Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : The Green Bee-eater : The Sunday Statesman: 23 April 2017
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THE GREEN BEE-EATER

" IT is during April and May that the Green Bee-eater nests over the major part of India, though in places it may breed somewhat earlier. By March the nest-holes may be completed already ( as they are often, in the Nilgiris ), and their excavation is always fascinating to watch.

Usually the high sandy bank of a dry watercourse is chosen -- and most watercourses are dry at this time of the year -- or similar vertical face of soft, friable earth. In places, where the earth is soft enough, the embankment of ghat-roads are freely exploited, and where nothing better offers, even a mound of sand in a dry location may be utilised.

A number of nesting pairs now commence tunneling operations on this earth wall driving in deep round shafts into it at right angles to its face just sufficiently wide across to admit the bird freely. The nesting holes usually run two feet or longer into the bank and are excavated by nothing more dynamic than the repeated packs of the birds at the bank; it is amazing how deep persistence can dig into the solid earth! Both birds of a pair engage in this prodigious feat and often the breeding pairs nest in close company, each pair having its nest-tunnel only a foot or less away from its next-hole neighbour.

Once the tunnel is completed, the white eggs are laid in a chamber at its end, and the infant Bee-eaters hatching out in this dark retreat are blind and helpless. Green Bee-eaters choose their nesting sites prudently, usually well above harm -- not all the members of the tribe display this care for the future and the Chestnut-headed Bee-eater often nests in flat sand banks liable to inundation with the summer rains.

EHN Lowther, one of our pioneer bird-photographers, says he noticed that the young were fed grasshoppers in the main. I, too, have noticed this partiality for Grasshoppers in Bee-eaters, feeding their young, a rather remarkable bias considering that many of the other insects they habitually hunt, such as bees and butterflies and even dragonflies, have fewer hard parts to be labouriously removed before being fed to the nestlings. There must be a great deal of nourishment in the plump bodies of grasshoppers; sparrows, too, have marked preference for this prey in feeding their young. Bee-eaters in flight exhibit extra-ordinary air-mastery and timing, flapping sharply up on actually triangular wings to casually pluck some fast-flying prey from the air but perhaps it is when entering their nesting tunnels that their sure sense of timing is most evident. A Bee-eater entering its nest-hole does not alight on its round rim and then go down the passage but flies headlong into the tunnel halting momentarily at the mouth to grip its rim with its tiny feet, and bracing its outspread, in bent tail against the earth below to check itself -- for a moment when it looks as if the impetuous momentum of its homecoming had driven its sharp-beaked head right into the earth of the bank!


Bee-eaters have such tiny sharp-clawed feet, with such shortened tarsi, that one might expect them to be helpless on the ground like swifts but though their feet are meant mainly for perching they are well able to sit on the flat ground and to rise swiftly from it in flight. Early in the morning, when the dew is still on the short grass, Green Bee-eaters may be seen on the ground, often perched on a clod or some little stone -- I think they are hunting grasshoppers then. And in the evenings on a country road, you may see a number of vividly green birds lying in a struggling mass on the road surface -- a party of these bee-eaters having a dust-bath in company. They continue to roll and luxuriate in the warm earth till one is quite near and then rise in a cloud of golden dust and emerald feathers to fly swiftly away to perches high above."

- M. Krishnan


This was published on 11 April 1965 in The Sunday Statesman
#The photograph of a pair of Bee-eaters perched on a wire not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan: Battles Royal : The Sunday Statesman :25 June 2017
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BATTLES ROYAL


" THE galumphing Tusker shown below was photographed six years ago, shortly after he had won a territorial fight with another lone bull. I saw the vanquished rival too but that gory, raging, brooding giant was in no mood to permit an approach, so no picture of him was possible. The victor on the other hand was at peace with the world, unmarked from its recent encounter, except for a skin-deep abrasion high up the right thigh; he was grazing in a field of lush tall-grass selecting a few blades from each tussock choosily and flapping his ears vigorously, always a sign of contentment in an elephant. I had no trouble getting close enough to take several pictures, though my approach had to be made openly but the thin grey persistent drizzle blurred detail.

ELEPHANTS seldom fight among themselves and as a rule only when they must. The big bull of the herd is not tolerant of strange adult bulls but thrice I have seen lone tuskers keeping together in a close brace for a few days -- I realise how meaningless is the word "lone" is in this sentence but it is necessary to indicate that it is a grown bull living by itself and not a herd bull that is meant. At times, as when there is competition for some choice plot for grazing between two lone bulls or when the master bull of a herd meets an aspiring rival, there is a BATTLE ROYAL.

THE curious thing about these fights is that they are often not limited to single engagement. No one can tell how impressive a bull tusker seems to a much smaller one, but it is seldom that a small bull will take on a really big one.However, a fighting pair is not always evenly matched and one of the pair may be considerably larger -- youth and ambition are often on the side of the lesser tusker and it is not always the bigger animal that wins though it is usually so. When the combatants are more or less of a size, the fight may drag on all day, or even be spread over several days with long breaks between bouts of fighting for feeding, drinking and baths or mud-baths.

AN animal weighing four or five tons cannot keep going for long without food, and both combatants break off from time to time to replenish, the other elephant often grazing in the same locality, though some distance apart. After feeding and drinking, they resume the fight and break off again to feed, and occasionally the intermittent battle may last a week. At times the combat resolves itself more on less into a pushing match and then the slope of the ground on which each combatant is standing may favour or handicap him, but it is seldom that bulls start a fight on a sloping ground.

FIGHTS for the territory or the herd among rival GAUR bulls do not often result in grave injuries and are seldom fatal but unless one of the fighting pair breaks off and runs away quite early in the engagement, among elephants such combats usually result in the loser (and at times even the winner) being grievously wounded, and even in being gored to death. Unlike carnivores, which are expert in killing, herbivores often persist with the attack long after the enemy is dead, and the the victor may stay on for some time after winning the fight periodically to gore the corpse of the enemy.

HOWEVER, the beaten elephant frequently runs away from the locality while he still can. According to my friend, K. Krishnamoorthy, it is such defeated tuskers that turn into rouges. I have the most sincere regard for my friend's knowledge of our forests and wild animals, particularly elephants, but though I realise a frustrated bull often given to raging, I think the main cause for a lone bull developing into a rouge is gunshot wounds inflicted by men.

THE question of Mucknas is especially interesting. these tuskless bulls are common in parts of North-East India and uncommon in the South -- in Ceylon, all bulls are mucknas as a rule. An adult muckna usually has a remarkably thick and muscular trunk, and is often of imposing size. Some people say that in a fight between a muckna and a tusker the greater weight and trunk-power of the former yells, and tuskers seldom fight mucknas -- it is a fact that trunk is freely used in intra-specific fights among elephants. Others say that the tusks (which are also certainly used in such fights) will tell in favour of the bull possessing them and that mucknas fear tuskers. I donot know the truth of the matter, but both schools of opinion could be right, the tusker winning at times and muckna at other times.

WITH the dwindling of their territory because of human encroachments on elephant jungles, one might logically expect these territorial fights to be commoner than in the past but observation of wild elephants yields no evidence to sustain this view. Little can be said for certain on this point, because even if one is lucky enough to collect reliable data on fights between wild elephants in the last ten years or so, no reliable data from the past exists."

- M.Krishnan


This was published on 17 October 1965 in The Sunday Statesman

#The photograph of the galumphing tusker which won the battle has not been reproduced here.