Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"............Never in any time of the year, not even in November, the moonlight so seductively brilliant,so full of luminous soft magic....When I think of it,the response of men(and women) to the call of the full moon saddens me: unmindful of the many rich lyric passages in every Indian language linking moonlight with erotic impulse,they lug their dinner to the terrace and consume it there; and this is the only reaction to lunar light I have noticed among my fellows.

But are the more natural birds and beasts equally uninfluenced or prudent ?

I am afraid I have more to ask than to say on this question.Though given to late hours and nocturnal walks,all that I have noticed can be said in a few sentences.Many night drives along hill-jungle roads have left me with the impression that wild animals are less prone to make manmade tracks on a bright night than when it is dark.This is only an impression,but other with whom I compared notes had it,too.Some birds ordinarily diurnal,are active under a radiant moon:this is a thing about which I can be definite.I have often seen and heard crows, lapwings and cuckoos( not the koel only but other cuckoos also ) on the moonlit nights- less frequently tree-pie,the cuckoo-shrike,common patridge and commoner village hen!

The stone-curlew is a bird of the dark,but is specially vocal on such nights and flies about then,and some water birds are simply affected.No doubt that activity of these birds is due to visibility being good---birds are much dependent on sight and can read print by a bright moon.It is well known that pigeons cannot fly in the dark and need clear light. I have tried releasing homers by moonlight but though tossed within a mile of their loft the results were discouraging: they want daylight.

Not all the animals are equally susceptible to call of the moon.What intrigues me is not so much the identity of all animals that are,as what they do when they are not under a round moon.Naturally,the assiduous prowler by moonlight will see many nocturnal creatures,if he is lucky--hare, fieldmice in plenty, jackals,mongooses,jungle cats,perhaps even a civet or palm civet--but he sees them on such nights only because the visibility is good : they are out every night but go unseen in the dark.It is difficult to gauge any exuberance in their behavior that one can attribute,reasonably, to the moon because beasts are silent as a rule and moreover they are self-conscious and will not stand being watched.But the birds that respond to moonlight are vocal, and they seem to be in high spirits................."-M.Krishnan

(This was first published on 18 February 1951 in The Sunday Statsman )

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"....I have opportunities for observing the gradual degeneration of Blue Rock-Pigeon from a throughbread to a mongrel.Away from mixed city communities and the lofts of the fanciers,the Blue Rock is true to its type-in places,it is true to its name as well,and lives among precipitous rocks.
...Such birds are proportionately larger (because of longer and less tightly shut tails) than domestic breeds that resemble them (say,the Homer) and stand lower to the ground.Their stance is somewhat crouched,and they run swiftly along the ground unlike domestic pigeons.I think their flight features are softer than the racing pigeons-they do not make that laughing noise when they take off quite so audibly.And their flight is distinctive,swift,direct and low in the air-they do not circle much and fly point to point.The wing action is less smooth than in Homers and more up-and-down,more like a Tumblers.

...When Emperor Babar stopped his conquest for a moment to comment on the differences in looks and voice between the Rock Pigeons of his native land and India,he was better placed than I ,for they were less interbred here then.

All breeds of domestic pigeons have evolved from the Blue Rock and if you allow half-a-dozen fancy breeds to mingle freely,their progeny will revert ultimately to the ancestral rock type.
...Wild pigeons are canny birds.A multitude of predators seek them in the air and on their breeding grounds.The fact that they are still numerous is proof of their wariness.But,of course one must remember how rapidly they breed.-M.Krishnan

(This was first published on 4 March 1951 in The Sunday Statesman)

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"........For the Roller is a sedentary bird at other times,respectable,even gentlemanly in a lazy sort of way.All day long it sits on some exposed perch,drab,squat and inert,indifferent to the blazing sun and breeze that ruffles its plumage.I have seen a Roller knocked off its balance and post by a gust of wind, pick itself up in air and resume its seat in the open in the most off-hand manner.

From time to time it comes out with a deep chortle (not a specially refined sound,but guttural enough to have tonal strength), but nothing breaks its bore,slumped repose otherwise.Even when it sights some passing insect and gives chase,bursting into dazzling blues with the spread of its pinions and tail, there is nothing hurried or indignified about its movements-it flaps lazily along on board, sapphire and azure wings, like some gigantic butterfly, takes its prey casually from the air and then flaps in way back to its pole.

What is gentlemanliness,after all, but a superiority to crude emotional displays(or its affectation when others are looking) ? The Roller has it even when feeding till late in March.

Then all at once it sheds its reserve,and becomes a thing demented. Love is a powerful influence,even in the highest animals it has been known to induce a sudden, abandoned silliness.The birds ,however,whose emotonal lives are not screened by reason or self-consciousness, it often reaches its climax of expression in aerial displays and melody.There is a quickening pattern leading upto a grand finale in their courtship displays, or else an undercurrent of audible, welling fervour.

But the courting Roller goes plain crazy, abandons its perch and flies about with maniac energy and aimlessness.It scours the heavens, not in soaring circles, not in steep,acrobatic loops, but just anyhow.The broad wings lose their good-nature flapping action and beat a pathless course for the bird through the air.At times it flies high and wild, when the colours of its flights and tail grow invisible and dark against the sky.So lost are the blues in the distance, so unlike its lubberly self is it on the wing now, that one who has not seen an ardent Roller before could mistake it for some other bird.

And not cntent with this exhibition of incoherent flight, the Roller sings-all the time it is flying-an incredibly hoarse voice, but usually it is discreetly laconic.In March ,however,it sings as it flies, and its song is even more pointless than its flight, but fortunately confined to a single note, a long-drawn, grating shout.

It climbs into the sky and dives recklessly earthwards, singing its harsh song unceasingly-on a stii day you can hear the courting Roller from half-a-mile away, and the increase in volume of the song alone is sufficient to tell you for its headlong descent.There are many unaccomplished musicians among birds, but few with such araucous or persistent voice.However, it is voice of love, inspired by the same feeling that prompts nightingale and the lark.

Luckily, the inspiration passes.Once it mates and nests-the event varies with place and climate,but is from April to July-the Roller settles down to the business of perpetuating the species, a thing that it does with its usual sang-froid, and it has no time for giddy flights and song.Later still you find it on some pole in the sun,so staid and sober tat you would have passed the bird by but for a deep-throated chuckle."
-M.Krishnan

(This was first published on 25 March 1951 in The Sunday Statesman)