Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"LIFE has grown wet and plastic during the past week. Visitors bring in footloads of mud, which they scrape against the stone steps or distribute over the verandah- being given to pretty joys, I note with satisfaction that when they go away the sodden gravel leading to my gate shakes of at each step from their shoes and that I have gained soil. The ditches flanking the road are turned into brown rivulets, and the dip in the field beyond, hardly perceptible in September, is now a miniature pond.

All these wetness is different from the somewhat formalised depictions of wetness that we are so used to. There would be white glints and dimpled blue patches in an artist's picture of these October puddles and flooded drains, and turbulent streaks of red, perhaps, to denote the freshets. Actually the lowering skies yield no highlights; everywhere the water is a torpid, deep umber, thick with mud and squirming with infant life. Almost as if by magic, innumerable mosquito larvae and tadpoles have appeared in the pond of the field, even little fish. Life began in the slush, according to biologists, and the slush is very fecund still. As I bend over its squelching rim to peer into the peer's teeming depths, I am conscious that I am not alone.

Another huddled watcher is on the other side, acutely aware of me. My cautious advent had driven it to several yards away, now it seems on the point of flight. I retreat to the roadside and squat immobile, and the Pond Heron returns to the water, step by deliberate step, its apprehensive head stretched out in front of its long neck. It stops at water's edge and is immediately harder to see. The extended neck is doubled up and drawn in between the shoulders, so far in that the bird is neckless; the streaked brown of its humped back and yellowish greys of its legs and beak blend with muddy background. It walks carefully into the water, lifting each foot clear of the surface and carrying it forward through the air before immersing it quietly again, and now its neck is again outstretched- it is withdrawn once more as the bird halts, and take its stance in the shallows.

For long two minutes it stays utterly still, only the hard, yellow glint in its eye betraying the avid life in the dull, slumped body.

While fish that pass by,
Till the destined fish comes in,
Great is the heron's dejection

- says a cynical couplet, in Tamil. Presently, and without the least warning stir, the dagger-billed head shoots down on the extensive neck, a tadpole is lifted deftly out of the thick water and swallowed in the same movement. At once the neck is drawn in, and the morose, huddled pose is resumed, so quickly and completely that I could have sworned that its waiting had been unbroken had I not watched the movement.

The "Pond Heron" or "Paddy Bird" is probably the most familiar of our waterside birds. Wherever there is not too rapid water, a puddle or a pond or any shallow stretch, you will find it there, an unmistakable little heron with dingy plumage, a humped back and sulky habits. When alarmed it emits a harsh "kra-ak" and is instantly transformed into a dazzling creature on broad, white wings- its pinions and underparts are white, but hidden except in flight by its earthy mantle, and in flight it seems an all-white bird. Americans in India used to call this heron the "surprise bird" from the sudden contrast between its drab, unobtrusive repose and flashing whiteness of its flight; I believe the name is no longer in fashion.

Though roosting and nesting in company, pond herons are unsociable by day. They are lone hunters; occasionally you may see three or four near one another, but they never seek prey in common, and even when going home to roost do not join together in large flocks. They are strong flyers, and though they look rather like Cattle Egrets in size and whiteness when on the wing, it is easy to tell their firm, quick wing beats from the lubberly action of the egrets.

Incidentally, all herons fly with their necks tucked in. Wordsworth's-

And heron, as resounds
the trodden shore,
Shoots upward,darting his long
Neck before

- might be quite true of a heron shooting up into the air in alarm, but once it settles down to flight the neck is not darted before, but is doubled up and drawn in- that, in fact, is the token by which one may know members of the heron tribe from other waterside birds on the wing."- M.Krishnan

This was first published on 19 October 1952 in The Sunday Statesman

#Sketch of the bird not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Nectar and Figs : The Sunday Statesman : 3 August 2014
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NECTAR AND FIGS

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"THIS summer I found opportunity for observing the flowering of that magnificent and wholly Indian tree, the red silk-cotton (Salmalia malabarica, probably better known to readers by its old name, Bombax malabaricum) in several places. And once again I was struck by the peculiarly rich and vivid red of the flowers, so poorly depicted in plates from water colour drawings and colour photographs. I do not know if it is the process, or the that rendering of the red by the printer or the film that is to blame, but the full, opulent crimson of this flower, with the blush of rose madder on it when it is newly opened, and later the imperial tinge of purple is invariably rendered a heavy, dark, purplish red in the plates.

A friend who is fond Sanskrit classics ( unfortunately I have no Sanskrit) told me of a celebrated passage that refers to the shrill green of parakeets against the background of Salmalia bloom. Parakeets do visit this tree and tear clumsily ad the fleshy petals but I wouldn't put them down among the birds that are typically associated with its blooming. Among the regular visitors to the flowers that I noticed were the mynahs (the Common, the Brahminy and the grey-headed Mynah in that order) a few stray Rosy pastors, Bulbuls, Sunbirds and House crows. the birds put their heads right into the open flower to get at the nectar. Squirrels, of course, were very much in evidence, being avid nectar-lickers.

Another tree at which I halted frequently, and whose pendent clusters of white , thick-petalled bloom attracted many birds, was the Southern Mohwa or "Illupai" - Bassia madhuca longifolia. The buds are dark with the enclosing rusty-green outer sepals, but the opened flowers hang with the luscious globes of their corollas displayed, each like a miniature, pearly-with electric-light globe,with the style sticking down from the centre like some ornamental appendage. Naturalists and shikaris have often commented on the fondness of jungle animals for these saccharine, rank-scented globes -deer and the sloth bear, in particular, seek out the mohwa to feast on the juicy, fallen flowers, on the ground beneath. incidentally, these fallen globes are sweeter than the ones on the tree, though they are ranker-scented and have a more "fermented" flavour. Expertocrede -I have sampled both.

Strangely enough, I have not come across any mention of the mohwa in bird books as a tree that attracts the avifauna of the neighbourhood to it's bloom-a surprising omission, for then it is loud with bulbuls and other small birds. I have known this from childhood, bird only this summer did I not down the commonest visitors to the Bassia in bloom - a surprising omission, for then it is loud with bulbuls and other small birds. I have known this from childhood, but only this summer did I note down the commonest visitors to the Bassia in bloom. Chief among them are the bulbuls (the Red-vented, Red-whiskered and White-browed Bulbuls), which tear at the flower and carry away pieces of the corolla which they eat, besides drinking the nectar. I also noticed quite a few Common and Brahminy Mynahs, a Magpie-Robin, Ioras, the beautiful Small Minivet, White-headed Babbler, Sunbirds and some Warblers. Some of these, apparently, visit the tree not for the sake of its sickly-sweet flowers, but for the insects these flowers attract. I watched a Small Minivet for nearly half an hour, and though it was hunting all the time among the pendent inflorescences, it did not even peck at the petals.

In Tamil, we have a proverb, "the village that has no cane refinery gets it's sugar from the flowers of the mohwa". I have often suspected this proverb of cryptic satire, but am not sure that it has any such ltent venom, for it could be construed literally, too. However that may be it speaks of the sugar-content of the corolla.

I would like to mention another tree at which birds forgather in clamorous numbers during summer. The banyan is in red fruit right at the peak of summer, and noisy mixed parties of parakeets, every kind of Mynah, the Rosy Pastor, Bulbuls, Barbets and crows (both the House Crow and the Jungle Crow) crowd its spreading boughs then. But at times, I have noticed, the birds visit only one of four or five neighbouring trees, though all are in fruit and the figs of that tree are the tastiest - I have observed that such specially favoured trees are often comparatively young (though mature), and that their fruit is larger.

Quite a lot of insectivorous food must be consumed along with the pulp of these figs, as you will realise of you pick up a fallen fruit and examine it. Whether it is such content or not that is the incentive, its true that at such favoured banyan the birds feed with unrestrained gusto, even the crows (which are usually content with picking up the fallen fruit from the ground) tugging and pulling at the figs eagerly and tearing them off the twigs.

Recently I saw a Brahminy Mynah bolt a fig in such haste that it almost choked to death and fell from the bough to the ground, its wings threshing, a visible bulge at its throat.After a frantic minute it managed to gulp down the fruit, and then, to my surprise, it just flew up into the branches above and started pecking and tugging at another ripe fig ! "

-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 11 July 1957 in The Sunday Statesman


#Two photographs of trees not reproduced here