every observer of the wild bird. Their sight is so good that even total immobility, which usually serve to prevent an inconspicuously clad man from being betrayed to the eyes of most wild animals, does not help. The hearing of these birds is also acute. As GM Henry rightly points out, the true alarm call is not the loud, trumpet like, repeated "peehan", so frequently heard at dusk in the jungles, but an "extraordinary, loud hollow grunt preceded by a squawk".

Peafowl, like many other game birds, trust their legs in preference to their wings mainly to cross streams, to get up to their treetop roosts at nightfall and to get back to the ground in the morning and to get past impenetrable barriers -- but they can fly swiftly and get quickly airborne if they wish to do so, and at times they take to their wings to escape. The trains of the cocks are hend clear of the ground when slinking through bush and undershrub and the lie of the feathers and barbs being away from the line of movement, the train does not easily get entangled in twigs and thorns.

In South India where Subramanya has sway, the peacock is held sacred as the God's vahana. The bird is usually depicted in representations of the God with the serpent in its beak and below its feet. Peacocks by themselves (unaccompanied by the God) are freely carved in the old stone of classical Indian art and small figurines depicting the bird cast in brass or bronze used to be common. The figurines are remarkable for their formalised simplification of all detail. Highly decorative "Oriental" peacocks showing each eye on the outspread train in clear detail in brilliant enamel do not belong to our classical art -- they might be recent imitations manufactured by some enterprising silversmith or they might even be made in Manchester! Peacock plumes, of course, have always decorated the fans and other ragalia of Gods and princes in our country.

Although so shy when wild, peafowl can be introduced into any really large garden where there is ample bush cover and tree growth and quickly settle down to a semi-domesticated life. They may then safely be given their liberty and can even be trained (if desired) to come in regularly at some hour to be fed. Nothing adds so much to the looks of an Indian place or mansion like feral peafowl in the grounds. I realise that some effort and pertinacity may be called for in introducing peafowl into some places, but still suggest that they should be introduced into such of our public parks, government houses and similar premises as can provide them with sufficient lebensraum."

-M.Krishnan



This was published on 8 October 1961 in The Sunday Statesman

#One beautiful sketch of a peafowl drawn by the author is not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

__________________________________________________ _______________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan: THE MOUSE-DEER: The Sunday Statesman : 6 March 2016
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

MOUSE-DEER
(Chevrotain)

"TAXONOMICALLY speaking, the Mouse-Deer is not a deer at all for it belongs to the TRAGULIDAE, a group apart from the true ruminants. Nevertheless it is called a deer in all languages, and even illiterate junglees have always thought it a deer, the most diminutive of the tribe.

No wonder, then, that it is called Mouse-Deer. It is much nearer an outsize Hare in size, but its diminutive build and furtive, creeping habits, and the way it bolts when flushed, not bounding like a hare but scurrying past on dainty frantic feet, justify the name. And what a noise it makes in the dry undershrub when it bolts! In the deciduous jungles, the animals that make much noise when getting away are all small -- the monitor lizard and the dinky little mouse-deer probably make the most impressive exits.

I remember the fright I got once, when scouting for a lone elephant in a jungle. There was a shifting breeze and the glimpse that I caught of the elephant through the bushes in between clumps of giant bamboo only told me that the animal was a tusker. Cautiously I approached a bamboo clump that seemed to offer a vantage point, when suddenly a tornado broke lose in the tangle of dried creepers and shrubs around me. Then a Mouse-Deer darted out of the cover and rushed between my legs and the noise of its progress till it gained the clearing behind me seemed enough to alarm the entire jungle. That was a yellow letter day for me! When I finally crept up and got a fair sight of my quarry, I discovered that it was one of the camp elephants, turned loose to graze.

Being crepuscular and even nocturnal, the little deer is not often seen; one gets a blurred glimpse of its scurrying form when it is flushed accidentally from its retreat, or in the course of a beat, and that is all one sees. But it was in a beat that I had longest chance I had to watch this creature.

That was a general beat, and there were several optimistic guns. I was in a machan with one of the guns, who promptly and sensibly went to sleep crouched as he was. Anything from hare to tiger was expected in that beat, and I have been specially warned to be on the look out for bears. Well, the beat began about half a mile away and presently a Mouse-Deer crept out of a bush, had a good look around and proceeded to trip slowly away from the noise, stopping now and again to nibble at the carpet of herbs. There was nothing furtive or skulking about the animal's gait as it tripped past on short, slender legs and disappeared into the bushes beyond -- Mouse-Deer, when alarmed, creep stealthily away if they can. A little latter it came back, stepping daintily and easily as before, and took refuse in a bamboo clump 10 yards away when the beat was almost in a line with us.

From the total lack of rifle shots, it was clear that no one has seen anything worth shooting. The party assembled below our machan and bemoaned its luck -- a couple of mouse-deer at least, it was generally felt, would have saved a blank day and assured a zest for dinner. There were two gourmets there who have not sampled mouse-deer curry and others dilated ecstatically on the dish; they even retailed Frank Buck's story of how, in Malay, this little creature is worshipped as the Spirit of the Wild and how people there just love it in a curry. And all the time the object of their desire was within yards, and I, vegetarian, derived a powerful satisfaction from keeping this knowledge to myself, and leading the others away from there before the Mouse-Deer could take fright and break cover.

In summer, it is said, Mouse-Deer congregate in small parties and spend the day in crevices between boulders and similar cool retreats. They have been driven out of such shelters and netted and four of five adults have been taken together.. Maybe the associate in small parties during the day, but they no longer keep together when they venture from their retreats in the evening. I have seen Mouse-Deer several times by night during summer, and always they have been by themselves or in a pair.

Once I saw what was undoubtedly a family party, a Mouse-Deer and two tiny young exquisite little miniatures of their mother.

Mouse-Deer have no horns, but have the upper canines well developed -- these needle sharp teeth project downward from the lips of the bucks and are used in intra-specific fights, but I do not think the bucks use them against enemies in self-defence, as Barking Deer do. These little creatures can swim well, and in Africa there is a cousin of theirs that is semi-aquatic in its habits.

The petty toes (above the hooves) are also well developed, so that the Mouse-Deer can achieve a grip where its tint hooves alone would slip. I have seen a captive specimen climb the bole of a sloping tree in its yard, and enter a hollow in the wood some four feet above the ground."

- M.Krishnan

This was published on 31 December 1961 in The Sunday Statesman.

# A beautiful sketch of the Mouse-Deer in its habitat not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

__________________________________________________ _______________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan: THE MOST STRIKING OF OUR PREDATORS: The Sunday Statesman: 13 March 2016
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

KESTREL

"THE KESTREL is, I think, the prettiest of our Falcons. This is very much a question of personal opinion, and the nice distinction between prettiness, on the one hand, and beauty or handsomeness on the other. We have smaller Falcons, more powerfully and daintily put together, and many whose flight is far more impressive in its dash and abandon, but I still think the Kestrel, sitting pretty on a perch or hovering and sailing in the air, the prettiest of our birds of prey.

Much of the charm depends on its colouring. All falcons have the long, pointed, graceful wings of kestrel, and many have tails as full and long, but they usually run to slatey greys and somber browns, heavy moustachial stripes and highly predatory looks. The brick-red back and buff breast of the kestrel, mottled with dark brown spearhead markings, and its touches of grey and blackish flights have a complementary effect, unusual in the plumage of a predator. Looking at the bird, one feels somehow that it is no implacable killer -- and it isn't.

The English alias for the bird, windhover, so little heard in India, describes its way of life. The kestrel's mode of hunting is to go sailing in circles, about 100 feet above the ground, flapping its long wings occasionally, and fanning and closing its full tail to suit the wind. It scrutinises the scrub below for large insects, little reptiles and the like and when it sees a suspicious movement below, it stops still, threshing the air with quick, small wing-beats, much in the manner of a swimmer treading water, but faster. It often drops much lower, to sight its quarry the better, and many drop again till it is hovering in the air barely 15 feet above the ground. Then, if it sees its prey clearly, it pounces.

Very different is the kestrel's hunting from that of other falcons, and they have said that the movement seems more or less limited to wingtips; the primaries alone appear to move rapidly up and down, and not the whole wing as in a Pied Kingfisher hanging over the water and searching for fish. No doubt that the movement does seem limited to the wingtips, but that is because the observer is well below the bird and so in that foreshortened view can take note only of quite obvious movements.

Recently I had the opportunity to watch a kestrel hovering from close quarters, and when I was almost on a level with the bird I noticed that the entire wing moved, I was on the terrace of a tall building, and the falcon was almost level with the parapet, and only 20 feet away from me. Such an opportunity rarely comes one's way, and I used it to the full, watching each tremor of the wing as narrowly as I could. The wings are moved up and down, not with the rowing, rotary action of flight, but still with some measure of lateral displacement besides the up-and-down motion; the whole wing is moved, but since the wing-beats are small, it is the flexible pinions that show the greatest amount of movement -- it is the principle of the lever.

GM Henry describes another method of hanging in the air adopted by the bird, and the description is so accurate that it is worth quoting. He says, "Where a gale blows up a hillside the bird does not need to fan its wings, or spread its tail, but remains poised for long periods 'with no visible means of support' -- a most fascinating sight." I think the quotation within the quotation is from "Eha", writing of Harriers, but I am unable to verify this now. There is one thing I should like to add to Henry's account of this spectacle: it is not only when there is a gale against a hillside that the Kestrel can perform this feat; I have seen it suspended motionless in the air when there was a strong wind in the Madras area, far from hills; a strong level breeze is, however, necessary.

Do Kestrels also hunt from their perch, as the White-eyed Buzzard does? I think they do. As everyone knows, they are fond of sitting atop an elevated perch, such as a post or the leafless, dead limb of a tree. I have seen them drop from their perch, at such times, to the ground -- once I actually saw a Kestrel take some insect in this manner, which it ate on the ground before flying up to its perch again."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 7 January 1962 in The Sunday Statesman

# A nice sketch of the bird perched on a leafless branch has not been reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

__________________________________________________ _______________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : BIRD CALLS : The Sunday Statesman : 10 April 2016
__________________________________________________ ______________________________________

BIRD CALLS

"RECENTLY, writing a note on 'Calls of Indian Birds', I was reminded irresistibly of a story by P G Wodehouse. The long-suffering heroine of the tale, a keen naturalist working as a wage-slave under an uncontradictable boss in Hollywood, asserts himself at last when the man lays down, with a striking lack of originality, that the cuckoo says, "Cuckoo, cuckoo!" She ups and tells him, in front of an outraged army of yes-men, that the Cuckoo says no such inane thing and the its call is, in fact, a spirited " Wuckoo, wuckoo!"

How she gets the sack in consequence of this closely-studied contribution to natural history and is restored to office and even promoted by a typically Wodehouselan development is the theme of the story. The fact is that if one were to assert that the cuckoo says "Buckoo" or "Luckoo" or even "Tuckoo", that would be as close and fair a rendering of a call as the traditionist's "Cuckoo".
Birds are not much good at consonants.

But, of course, a number of birdcalls do seem strikingly like the renderings we know them by. This is because these renderings accurately indicate the syllables, the stresses and the modulations of those calls -- but not their articulation. The Cuckoo tribe in India provide excellent examples of truth of this. My first acquaintance with the INDIAN CUCKOO (Cuculus micropterus) was made in a deciduous forest long, long, ago; I heard the bird's repeated call and guessed its identity from the popular rendering of the call, "Broken pekoe", even before I saw it. Now the same call is rendered differently in different languages: in Bengali it is "Bokotako"; another good rendering is "Kyphul-pukka" and a different version is "Crossword-puzzle".

There is no question of any similarity in consonants or even in vowels, between these four renderings, but all faithfully echo a call of two closely-spaced words both disyllabic and both with the accent on the first syllable. The "KOEL" and the "BRAINFEVER BIRD" or Papiha (The Common Hawk-Cuckoo) have names that echo their calls.

The accepted rendering of the LAPWING's call, "Did-he-do-it?", gives the syllabification of the bird's alarm call, and even suggests the sense of urgency in it. The renderings in Indian languages of some birdcalls are no less happy. But all of them can be equally suggestively and more unmistakably rendered in a series of "ki's" (standing for short syllables) and "kee's" (standing for long syllables) if we add a mark to denote where exactly the accent falls, but naturally one prefers a rendering in words, sometimes in romantic words to a system of meaningless sounds.

The Tamil rendering of the SPOTTED DOVE's coo, "Kappalchhetti kodoo, kodoo kodoo!" is remarkably good and there is a touching little story to explain the words -- I shall not retail the story here since it is best told in Tamil. No doubt other renderings of birdcalls in Indian languages have similar associations with sentiment or a story.

Not that any sophistication or culture is needed to appreciate, or even to invent a rendering of a birdcall. The best rendering that I know of the RED-VENTED BULBUL's call was provided by my son, when he was four. At that stage of his life, he was most at home in English, the only language that my wife and I have in common, and potatoes boiled in their jackets was part of his regular diet One morning my son came up to me and announced that there was a hungry little bird in the drumstick tree by the kitchen that kept on saying "Big, Big, BIG potato"!"

What a contrast has been provided by pretty poetic fancy! I don't suppose many people read The LIght of Asia these days, but her is Edwin Arnold's account of Bulbul's song:

The Koel's fluted note, the Bulbul's hymn,
The "Morning! Morning!" of the Painted Thrush............

Whoever heard a Bulbul singing a hymn! Bulbul's are noted not for their ecstatic song but for their cheery, rollicking staccato voices. A last point. It has been said that a distinction between a phrase of many syllables with a defined cadence, used regularly by a bird as a call and birdsong proper lies in the greater complexity and fluency of the song. Not at all. Birdsong can consist of one or two notes and still be authentic song.

I have heard many gifted avian singers, among them the SHAMA wild in the bamboo jungles but in my list of Indian songbirds I would certainly include the PIED BUSHCHAT, The cock chat's song consists of a single rather cheery clear whistle, repeated a few times from atop some elevated perch; then suddenly this call rises steeply to an untamed and ecstatically sweet note, which ends as abruptly as it began. No rendering in words can suggest the call, and if this is not birdsong, I do not know what is it."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 25 March 1962 in The Sunday Statesman

# One beautiful sketch of birds drawn by M.Krishnan has not been reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

__________________________________________________ _______________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M.Krishnan : A MIDDAY CHORUS : The Sunday Statesman : 24 April 2016
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

A MIDDAY CHORUS

" ABOUT one o' clock it came on to rain. It began gradually and mildly, with a great pearl-grey cloud spreading itself across the sky, rendering the midday light wonderfully soft and clear. There was a refreshing coolness in the air, but no palpable breeze. In fact, it was as if the hot, sweltering jungle has been magically air-conditioned and furnished with diffused artificial illumination and a mother-of-pearl ceiling.

I was lying on my back in sandy riverbed, in a shade tall tree. I had gone to sleep dog-tired and feeling ill, and woken only minutes later to find the sky and air and jungle transformed, and euphoria in me. Almost a hundred feet above me was the top of a giant clump of bamboo leaning over the nullah; a pair of GREY DRONGOs was perched on that swaying bamboo-top and all at once they burst into song -- a series of trilling, wildly sweet calls.

IMMEDIATELY, as if this was the signal for which the other birds had been waiting, a medley of the musical bird bird voices filled the air. It was a chorus such as I have never heard before -- and I have heard the exhilarating chorus of WHITE-BELLIED DRONGOs in the cold greyness before dawn, the RACKET-TAILED DRONGO's ecstatic song to the rising sun, the welling rhapsody of the SHAMA at the dusk in the bamboo jungle and many mixed dawn-choruses, but this was something different, differently compound.

A TREE-PIE, nearby, joined in with almost-chimed metallic calls, varied from time to time with its familiar " ting-a-'ling "; the loud melody of a party of HILL-MYNAHs came through clearly, and nearer at hand some other DRONGOs (probably White-bellied) were singing; the cadenced "broken pekoe" of the INDIAN CUCKOO, a call that I love, was so pleasantly repeated from behind the bamboo clump, and less musical voices, the distant screams of PARAKEETs, the jabber of JUNGLE MYNAHs and even the faintly heard axle-crack call of a SERPENT EAGLE circling high overhead somehow did not seem out of place in that chorus. And dominating everything was the insistent, never-ending "papiha, papiha, papiha!" of the HAWK-CUCKOO -- the bird was some distance away, but its call cuts through distances effortlessly and has a peculiar penetration gets through nearer bird voices.

A great black woodpecker almost the size of a crow ( this was the MALABAR GREAT BLACK WOODPECKER) was hammering away a dead limb of the tree above me, providing the throbbing drum accompaniment to the many-voiced chorus. The hammering of this bird is sustained over a length of one -and-a-half to two seconds, and I have often timed it with a stopwatch. I have often tried to count the number of evenly-spaced billstrokes within this period, but never was able to get a precise count. There were from 15-20 "beats" in each long-drawn throb of hammering. Since these were evenly spaced, each impact and interval must be about 1/20 of a second long. I had thought it would be much shorter.

The chorus was sustained and continuous and ended as suddenly as it began. I heard the mahout and his assistant summoning the elephant, browsing at a nearby clump of bamboo, just before the Drongos burst into song, and since it takes about 15 minutes to get a reluctant elephant to abandon its lunch and lie down, lay the pad on its back and tie it down securely, probably the chorus extended over that space of time. A lazy drizzle arrived with the elephant, and gradually the rain gather momentum. The bird voices were stilled the minute the drizzle grew brisk.

We reached the shelter of a permanent observation platform just as the rain came down in earnest. For two hours, it rained heavily without a break, the long, vertical streaks of water coming down relentlessly all around us. Visibility was very poor, and no sound came through the dreary noise of the rain. But when the rain stopped abruptly and the sky began to clear, I saw a curious sight.

There was a great mango tree close by, and two HILL-MYNAH were practising a remarkable exercise right at the top of its towering bole. There were some holes in the wood high up in the tree, and when I saw them first, through the slackening rain, the birds were sitting in these holes, ruffled up and sheltered from the downpour.

Then they came out, and clinging to the bark with their claws, slithered down a few yards and then climbed up the bole again using both feet and violently flapped wings to propel them: then they slithered down again and flapped their way up once more. I thought that there was a definite purpose in this game to dry the flight feathers before the birds dared to take wings again. They flew away after five minutes to another tall tree, where they went through the exercise again, thrice of four times, and they flew away for good."

-M. Krishnan

This was published on 10 June 1962 in The Sunday Statesman

# Not reproduced here is the Nice Image of a Hawk-Cuckoo with the caption at the bottom :
'The Hawk-Cuckoo which builds no nest'