Correction : ...eats from 500 lbs to 600 lbs of green fodder daily.
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Correction : ...eats from 500 lbs to 600 lbs of green fodder daily.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan: Twisting & turning at top speed:The Sunday Statesman: 25 February 2018
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BLACK DRONGO
" The BLACK DRONGO is one of the few birds that practically everyone knows, though we are, as a nation, singularly unaware of the creatures that share this India that is Bharat with us, and the charm that they lend to life here. It is not a big bird, but it is bold and black and energetic, and endowed with a distinctive, deeply cleft tail, the kind of bird that no one can help noticing, so it is noticed and known.
Its names proclaim its character. It is the KING CROW in english, "Bhim raj" in Hindi, and "Valiyan" in Tamil, the last meaning "the powerful one" - no doubt it has other names in other Indian languages indicative of its might in such small compass.
Its mastery in the air, and the ability to twist and turn at top speed, and its fearlessness makes it the terror of all nest-raiders that many imprudently come too close to its nest. It believes in the dictum: "Thrice is he alarmed who has his quarrel just, but four times he who gets his blow in fust" and since justice is on his side when crows and similar thieving birds come near its nest, it is actually seven times armed! It shoots up into the air on quick-beating, broadly triangular wings, and plummets down on the unfortunate crow or kite as if it would transfix the enemy with its beak; invariably the trespasser beats a hasty retreat, and the pair of king crows follow it for some distance, speeding the parting guest.
Many observers have pointed protection from the nest robbers. Such associations, which are not really symbiotic because only one party to it is benefited, are not uncommon among birds and beasts.
King Crows like to perch high, on telegraph wires, posts and the exposed branches of a tree, keeping a sharp look-out for insects and other prey from their vantage point; where there is pasture, they also go riding on the backs of grazing cattle and goats, snapping up the insects that their mobile perches disturb. Unlike bee-eaters king crows often come down to ground to deal with prey that they can see there.
It is in the air that one really sees the bird at its best. The broad but short and sharply pointed wings are a dark, translucent brown when expanded and so is the forked tail, by their sudden changes from translucency when open to black opacity when shut, provide a visual complement to the dizzying twists of the bird's flight, and there is even an audible echo of these movements in the whir that the sharp expansions and contractions of the pinions and rectrices produce.
Early in the morning, before sunrise, king crows indulge in a chorus. Other drongos also do so, and some of them, like the white-bellied and grey drongos, have musical voices by comparison. But though the pre-dawn calls of king crows have a harsh sharpness, at that hour, when it is cold and the blackness is turning to a clear grey, they have an exhilarating quality.
Through the day they are usually silent, but as nightfall approaches they grow vocal again, and often come out with a quick grating double call, almost identical with the call of the shikara. Whether this is mimetic or just due to coincidence is a thing I do not know, though it is true that drongos as a family, are sometimes given to mimicry. But then, why should this shikara-call be sounded only at roosting time and not early in the morning as well? "
- M. Krishnan
* This was published on 12 June 1967.
# The photograph of a Black Drongo has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : A Skink would a-courting go : The Sunday Statesman :18 March 2018
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COMMON SKINK
"Of the lizard family one may well say: " How are the mighty fallen!" Once pre-historic lizards dominated life on earth, but those great monsters and dragons died out long, long ago, and today the degenerate representatives of the family scuttle along walls and hedges, and hide in crevices in stone and bark. In fact, with the exception of the crocodiles and alligators, none of them is really dangerous, or even frighteningly big.
All the same, they retain their primitive urges and passions, and are both violent and secretive in their ways. The life of most small lizards consists of hunting prey and escaping being killed, furtive solitude and sudden displays of intimidation. One would expect love to be a brief and somewhat violent urge with such creatures, and in many lizards love is like that. Therefore it was a surprise and a revelation to me when I followed a pair of courting Skinks for five days in my backyard some years ago, and noted that their intimacy was marked by a protracted courtship and many tender overtures that were ludicrously human at times.
They were the common Skinks of our plains (Mabuiya carinata), and both were very big. The female, over 10 inches long, was darker, and had the dark chocolate "hyphen-marks" on the skin prominently displayed; but because it had a regenerating tail, was much less in length; it was markedly paler. Both skins had a faint mauve blush over the dominant olive green of the skin~I do not know if this blush signified breeding condition.
For the first two days, the pair would not allow a really close approach, but thereafter "accepted" me, and I was with the pair from morning till late in the evening each day, seldom further then two yards away, often much nearer. I was using a folding camera with a proxar lens for close up pictures, and had to get the lens an estimated 18 inches from my subjects for the pictures. The pair kept close together, and except occasionally when hunting,were never more than 10 ft from each other. At nightfall the Skinks retired to a pile of stones, and disappeared down the many deep tunnels in the pile, and did not come out till the sun was up next morning.
It was during the early rains, in July-August, that I watched this pair, and at midday, if the sun was shining, they would bask in close proximity, bodies usually touching on a big slab of stone; if it rained, they found ample shelter under this same stone, which had a hollow space beneath it.
There were many other Skinks in my backyard, all of them considerably smaller, and invariably they ran away from the vicinity of the courting couple. The male was gallant in its attitude to its mate, never disputing any prey, and allowing the female to take the cockroaches I offered occasionally.
Tactile stimuli and responses seemed to play an important part in the leisurely progress of the courtship.
The male often snuggled up to the resting female, touching it with the body, sometimes caressing it with the snout. On the fourth day they mated, and mated again, twice. On the fifth day there was a sustained downpour and they disappeared from sight - in fact, I did not see them together again. I saw the female a week later, on the tiles of my bathroom in which it had, apparently, found a congenial home for the rains."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 7 August 1967
#The photograph of the pair of Skinks not reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : The goggle-eyed one : The Sunday Statesman : 22 April 2018
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GOGGLE-EYED PLOVER
" The small group of extraordinary birds known as the Burhinidae is noted for its enormous eyes, its members being nocturnal and crepuscular in their habits. The most familiar of them in our country, the Stone Curlew, is also called the Goggle-Eyed Plover, and its larger relative, the Great Stone Plover to be found along broad rivers and on the the coastline, has even larger eyes.
It is a bird as big as a hen, with a big head on a robust, long neck, and sturdy legs ending in three forward-pointing toes, on which it can run quite fast. The streaky, mottle grey, brown, black and white of its plumage renders it inconspicuous against the stony river beds and sand-banks it frequents, but its great, slightly tiptilted beak, and its huge, staring yellow eyes, sometimes give it away, even from a distance -- and it is seldom one sees it from close by,for unlike the Stone Curlew which freezes and stays put when it sees an intruder, trusting to the cryptic colouration of its plumage, the bird flies off at once, to land a safe distance away, and keep a sharp lookout.
Two years ago, in November, I came across a party of six Great stone plovers on the broad, dry bed of the Torsa in North Bengal; there were many thin streams in the river-bed, most of them shallow and, at one point on the stony, scrubdotted expanses between the streams. I came across these birds. It is said that the Great Stone Plover mates for life and that it usually goes about by itself or in a pair, but at times it associates in small parties, such as the one I saw, when not breeding. Throughout the week I tried ineffectually to get close to these watchful birds to photograph them; they kept very much together, in a close kit.
I would walk casually at a tangent towards them, pretending to be interested in the ground at my feet, and once or twice I even tried walking backwards towards them, though the uneven, pebble-strewn ground did not encourage reverse gear, but however artfully casual I was they would not permit me to get closer than 60 yards-and since there was no cover, a concealed approach was out of the question. As soon as they felt I was too near, they would rise in a body with penetrating, rather plaintive alarms, and skim over the broad bed of the Torsa to another section. Years ago and in the Deccan, I succeeded in getting fairly close to one of these birds, and when it discovered me, it came out with a very different sound of alarm or surprise, a low, harsh "grrr" ----apparently it is given to swearing at intruders on occasion.
The bird also has the the curious habit of jerkily bobbing its head up and down in a quick movement when apprehensive -- a gesture hard to describe in words, but unmistakable, once seen. When I was in North Bengal that November, I noticed that a migratory Lapwing which I also saw on the Torsa's bed and which I could not place exactly had the identical habit. The huge eyes of this bird are said to be adapted to nocturnal hunting, but the birds I saw were feeding actively by day as well-not resting in such shade as there was. They hunted the pebbly ground for crabs and insects and I frequently observed them packing at something and then swallowing it.
The greatest avian night-hunters, the Owls, have their great eyes set side by side in a flat face, to give them frontal, binocular vision. The Great Stone Plover has its eyes very differently placed, on either side of its head, and the eyes can see not only in front and to either side but also behind to some extent --when looking at the back of the head of this bird, one can see the rear rims of the eyes, and from personal experience I am satisfied that it dose not need to turn its head round to see what is behind it--so much of the area of the side of the head does each eye cover."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 16 October 1967.
* The photograph of a Great Stone Plover has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M.Krishnan : An Elephantine Inhibition : The Sunday Statesman : 17 June 2018
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AN ELEPHANTINE INHIBITION
"SOME YEARS AGO I saw, in a cinema house, a documentary on a kedah, showing the elephants soon after they have been impounded in the stockade. I like wild Elephants too much to care for the sight of them milling around in a panic, bewildered and trapped but an incident in the documentary roused my anger, though it seemed comic to everyone else in the auditorium. A little calf, separated from its mother in that melee was shown approaching a grown cow, which promptly sent it flying with a kick and the commentator said something about the myth that elephants are considerate to all young of their kind.
Well that is no myth and that man said what he did out of ignorance. Anyone who has watched elephants closely will know that never, even when moving in a tight-packed crowd and in a hurry, do the huge adults trample on an infant or kick it accidentally. Such care in social animals in usually instinctive and not the result of an intelligent realization of their responsibilities by the weaker members of the herd. Sometimes such behavior is induced or guided by instinctive reactions to colours.
The phrase "a red rag to a bull", conveys the immediacy of an animal's response to colour, though it has no basis, for bulls are colour-blind and see red only as a shade of grey. Crows as is well known react strongly to something black. On a recent tree-photography trip I used a view camera and the usual square of black cloth a photographer throws over his head to focus on the ground-glass. The crows wee so violent in their response to my black cloth that I had to get it covered with a square of thin khaki after which they left me in peace.
Elephants on the other hand, seem to instinctively avoid contact with anything black. I think they are not able to see things right under them very well and believe that quite a few men who have fallen while running away from a charging wild elephant, or dived into cover and crouched owe their lives to this inability of elephants. In a herd, it is likely that the adults are not able to see an infant that is right beneath or besides them clearly except perhaps as a dark blurred mass and I think the dark colour of the little one serves to save it from being trampled accidentally.
Wild elephants uproot and damage milestones posts and similar things when they are left or painted, white or some light colour but usually leave them alone if painted black - this is further evidence of the theory. An experienced electrical engineer once told me that the bases of the pylons carrying the power-lines through elephant jungles are invariably painted black to save them from being damaged by the great beasts.
An even more interesting example of this instinctive reaction to black is provided by the pilgrims who undertake the climb up Sabarimala in Kerala to the shrine of Aiyappan they wear black shirts and black dhoties not out of regard for any religious convention but out of prudence - they have to traverse through several miles of elephant forests, and believe they are less prone to attack if dressed in black.
At first sight this simple dodge might seem the complete solution to the problems of people living near or right inside elephant jungles. Wild elephants are undoubtedly the animals they dread the most and hostile brushes between the great beasts and men are much more frequent than is generally thought - not all cases of men killed by elephants are reported. It may be thought that in such places all that people have to do to secure immunity from attack by wild elephants is to wear black and tar their shed and dwellings.
I think such a practice will definitely lessen the risk to humanity from wild elephants but not eliminate it. I am thinking of the calf that got kicked in that documentary and also of the fact that animals are often moved by instincts that are mutually opposed, and go by what dominates them at the moment. An elephant may well attack something black when driven by fear or anger as everyone knows, elephants do fight among themselves at times.
In deep hill-jungles where men have not yet occupied their terrain, elephants tend to run away from humanity. But where they have been constantly disturbed and harassed by men who have invaded and occupied their homes and occasionally shot at, they develop a lasting hatred towards humanity. It would be quite necessary to stop the disturbance of the elephants and bar cultivation inside the jungles, before the inhibiting potential of black can be exploited effectively,and that would be an exceedingly difficult thing to do in India today."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 19 February 1968.
@ The photograph of a herd of elephants has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Myths about Snakes : The Sunday Statesman 13 May 2018
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Myths about Snakes
" ONE afternoon in September some years ago, I walked two furlongs along a forest road to a hilltop rest house, and in the course of that short walk I saw five different Cobras.
They were all medium sized, but I saw them in different places; in the grass and bushes bordering the road. In every case there was no doubt about the identity of the snake, for on a circumspect approach it raised its head and spread its hood in warning at which point I halted and prudently retreated a few paces. Thereafter the snake just went away, slowly and sinuously disappearing into cover. Two of these Cobras were a dark, olive-grey, two were a lighter olive-brown, and one quite pale, a wheaten brown in colour. I can not tell you their sex -- I did not know, and I do not know.
Encountering an elderly tribesman who knew the ways of the creatures of the place, I asked him if he could tell me why so many Cobras were about that afternoon, resting beside but not actually on the road. His answer was to draw me aside by the arm, swiftly and suddenly, and point to the surface of the earth road; near were I had been standing was yet another snake, a small brown Saw-scaled Viper, a snake with a peevish temper and prone to attack, though less deadly than a Cobra.
I said it was sure to rain. We had been having a spell of very dry weather and though I could see no clouds or other signs of a shower, I remembered that once in a place far from where we were, there had been a spell of dry weather and that one morning I had seen three snakes in succession and that shortly afterwards rain had come down in torrents. I told my companion of this, and he nodded his head sagely. Naturally, he argued, if a downpour was in the offing, the snakes would come out in numbers, for if they stayed within their subterranean daytime retreats they would get flooded. He wrinkled his aged nose and announced that he could smell the rain, faintly and far off, and I too, could. Neither that afternoon nor that night nor during the fortnight following I spent in the place was there so much as a thin drizzle.
Subsequently I have consulted men wise in the ways of serpents about a phenomenon, but naturally, with so little circumstantial evidence, they could not say why there should have been so many snakes about that day. I asked one expert if it could be that they were moved by a mating urge and he was non-committal, but remarked that the possibility merited examination. Scent perception is subtle and complicated in snake; they "taste" smell, with the aid of their bifid tongues and a special sensory organ they have (the Jacobsen's organ) and in this they are probably near-scented, but they also go by normal olfactory smells, and therefore are probably also able to scent from far off.
All this being thus, I asked the expert if what I had seen could not be a number of male snakes, attracted by the scent of a female somewhere near, and he agreed that the possibility needed further examination. In the old days, when people believed in myths about snakes and had not the scientific outlook, no doubt anyone could have told me what exactly the sight of so many snakes in succession presaged, but now we know better and are cautious.
Although this has nothing to do directly with this incident, is it not likely that the story so often told, of the revenge of poisonous snakes (notably the Cobra) has also a scent motivation? It is a fact that at times a male and female snake stay in the same area and keep in though with each other, it is also a fact that snakes have been known to behave towards a dead mate and encountering a man turn aggressive. Moreover, being in the same area, the snake not killed is likely to encounter the killer by chance.
It is not necessary to presume that this roundabout explanation is the likeliest. I can say from personal knowledge that Cobras are resentful of human invasion of a territory they are used to and if wounded or harassed they turn very aggressive. It could well be that an attack by the survivor of a pair is intelligent or intentional and directed towards the man on the spot specifically. However, I am unable to find any factual basis for the accounts of the revengeful survivor following the very man that killed its mate over a long distance, and exacting retribution."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 27 November 1967.
* The photograph of Common (Spectacled) Cobra with its head raised and hood spread has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: The Wild Buffaloes of Assam : M.Krishnan: The Sunday Statesman: 12 August 2018
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THE WILD BUFFALOES OF ASSAM
" THE WILD BUFFALOES of Assam are really wild --- that is, they have never been tamed. Now, all strains of the familiar village buffalo are descended directly from this wild progenitor and most of them look very like it except that they are smaller and, being domesticated much less aggressive. However,this difference in temperament and build between the wild and the village buffalo is entirely a question of degree and not, as in many other domesticated animals a radical change fixed in the strain.
Take domestic strains of the humped cattle, for instance. In many places in India they have been allowed to run wild and after generations they remain very much what they were. And they finest pedigreed draught breed anywhere, the very distinctive Amrit Mahal was actually evolved under semi-wild conditions so as to improve its mettle and rangy power.
Village buffs, on the other hand, if given their freedom soon become almost indistinguishable from their wild ancestor. The "Wild buffaloes" of Ceylon are really feral, that is domestic stock allowed to run wild. And authentic wild buffalo bulls will seek out village herds and mate with the domesticated cows in them. In fact, near Kaziranga village there is such a wild bull, of imposing proportions.
The point I began with is that Wild Buffaloes in Assam have never been domesticated and that Assam has played a notable part in saving this most magnificent of wild oxen from extinction.
It is a curious fact that although the domesticated buffalo was much-prized all over India 2,000 years ago and exported to other countries, the Wild Buffalo (a peculiarly Indian animal if one excludes Nepal) had a comparatively limited range, more or less confined to the delta areas of eastern India north of the Godavari. It was rapidly wiped out over most of the area, and today it is Assam that is the main stronghold of our Wild Buffalo.
There are several herd distributed over Kaziranga sanctuary but this is not the only sanctuary in Assam which can boast of these noble animals, there are plenty in Manas, and also in the less well-known Laokhowa and Sonai Rupa sanctuaries.
At Mihimukh there was a herd that like many other animals here, permitted a close approach. In Wild Buffaloes the horn is mainly of two types, long sabre-curved and more or less alongside the reck or rising upwards in a steeper curve both horn types occur in the same herd and a cow in the Mihimukh herd (cows generally have longer but thinner horns than the bulls) and quite remarkable horns almost meeting overhead in a circle. The bull of this herd massive and long though not tall, was given to a demonstration that amused me. I took my time gradually getting close to him on elephant back in an aimless-seeming zigzag and every time he felt we were approaching close he would stop stare at us, and then come trotting three steps forwards in an intimidatory gesture to come to a rocking halt about 70 feet away, then he would go back.
Another demonstration indulged in by a long bull we surprised at a wallow was much more the usual threat-gesture of wild oxen, he lowered his head and butted the mire savagely. GAUR bulls and even the bulls of domestic humped cattle demolish termite heaps and mounds of earth in such demonstrations. It is of course wise to halt when any wild animal is demonstrating and beat an unostentatious retreat, but it is my experience that when a Gaur or Buffalo bull really means to charge, he wastes no time on formal demonstrations.
Except that we are familiar with village, buffaloes and that they look so like the wild ones the sanctuaries of Assam would be more renowned for their Buffaloes than even for their Rhinos. Anyway nowhere else is there such a large population of Wild Buffaloes and Assam's achievement in saving these magnificent beasts deserves more acclaim than it has had."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 24 June 1968.
* The photograph of a massive buffalo has not been reproduced here.
Publisher
The Wild Buffaloes don't often get the recognition they deserve. Such massive fellows. Just because we are used to watching domesticated buffaloes so we don't feel anything new in this species. However, one needs to be a bit cautious. Several times in Kaziranga I found that the wild buffalo herds were cautious and ran away on our approach. Except for one which was wallowing and came very closer to inspect us and gave us some looks, one may get the impression that these are tame creatures. Lest one makes such a mistake and get down from vehicle or move closer if you are on foot, one may get a nasty attack.
In Satyamangalam there is a herd of feral buffaloes. They are known to attack man as they perhaps feel they are going to be again captured. A researcher R. Arumugam's assistant was attacked many years ago. The poor man survived with stitches from the local hospital despite some grass and other vegetation remaining within the body. Perhaps the higher level of resistance power of the tribals helped.
Originally Posted by Saktipada Panigrahi
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Hog-deer : The Sunday Statesman : 2 September 2018
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HOG-DEER
(Kaziranga)
" THE animal I saw most often in the Kaziranga sanctuary, in bush-covered scrub and around bheels was the Hog-Deer -- and still the picture of it here is a zoo specimen.
The Hog-deer has no strongly gregarious feeling like its cousin, the Chital, it goes about by itself, or in a pair or in small parties but both when it is by itself, or in a pair or in small parties but both when it is by itself and when in the company of its fellows, it bolts into cover at the sight or scent of man whether he be on foot or on elephant back. And since it is not a large animal,one needs to get at least within 20 yards for a clear picture even when using a long lens- something I never succeeded in doing I wish now that I had sat up in a hide some likely spot- if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
The Hog-deer, in spite of its dissimilar looks and habits is so closely related to the Chital that it will interbreed with it in captivity I do not know if in nature the two animals interbreed perhaps not for they favour different grounds and their ranges seldom overlap. In the Kaziranga sanctuary there are no Chitals - it is the domain of the Hog-deer as the Jaldapara sanctuary of Bengal also is.
Why did it get its name? It is said that in its thick body and neck the old stag is somewhat porcine and the gait is also said to pig-like " When running it keeps its head low down and moves without that bounding action go characteristic of deer ", says the unusually reliable Prater in his * Book of Indian Animals *.
This sentence has always puzzled me. Most deer run with the head outstretched not held high, when they are bolting- the Sambar and the Muntjak for instance - I think all deer inhabiting bush-clad scrub or tree jungles where there is undershrub do so, and I have seen Chitals running with their heads stretched out when bolting through scrub country. Furthermore I have seen Hog-deer bound along, sometimes bounding along for quite some distance.
In fact it is only when studying an old stag at close quarters in a zoo that I have been able to see any resemblance to a hog. The somewhat grizzled coat of old males, their thick bodies and thick necks, do suggest a far-fetched resemblance to a boar, but certainly not to our Wild Pig. A peccary, perhaps. In short I can see no justification for the name. When one catches a glimpse of Hog- deer borting through cover, it is quite impossible to mistake them for pig for what one sees then is a flash of chestnut, a colour that no one associates with wild pig. sometime in a fleeting glimpse, and in country where both animals occur, I have not been sure whether what I saw was a hog-deer or a Muntjak, but that is about the only mistake that one can make seeing this deer momentarily- incidentally and irrelevantly, the Muntjak, is another deer which suffers from many misnomers .
At certain bheels in the Baguri area, hog-deer are almost gregarious. They are in several parties close to one another in the mornings and evenings sometimes as many as hundred more or less together. Even when bolting they keep close, so that the question whether they are a group of parties or a herd is somewhat academic. But watching from afar the way the groups grazed somewhat apart when undisturbed I am sure they do not run in herds.
Hog deer fawn are spotted and look very like Chital fawn during their first year of life except that the spots are larger and on a darker ground of chestnut-brown.
All meaty creatures are hunted even such unlikely-seeming creatures as rats and adjutants. Being a grass-eater myself, I have no idea of excellence of hog-deer in a steak or curry but I am told though the vension provided by other deer is even better, the hog-deer is eminently edible. And it is thick and meaty. It is hunted wherever it is found, by every class of hunter from those armed with guns to those armed with bows and arrows. In fact, tribals are so much more its enemies than more sophisticated poachers in protected areas, that if only the hog-deer knew its Shakespeare it can ruminate with a much deeper apprehension than we can over the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune! "
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 14 October 1968
# The photograph of the Hog-deer has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Barasingha :The Sunday Statesman : 28 October 2018
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BARASINGHA
" In KANHA they call their own distinctive variety of the Swamp Deer Cervus duvaucela branderi, the Barasingha. Using the name for this deer in correspondence with some authorities I have, apparently, caused eyebrows to be raised, and in the replies I received the name was put within quotation marks -- " barasingha ".
The Kashmir Stag is also called barasingha, and evidently the contention of some people is that the name should be limited to that animal,and not be applied to Cervus duvauceli, which should be called the swamp deep. There are two subspecies of the swamp deer, one inhabiting swampy ground and marshes in the Terai, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and the Sundarbans*, which has somewhat spongy and splayed hooves and a comparatively larger skull, scientifically distinguished as Cervus duvauceli duvauceli, and the other the branderi of Madhya Pradesh which lives on hard ground and has compact hooves and in the old stags, darker antlers. In both subspecies the number of tines carried by the adult stag varies, but is generally twelve on each antler,which is why the animal is called "barasingha". The Kashmir Stag (which is a cousin of the Scottish Red Deer) has also often twelve points, but more often more, and is also called barasingha. Both deer have other vernacular names.
In the circumstances, I am unable to see the force of the argument that only the Kashmir Stag should be termed barasingha. On the contrary, there is something gained by calling the Kashmir Stag the Hangul (one of the standarized names), and the hard-ground subspecies of Cervus durauceli the barasingha - the name of Swamp deer can then be applied to the other subspecies. Anyway, the alternative, hard-ground swamp deer is a contradiction in terms.
In a note to follow I shall discuss the decline of the noble deer in Madhya Pradesh and possible schemes of reviving it, here I shall merely record what I saw of it in May last in the Kanha National Park.
There were two main herds, consisting of hinds and a few small stags, about 80 animals in both herds together; in one herd there were 3 young fawns and 2 in the other, the objects of peculiar interest and importance, for they represent the future of a dying race. Apart from these two herds, there was a party of 5 big Stags, all in hard horn; among them was a fine animal which carried what were probably the most magnificent antlers of the tribe, and although I never saw him, I heard that there was another lone Stag in a grove near the lodges even more impressive in build and antlers. There are only about a hundred barasingha in all in Kanha today.
During the day the two main herds could often be seen lying down in the open, very relaxed and chewing the cud. Occasionally I saw a deer lying down with the head flat on the ground at the stretch of the neck, a posture that would render it very hard to see even in low, thin cover. Sometimes a stag ran around with a lot of grass entangled in his antlers, and people said this was the silly animal's attempt at camouflage. Actually,it is no such self-conscious effort, barasingha stags clean their antlers mainly by thrashing the grass with them, and this carrying of grass on the horn is merely the result of this instinctive habit.
What impressed me most was the seeming lassitude of the deep. Swamp deer(of both subspecies) are highly gregarious, more gregarious than any other Indian deer, and where they flourish they go about in vast herds, the herds keeping fairly close to one another. There is a survival value in vast numbers,and apparently these deer, like other deer of the cold North and some birds, are rather dependent on their sheer numbers.
However that might be, the two subspecies of the swamp deer are less unapproachable than say, Sambar or Chital (Chital have become rather tame in places, and I refer only to Chital where they are still very shy). Making allowances for all this, I still thought the Barasingha of Kanha rather simple. I do not know if this lassitude is the result of some debilitating infection or not, but the deer were definitely less wild and warythan the Swamp Deer I had seen in definitely Assam and U.P.
A thing that caused much concern to the authorities of the park was that in recent years the breeding of the deer had been infructuous, too many young being still-born. It was heartening to see young fawns in both the main herds. "
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 16 Feb 1969.
#The photograph of two Barasingha Stags not reproduced here.
*The Swamp Deer is extinct in the Sundarbans now.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------COUNTRY NOTEBOOK:M. Krishnan : A Hunter turned scavenger :The Sunday Statesman:9 September 2018
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ADJUTANT STORK
" The Greater Adjutant does occur in the Kaziranga Sanctuary; in fact a pair had nested in a tall red silk-cotton tree near Kaziranga village in 1967-68, but it is a rare bird here. The common stork of the sanctuary is the Lesser Adjutant slightly smaller in size without the fleshy pouch at the throat, and with sparse down on its crown, wholly bald in its larger cousin.
I found it wherever I went, on the edges of bheels, or on the swampy or even on dry open land, hunting insects, frogs, fish and even small reptiles and mammals. It was usually solitary. At times I saw an Adjutant parading its beat, and another a hundred yards away, and a third and even a fourth still further off, in clearings inside the jungle it was usually truly solitary.
It was also in the treetops, singly or a few together in a tree. It did not seem to be gregarious in its roosting here, and on several occasions I saw Adjutants roosting by themselves in some tall tree. But when it soared it was always in a party sometimes as many as two dozen getting together to sail in effortless graceful circles on high. All storks are good fliers and given to soaring and an Adjutant on the wing of a very different bird from its grotesquely ugly and large self on land.
Storks stretch their necks straight out in flight, even when soaring -- in fact this is the token of the flight silhouette by which the tribe can be distinguished, even from a great distance, from the Herons and the Egrets. The Adjutant however, folds back its neck in a tight "S" like a Heron when in the air, so that its neck is invisible in flight and only the long bill jutting out in front and the legs trailing behind serve to distinguish it from a vulture when it is soaring in company on high at such times of course, it can never be mistaken for a heron, for herons are not given to soaring. But often it circles so high that the bill and legs can hardly be seen.
Although it does not seem to congregate at garbage heaps as its greater cousin does, this Adjutant too is given to scavenging, when the opportunity offers. When something dies and vultures gather to feast the Adjutants too are there, to take their share but never in a crowd like vultures -- only one or two, or at best a few along with the regular carrion feeders.
The Adjutant's broadsword bill is not suited to rending flesh, and so it waits till a vulture near it has detached a piece of flesh from the carcass, and then robs it. Feeding vultures are highly rapacious, and gobble up what they are able to tear apart in a great hurry so that any bird robbing them has to be very alert to get any thing at all, but the Adjutant is a fast mover when it has to be.
I watched an Adjutant at a bheel in Bokani for over an hour using the small but efficient telescope that the normal lens of my 35 mm camera becomes when a special eye-piece is screwed on to it. It stood slumped and inert at the water's edge as all hunting waterside birds stand and in repose its neck was partially or even wholly retracted; when it sighted prey, the bill did not dart out at the end of the shot-out neck in a lightning thrust as the bill of herons and darters do but the necks was slowly extended till the great down-pointed bill was above its victim and then with a smooth movement the prey was neatly picked up between the mandibles~for all its seeming resemblance to a broadsword, the bill of the bird is really a giant pair of pincers. I could not always see what prey it had caught, as most of the time the bird rudely turned its back on me, but only once or twice when apparently it had caused a frog, did it jerk, drop and grab the prey to kill it, a fish it caught was held crosswise in the bill at first, then neatly turned lengthwise without being dropped, and finally swallowed, very much in the manner of Black necked Stork.
In February when I was in the sanctuary, the Adjutants were not breeding. But I saw a few nests presumably the previous year's. The bird is said to nest gregariously, but several nests I saw were by themselves, high up red silk-cotton trees."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 28 October 1968
# The photograph of the Adjutant Stork not reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M.Krishnan : Muckna at Bokani : The Sunday Statesman : 19 August 2018
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MUCKNA
[at BOKANI, Kaziranga]
" THE INDIAN ELEPHANT, in spite of name, has a wide distribution outside India, in neighbouring countries such as Ceylon, Burma and Siam. Incidentally it is quite distinct from the African Elephant, and not merely a different species as most people seem to think,the Indian and African Elephants belong to different genera altogether, there is only one species of the genus ** Elephas, E maximus **, which is the Indian Elephant, there are two species of genus Loxodonta, the African Elephant, of which only one is larger than ours.
Usually when an elephant is distributed over several countries, territorial races of it are distinguishable. The Tiger has a few such races, the Manchurian and the Indian, for instance -- within India, the white tigers of Rewa are a distinct kind, if not a race, but I am afraid there is no such animal as the Royal Bengal Tiger. Though ** Elephas maximus** has such a wide distribution in SE Asia, it is impossible to distinguish territorial races of it.
No less an authority than GP Sanderson says that seeing two tamed elephants, one Wild caught in Burma and the other in South India, no one can say which came from where without prior knowledge. For a somewhat different reason, I too think this true. Although I have no personal acquaintance with elephants from Burma, as Sandarson had, I have seen elephants from foot-hills of the Himalayas to the farthest South, and though I have noticed pronounced differences between individuals in their tusks, bodily shape and relative proportions (particularly in large herds) these differences have no territorial basis.
However, certain tendencies are more pronounced or more usual, in some areas than in others, Ceyonese elephants, for example are tusk less. Tusk less Bulls or Mucknas are found all over India and everywhere generally endowed with much thicker trunks than the tuskers and often more powerfully built. But Assam has the greatest number of mucknas of any region, and Kerala probably the least -- the commonness of mucknas in Assam is reflected in their elephant control rules which make it compulsory for a licensee shooting a tusker to shoot a muckna as well.
In South India, Kurwar, and elsewhere I had seen several mucknas, but none that was outstandingly big. So when a kind friend went miles out of his way to inform me that a singularly impressive muckna was visiting the shallow water at Bokam. I set off at once for this remote interior area of the Kaziranga sanctuary.
When I arrived there in the afternoon, after a long ride on elephant back, he was there, on the other side of the bheel. there was no cover and the wind was not favourable but I made my way slowly on foot to the edge of the water for a better look at him. Seldom I have seen as superbly proportioned a bull elephant and I have seen some.
His trunk seemed almost as massive as his thick-muscled limbs and was generously flecked with pink -- the tip being entirely pink -- there were pink flecks on the face and ears too. The tail was so long that the brush at the tip almost touched the ground, and his build was not only massive and powerful but also beautifully balanced. He was in musth, and his cheeks stained black. He did not mind me silting on the water's edge across the bheel but the people behind me moved into view and he made of.
An hour later he was at the long stretch of water directly in front of our camp. Luckily, this water was thickly fringed with tall grass and I could approach unseen. However, when I got near enough the light was dead wrong against me, and I got only a rim-lit silhouette.
By moving 60 feet to one side and getting into the grass and partly into the water a good picture could be taken, but four grass stems were in the way I asked the willing young man who had accompanied me and was now lurking behind to remove them, gesturing with my hands to indicate a sawing with the knife and saying 'cut' I should not have spoken but only gestured. He hacked at the stems and hearing him the great beast moved off.
He didn't go far. He stood behind a tree facing me, and I stayed put on the slippery wet bank,half hidden by grass, I was confident he could not see me unless I moved and perhaps he too felt he could not be seen, standing behind a thick hole that did not hide his great bulk. For fully half an hour he stood there watching, as immobile as an elephant can be. Then, with aloud sigh he turned and disappeared into the forest and we did not see him again.
Subsequently, by two careful measurements of the impress of this forefeet in the clay, making due allowance for the slight spread I found his height at the shoulder was 9 feet 2 inches I have seen taller elephants and a superbly-built tusker just an inch or so under 10 feet in height -- but this muckna impressed me tremendously."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 8 July 1968.
* The photograph of superbly-built Muckna has not been reproduced here.
Last edited by Mrudul Godbole; 21-09-2018 at 02:32 PM.
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Sighting of a slender-loris is so difficult these days unless one is out in the night with torch. I would love to see one swim. Wonder how fast it can swim.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : The Mocking Bird : The Sunday Statesman : 10 February 2019
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THE MOCKING BIRD
HARIAL
(Green Pigeon)
" Those who have spent some time in the deeper forests might have heard, probably when they were alone and immobile, a loud, fluent, mocking bird voice and looked for its source and found nothing. Bird-calls are difficult to render in words because, lacking consonant and even defined vowels, it is only their fortuitous resemblance to familiar phrases in their syllabic break-up that provides the rendering into words, and this is dependent as much on the hearer as on the call. But about the undercurrent of mockery in this particular call-to human ears- there is little doubt.
The first time I heard the call I had been following a heard of elephants along a forest road, and on leaving the road to continue following the great beasts lost them suddenly round a bend (a thing which is quite easy to do, in spite of the huge size of elephants). After a while I realized that I had also my way, and didn't have the foggiest notion where the road was. I tried getting back to the road along a nullah and after two miles sat down in the shade of a giant flaf for rest and reorientation. It was then that I heard this call. I could not place the direction from which it came exactly, though the call was loud and seemed quite close, and although I looked hard all around and above I could see nothing that might have been responsible for the sound. Then I heard it again and though I could not see the bird, it was very clear to me what it was saying. "You fool !" it said "you are miles from the road". I was.
It was only after another such experience with the voice that I located its owner; it was the Harial (the Green Pigeon) and naturally I had missed seeing it; against a leafy tree top the bird is almost invisible- and with a call so uncolumbine in its accents and intonation, even if I had seen a Harial near where the call came from, I would have looked elsewhere for my bird.
Last summer, near Churna in M.P., I tried sitting up during the day beside the only stream in the neighbourhood, a mere chain of half-a-dozen elongated, shallow puddles in the dry, sandy, rocky bed of the stream. It seemed most unlikely that any animal would come there during the scorching heat of the day, but the concentration of Sambar and Pig slots on the impressionable sand tempted me to put up a hide of dry grass and sit up for two days. At the end of it, it was clear that the animals came to the water only after sunset, but the bird life of those little pools was most interesting. In the evening flocks of Harial and Rose ringed and Plum- headed Parakeets came there, to guzzle the coarse river sand.
Right by my hide there was a leafless, twisted tree, bristling with dry branches, and I counted over 30 Harials in it they quarreled for perches on it like all pigeons, and they were very pigeon- like in their take off with audibly flapping wings, and they sat there for an hour or longer peeking all round to make sure that no one was there in the neighbourhood, before they dropped to the stream-bed to drink and eat sand. I had ample opportunity to listen to them and noticed that a cock serenading a hen on a treetop, further up the bank, had a recognizably pigeon-like call, very different from the usual, mocking call. I thought of many renderings of the common call, but came up with nothing better than
"You fool ! You are miles from the road".
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 5 October 1969
# The photograph of the birds on stream-bed has not been reproduced here.
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Apropos of the posting above on 24-02-2019 : 6.45 p.m, the Correct Caption may please be read as under:
THE MOCKING BIRD
HARIAL
(Green Pigeon)
I sincerely regret for the mistake.
Saktipada Panigrahi
25.02.2019
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Elephants in Musth : The Sunday Statesman : 3 March 2019
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ELEPHANTS IN MUSTH
" THERE were quite a few tuskers in the herd of Elephants ( which I thought a composite herd ) at the Corbett National Park, and in the evenings, when they came out of sal cover and crossed open ground to get the water, they were usually by themselves. There was a small, mean-looking old bull with both tusks broken off short who was said to have a nasty temper, and a massive, medium-sized bull with short blunt tusks, also well past his prime, who had the habit of grazing steadily towards human intruders till they moved off. Besides these, there were three sub-adult tuskers, and I thought that was the lot.
Then one evening a much more impressive bull, with yard-long symmetrically curved tusks, taller than other bulls and longer and heavier in the barrel came out of the sal forest. The herd and oter bulls were half a mile away, and this bull crossed the narrow belt of open scrub behind the rest house and made straight for the Ramganga.
I had a good look at him as he crossed the clearing, the slanting light of the descending sun illuminating him warmly and bringing out every little surface detail in sharp relief. He was in his prime, probably about 40 or 45 years old, with a black skin flecked with pink on the trunk and a pink trunk-tip, and covered thinly with red dust, and on either side of the face, between eye and ear there was red patch, as if the iron of his hide rusted there - this was where the dust had settled on the sticky exudation from his musth glands.
I followed him discreetly, keeping well behind, as he went down the boulder-strewn path through the forest to the river. Once he was at the water, it was possible to approach much closer among the opposite bank but although the photographer in me urged me to do so. I had the sense to stay hidden at a sufficient distance so that I could watch once again a big tusker in musth spraying the cooling water over the irritating patches on either side of his brow where the secretion from the musth glands had spread over the skin.
Bull elephants in musth, as I reported in this column some years ago, often carry clinging, hard-packed day on their tusks, even after bath, and I had supposed because they had used their tusks, after a bath, and i had supposed this was because they had used their tusks to dig up something, some corm or luber deep in the earth, which when they are in musth, the deep digging fixing the earth so firmly on to the ivory that even subsequent spraying with water could not wash it off - I have seen a tusker swim right across the fast flowing Periyer with his head submerged most of the time and when he climbed ashore the mud was still clinging to his tusks.
Soon after a bath, the elephants throw dust, or at times mire, all over themselves; this habit cannot possibly fix the earth so firmly to the tasks that it stays on after the next bath - there should be no confusion on this account.
Well, I spent one of the pleasantest hours I have have lived through watching the great beast drink deep at the Ramganga and then spray the water systematically all over his head and body. Then clean-washed and glistening black, he crossed the river where it was shallow, climbed on to the bank on which I was, and searched around till he found a suitable patch of dry earth which he kicked up with his forefeet till it was loose and powdery; then picking up
( Contd.)
Last edited by Saktipada Panigrahi; 04-03-2019 at 11:47 AM.
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Elephants in Musth
(contd. from previous page)
... the dust in his trunk, he threw it over himself. After this, he went up to the steep earth bank, and selecting a clear spot on its perpendicular wall, drove its tusks into it, using his great mass to bury them deep, and stood leaning his weight against the bank. Luckily, I had a small pocket-telescope with me (the normal lens of my 35 mm camera screwed on to a special eyepiece, and most useful implement) and was able to watch entire operation closely.
As he stood, leaning his buried tusks, the compression of the attitude on the head and face caused the musth to flow out of the temporal glands, and no doubt the fact the pores in the skin over them have been freshly washed free of all clogging matter helped in this. I suppose elephants in musth get some relief by expressing the secretion from the tumid glands in this manner. After a while he leaned back, pulled his tusks out of the earth and sauntered away, and I noticed lumps of impacted clay sticking to his tusks, and realized at last what causes tuskers in musth to carry hard clay on their ivory."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 14 December 1969.
# The photograph of the lone tusker in musth has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Fish, Feathers and Oil : The Sunday Statesman : 19 May 2019
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FISH, FEATHERS AND OIL
" FISH as everyone knows, lives in the water and naturally the creatures that live by hunting them have to seek their prey beneath the surface, in rivers and lakes and estuaries. However, not all these hunters, particularly among the birds, swim submerged in hunting their prey.
Egrets and Herons and their tribes wade in the shallows, catching their victims with a lightning down-ward thrust of their beaks, their long, retracted necks being violently extended to power the movement.
Kingfishers and Raptorial fish-eaters ( such as Sea Eagles and Ospreys ) plunge down from the air at the surfacing fish, grabbing the prey in their beaks and talons, and Pelicans often hunt in company (as cormorants also do at times) driving the fish towards one another and scooping them up in their capacious beaks.
The Darter, however, is a true underwater hunter, and a bird that hunts alone. It drops quietly from its perch into the water with hardly so much as a splash, and goes scouting for fish under water, lifting its dagger-billed head and long, snaky, powerfully-kinked neck above the surface from time to time to breathe or to have a look around, or to swallow its catch - the popular name that it has, " Snake-bird ", come from the resemblance that it has then to a snake in the water raising its head above the surface.
It does not spear its prey, spitting it through on the pointed bill, as was once supposed but catches it like any other fish-eater, between its mandibles. It swallows its prey in the air, raising its head above the surface, and flicking the fish deftly into the air to catch it, usually head down and swallow it.
After a spell of hunting, it leaves the water and flies up to some convenient perch, an exposed branch of a waterside tree or a column or deadwood projecting from the surface, and spreading its ample wing and long tail, sits airing them. And when they are properly dry, it oils its plumage carefully, rubbing its bill over the gland just above the tail to smear it with oil, and then rubbing it all over its feathers.
A water-bird does not take kindly to overmuch oiling of its plumage, for once the delicate but firm inter-meshing of the hair-like bards that make up each feather gets clogged with oil, the bird cannot fly and loses the airiness of its feathers. It is because of this the pollution of the sea with waste oil from coastal factories kills off great numbers of oceanic birds. What is needed is just a little oil on the feathers, to keep the water from rendering them soggy, and not too much of it, and the oil-gland of the bird produces the right grade and quantity needed for this thin insulating film.
Cormorants (close relative of the Darter) have the same habit. After a spell of underwater hunting, they too sit atop exposed perches and hangout their wings to dry before oiling the plumage. But they lack dagger bill and long, strong snaky neck, and almost reptilian plumage pattern of the Darter."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 26 July 1970.
The photograph of a waterbird hanging out its wings for drying has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : A King among Fishers : The Sunday Statesman : 02 June 2019
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PIED KINGFISHER
" EDWIN Arnold was never a major poet. Even in India and as author of THE LIGHT OF ASIA he is, probably unfamiliar to most people today.But in the course of his classic on the Buddha's life he describes many Indian birds rather prettily and among them the Pied Kingfisher which he calls " the Pied Fish-Tiger ".
Not a specially happy appellation, I think. There are other birds that hunt fish which have the power and predatory features and fierceness that would fit the name better, the Osprey and the Fish-Owl, for instance, though I concede they are not pied black and white.
However, the fish would probably agree with the poet for there are few more inveterate fish-hunters. Perhaps this bird is the most piscivorous of the kingfishers, though it does at times take other small fry from water, it lives almost entirely on fishes mainly on the smaller kinds. It is never found away from water, and while it frequents lakes ans estuaries as well it is typically a bird of broad, fast-flowing rivers. I have never seen it at a pond, as I have seen others of its tribe.
The manner of hunting too is much more active and predacious than that of other kingfishers. It does not sit perched on some bank or bough overlooking water keeping a sharp watch for approaching prey, but flies low and swift over the water, and when it spots a rising fish, it hovers above it on quick-beating wings, hanging in the air very much in the manner of a Kestrel, and then plummets straight down on its victim. It may plunge a foot or more into the water to reach the unlucky fish, and it is not often that it misses its aim.
On this point, however, I am unable to agree entirely with other observers, who say it rarely fails to come up with prey. I have seen it come up empty-billed many times. Recently at the Periyar Sanctuary of Kerala, I had the opportunity to watch four of these kingfishers (two pairs, I think - this bird is often to be seen in pairs, separated by some distance while hunting) for a whole hour, one afternoon. Naturally I was not able to watch all the birds all the time, because they were hunting a considerable stretch of water and I could not observe the other birds while watching one of them. But from 27 plunges, only 17 were successful. Incidentally the bird in my picture (one of the four birds I watched at Periyar) is a male. The female Pied Kingfisher lacks the double necklace, having only one incomplete band of black across the white chest."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 23 August 1970.
#The photograph of the male Pied Kingfisher has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Monkeying in the deep : The Sunday Statesman : 7 July 2019
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MONKEYING IN THE DEEP
(Swimming ability)
" THE MACAQUES as a family, are good swimmers. The Rhesus, the most familiar monkey of the North, does not take to water, can even swim submerged for some distance. Once I saw a Rhesus plunge into the water and swim about 10 yards submerged before surfacing and have many times seen these monkeys actually preferring a short cut across water to skirting a large pool, when at some convenient point the farther bank was near. They are not afraid of deep water, but take care to avoid strong currents.
Many people must have read newspaper accounts of a big Rhesus Monkey that plunged into a lake to rescue a human child that had fallen in. I was unable to verify this story, but see nothing intrinsically impossible in it. An unreasoned, instinctive urge to rescue an infant of its own kind in similar circumstances might well have been extended to a human infant.
My picture will prove that the Bonnet Monkey, the commonest monkey of the South and a macaque, is also a strong swimmer and does not hesitate to carry its baby with it while swimming, riding high piggy back and not clasped to the abdomen as usual, naturally not! The she-monkey was crossing a deep, wide temple pond when I took the picture.
Nothing is known about swimming abilities of the other Macaques of India -
the pigtailed and stumptailed macaques of Assam and liontailed monkey of the Southern hills. But probably they can swim well. I was given an account of how a liontailed macaque swam across the deep pool beneath a waterfall in Courtallam (in which pool I was nearly drowned), by man who claimed to have watched the feat.
But do Langurs swim? I doubt they do. Of the four Langurs in our country, three (the Nilgiri black Langur, the Golden Langur and the Capped Langur) are highly localised forest monkeys of whose life we know little. The Golden Langur (presbytis qeei) occurs in the Bhutan side of Manas, but from enquiry I learnt it was not* to be found on the Indian side. That proves nothing. The Manas is a wide fast-flowing river that most animals might not care to cross.
But I doubt if Langurs swim. I have mentioned three highly restricted kinds of Langur, and the fourth, the Common Langur, is not only common but is also the only monkey with an All India distribution from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas, from Maharashtra to Assam. I have often watched it near water in many different forests in the country (for it is essentially a forest monkey) and though it drinks regularly, the caution of its approach to water and the way it hugs the land while drinking, preferring to drink from puddle near a lake or pond direct, suggests a distrust of water.
I wonder if some reader who has been more fortunate than I can tell me if he has actually seen a Langur in deep water, and if at a pinch it can swim some distance, say, when it has accidentally fallen into deep water. Many animals which seldom enters water can swim a few yards, inexpertly, if they must. Even I can."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 18 October 1970
* The Golden Langur (discovered in 1956) has subsequently been found in the adjoining and other forests of Assam in India. .
# The photograph of a She-Bonnet Monkey with baby riding on her back swimming and crossing a pond has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Wallowing in the mire : The Sunday Statesman : 4 August 2019
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Wallow in the mire
(Elephant)
" AFTER A BATH, especially after swimming across a river, Elephants love nothing better than to kick up the earth into a fine powder with their forelegs, and to dust themselves all over their gleaming bodies with the dry earth.Very young calves,and even older calves do not indulge in these dust-baths after a plunge into water but the sub-adults do.If there is a patch of mire handy,they proceed to it a and squirt the mud all over themselves and while cows also indulge in this slinging of mud over themselves it is the grown bulls that seem fondest of it, wallowing in the mire till they have acquired a regular plaster of it over their bodies, heads and limbs.
Obviously, a wallow in the mire is cooling and gratifying when the sun (which our elephants do not like) is hot especially in dry summer. But even when it is cloudy and the air is humid, as during the monsoons,elephants love a mud-lark. I have watched a herd of a dozen elephants spend over an hour in a shallow, muddy pool on an overcast September day picking up the mire in the crook of their trunk tips and slinging it over themselves and even their fellows. Only a young cow, with an infant calf (barely a week old) refrained from the orgy. Even Quite young calves will lie down and play in the their trunks to fling it over themselves till they are older.
As said, it is the bulls, especially the lone bulls (which feel no urge to follow the herd when it moves off) that indulge most zestfully in these mud-baths.Years ago I came upon a tusker that was a deep crimson all over except for a little white showing through on his tusks he had dusted himself with some dry fine, crimson earth after a good mud-bath. However, the muddiest elephant I have ever seen was a long bull I saw in the Bandipur Sanctuary of Mysore in October,1968.
He was behind a big bush, and it had been drizzling, and for a moment I thought he was a huge anthill wet with the rain. Then it occurred to me that a wet anthill would not gleam with oozing mud, and I looked again and saw the anthill moving. He was looking at us from behind that bush,and when we stopped he came out into the open for a closer look - a tusker so comprehensively plastered with mud that even his tusks were a dark glistening raw umber, that had evidently been enjoying a thorough roll in a patch of deep mire, about a furlong away.
My picture, in black-and-white though clear enough, does not adequately convey the muddiness of old Muddy as I saw him then.He was just a moving mass of clayey wet earth, with no surface detail, and with his features merging into one another because of their common, umber- coloured earth nesa.
Various reasons have been assigned for this elephantine love of mud-other animals,too,pig rhinos and wild buffaloes(and even tame ones),love a good wallow in the mire.All these animals have thick hides,and the elephant and rhino with the hide much creased in addition. Undoubtedly mud serves to cleanse their creased and pitted skin more thoroughly then water especially when coated on after a plunge in water, for it clings on till dry and then flakes off.The virtues of a good plaster of mud as a cutaneous tonic and palliative area known even to smooth thin-skinned humanity, but probably this logical, cause-and-effect reasoning dose not adequately cover the question. There is also the recreational and voluptuous enjoyment of a mud-bath to be considered."
- M. KRISHNAN
@ This was published on 28 March 1971
# The photograph of a massive tusker has not been reproduced here
Last edited by Saktipada Panigrahi; 09-08-2019 at 11:22 AM.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : Tiger, tiger, not burning bright :The Sunday Statesman:1 September 2019
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" THE TIGER, according to the experts, does not burn bright in the forests of night, and even by day its orange-ochre and white pelage boldly striped with black is obliterative serving to break up contour and merge with the streaky grass and bushes. In assessing the cryptic patterning of the tiger's coat two things should be remembered. First, most of the animals it preys on (deer, pig, cattle and the like) are colour blind so far as we know and can see things only in terms of black grey and white, somewhat like panchromatic film. Second at night when light levels are low and the tiger usually hunts even our colour sensitive eyes cannot readily distinguish between colours.
I have had considerable difficulty in spotting a leopard in the under-shrub and even been totally unable to make it out from near, but not a tiger. No doubt that is because of the tigers much larger size. But even when in heavy cover when it is only glimpsed through intervening foliage and twigs the tigers face has certain conspicuous features the circles of white around the eyes (the "sunspots") marked with black bars and spots the white whiskers framing the face and the white chin (closely spotted with black only near the mouth) its mask gives away the tiger when it looks up at one from cover. However when hunting or hiding it seldom looks up. It keeps its head lowered as if it knows in some dim instinctive way that by lowering its head its chin would no longer be visible,and that even its whiskers and "sunspots" would be less noticeable in the fore-shortened view. The white underside of the body and the white insides of the limbs heavily striped with black, are naturally not seen when the animal is in cover or crouching.
The other greater cats have no harlequin masks. The lion and the puma, the leopard and the jaguar, have less conspicuously white chins and whiskers and hardly any "sunspots". But if you wish to know how truly obliterative a tiger's seemingly vivid colouring is you have only to go to one of these modern zoos where they have a large open air enclosure, planted with tall grass and bushes and insulated by a deep moat into which they let out lions and tigers (sometime by turns). You will then see that in cover the seemingly dull, whole coloured tawny coat of the lion is much more readily seen than the striped coat of the tiger.
Another conspicuous feature of the tiger's pelage is the light coloured spots, almost white, at the back of each ear heavily rimmed with black. Many other animals of the cat family also have such ear-spots, but in none of them are they as flagrant as in the tiger. Even in the tiger, it is only when the animal is seen from behind or partly from behind, that the ear spots are so conspicuous. Why should there be any need for a tiger to be visible from behind?
The theory has been advanced that in the cats, the ear spots serve a function in aggressive displays, that the ears are turned around so far that their backs become visible from the front when the animal is threatening a possible adversary. With specific reference to the tiger, this theory may be discounted. At no time have I seen a wild or captive tiger (and some of the fresh-caught ones I have seen have been singularly savage and prone to aggressive displays) turn its ear round in this manner.
It is not necessary any longer in modern scientific natural history, to prove a function or to attribute a specific function for every morphological peculiarity noticed.
It could be that the remarkably flagrant ear spots of the tiger serve no purpose, but probably they do serve an important purpose, in enabling other tigers to follow a leading tiger when no communication by voice or displayed attitude is possible."
- M. Krishnan
# This was published on 16 May 1971.
@ The photograph of a tiger cub in the forest with white spots at the back of the ears has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Hazaribagh Sambar : The Sunday Statesman : 22 September 2019
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SAMBAR
(Browtine,Sore-patch)
" THE FEATURE of Haharibagh National Park is its Sambar. By day, they stay in deep cover, but with dusk come out to the roadsides and licks and the rare pools of water. In the course of three summers, in 1968,69 and 70 I have seen many hundreds of Sambar in Hazaribagh at night, and early in the morning and late in the evening, and while undoubtedly many were these animals I saw more than once, they were of all sizes, from young fawns to dark, burly old stags with impressively heavy antlers.
Two features about these Hazaribagh Sambars were especially noteworthy. Most of the Stags were in hard horn when I saw them, and in full-grown animals the 'browtine' was usually exceptionally long and heavy, though the antlers themselves were of medium size. This notable development of the brow tine is a feature of Sambar in parts of Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh ; I have not seen enough Sambar in Uttar Pradesh to be able to say if this is a feature of the animals there, too, but Sambar seen elsewhere in peninsular India did not display this development of the brow tine.
The second and more note-worthy, feature of Sambar here was that though I kept looking for it specially, in not a single animal did I notice a 'sore-patch'. The occurrence of the sore-patch in Sambar at the base of the throat,where it joins the chest in a symmetrical, median, bare extravasated patch of variable size, with a small, central, white-lipped tubercle when well developed) is something already discussed in this column years ago (23 August 1964). I do not propose to recapitulate that discussion here, but it may be said that the invariably symmetrical, median ventral location of the patch at the base of the neck, as well as the fact that in the same animal the sore- patch diminishes and increases in size, suggests a glandular origin for it - it may, for these very reasons, be also connected in some way with the nervous system. Anyway, the sore-patch is something peculiar to Sambar, not known in any other kind of deer.
Schaler thinks the sore-patch has a glandular origin, and suggests that it is probably connected with the rut in Sambar and serves to establish a scent- trail. I am unable to agree with the latter part of this view : I do not think the sore-patch has any sexual significance, for I have seen it on Sambar both in summer and in winter (November- January), and also on stags in velvet - I have even seen, and photographed, a heavily gravid hind with an extensive patch, and also hinds with very young fawns that displayed it - the hinds, not the young.
To return to Hazaribag , how is it that Sambar here are so unanimously free of the 'sore-patch' in February-March, when most of the stags are still in hard horn - when I have even seen stags following hinds and sniffing at their hind quarters? "
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 30 January 1972
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : THE JUNGLE CAT : The Sunday Statesman : 10 November 2019
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The Jungle Cat
" One of the animals long familiar to villagers where human settlements and agriculture adjoin scrub and forest, is the Jungle Cat, Felis Chaus to be specific - and, as will be apparent later in this note, there is need to be specific.
The earliest extant Tamil poetry, some 18 centuries old, has a brief vivid reference to it :
"The round-footed Jungle Cat
Waiting at dusk at the edge of Jowar-field.
Waiting with inexorable patience
For the atrutting red-watiled village
Rock to stray near."
I spent my boyhood in the scrub jungles and forest of what used to be the Tamilian and Telegu tracts of the Madras Presidency, and have often seen the Jungle Cat. Later in the Deccan, I saw it again, many times - once, a Jungle Cat got somehow into my pigeon-house and slaughtered my racing homers, as most predators will when in the midst of thronging prey, and after watching it for a while as it crouched in a corner and spat at me, I let it go. I let it go. I mention this past experience only to say that in my youth and prime I knew the animal well, and had no difficulty in telling it apart from domestic cats run wild (which is also quite common in the scrub-jungles around villages), even when I could get only a brief glimpse of it. For one thing,it was twice as big as its domestic cousin turned feral,with a comparatively short tail ringed with black at the tip, standing almost as tall as a jackal.
During the past few years,however, when I had occasion to see and even closely observe jungle cats in forests all over the peninsula, and in UP. West Bengal and Assam,I have not always been able to tell it apart from feral cats with certainly. Perhaps it is that with this greater opportunity and closer observation I am finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile the animals actually seen with textbook descriptions of Felis chaus.
The textbooks describe the Jungle Cat as an animal with a foot-long tail and about 18 inches high, long-legged and varying in colour from "sandy grey to yellowish grey" (a ground-colour difficult to comprehend) with the tail ringed with black towards the end and black tipped; the ears are said to be reddish, "ending in a small pencil of black hairs",and while there may be vestigial stripes on the underside and flanks,the body is unmarked. The weight is given as from 10 to 12 pound. The Jungle Cats I saw varied from fulvous grey to a grey with a distinct red tinge to it (a ferruginous grey) in ground colour, and sometimes a neutral grey, with the chin, throat, insides of the limbs and the chest and abdomen much paler.Adults animals did not show any patterning on the body, but carried the characteristic rings at the end of the tail and the black tip~ the tail was comparatively short, and noticeably so in short adults.
The ears always showed the pointed tuft of short, dark hairs. The iris varied in colour from yellow ochre to a pale green, and was not always pale green as stated in the text- books. It will be seen that except for the marked ferruginous ground colour of many Jungle Cats seen (especially in the Nilgiris and in West Chanda in Maharashtra) there is no discrepancy in colouring between the taxonomic descriptions and the specimens I observed."
- M. KRISHNAN
This was published on 17 September 1972
# The close-up photograph of a Jungle Cat has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : THE GIANT SQUIRREL : The Sunday Statesman :29 December 2019
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THE GIANT SQUIRREL
" The big, handsome Giant Squirrel was a regular visitor to the Range Office at Kargudia in the Mudumalai Sanctuary, during September last. She was wild alright, and completely free to go where she pleased, but over the years she had been accustomed to take tidbits, like crisp biscuits and nuts, from the men there.
In the mornings she usually stayed in the forest around, and could be called up to the trees in the Range office compound with a judicious display of something she specially fancied,but this worked only when she had an appetite;sometimes,when she had already had a good feed off teak or Terminalia tomentosa fruits,or the young leaf of Garuga pinnata or Anogeisus latifolia, she would stay put in the treetops and no amount of calling or the proffer of inducements would bring her down.
I did not try to offer her anything myself; but left this to the men who said she knew then and trusted them, and confined myself to the photography I was using a 10-inch lens focused by guessing the distance and setting the lens on its footage-scale,and a muffled flash to illumine the dense shadows~I had quite enough to keep my fully occupied without also trying to make friends with a stranger.
However, I did notice that the squirrel's readiness to answer the summons of those who claimed that she was actually fond of them was much dependent on how hungry she was, but it could be she did know and recognise them.
This squirrel had a grownup daughter with her when I saw and photographed her last September.The young doe was quite as long as her mother and every bit as richly and beautifully coloured, but much less substantial, and was under a year old.
On occasion the younger squirrel accompanied her mother to the Range Office compound, but was much more wary and shy:she generally kept to the treetops and would not come down the bole to take the nuts or biscuits offered, though sometimes, when some tit bit had fallen to the ground, she would race down, pick it up, and race up the tree again to eat it from a safe height.
When her mother was eating some sizeable morsel, hanging head down and gnawing the food held in her paws (these squirrels, all squirrels in fact, seldom eat food held in their paws when facing the treetop~ when they are going up the bole), at times the younger squirrel would come down to her and nibble the food held in the maternal paws. I was impressed by the tolerance shown by the older squirrel towards her daughter.
I mentioned how squirrels hang head down when nibbling food held in the paws.There is a reason for this. They hang on to the bark of the tree-trunk with their outspread hind legs their sharp, curved claws cannot support their body weight.
Quite often a Giant Squirrel nibbles food held in the paws while hanging head down from a branch, with the long tail pendent from the other side counterpoising the paws and head, and the body weight balanced securely across the bough on the belly. But when hanging down from a tree trunk, the grip of the dug-in hind claws supports the weight of the squirrel, eased no doubt by the fact that the entire body is closely applied to the bole along the abdomen and chest.
I had an acute reminder how efficient the grip of the hind claws can be when I was photographing the big doe.Her daughter was up a tree behind me and decided to share the food. She took a short- cut via my bent head to where her mother was~suddenly I felt something heavy and alive land on my thin-thatched dome,then felt the sharp prick of the claws as the young squirrel took off from by head to the tree trunk on which her mother was.For minutes afterwards,the blood came up in droplets out of the punctured wounds on my nose and scalp.
Watching these squirrels,which do not get un-interestingly tame when not caged,I thought how attractive a feature of many of our sanctuaries they could be, if the officials in charge to not try to tame to tidbits and near human presence, as at the Mudumalai Sanctuary. Giant Squirrels are found all over India in the deciduous forests, and are to be found in most sanctuaries."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 8 April 1973.
#The photograph of the Giant Squirrel has not been reproduced here.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M.Krishnan : THE OUTLAW : The Sunday Statesman : 19 January 2020
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THE OUTLAW
( DHOLE )
"EVERYONE knows the Wolf of the fable which, seeking justification for killing it, blamed the kid drinking downstream with fouling the water.
Somewhat similarly, men who have invaded their immemorial homes and brought the jungle and scrub under the plough kill the wild animals, from the field-rat to the elephant, on the grounds that they are crop-raiders - the larger harbivores and the carnivores of course, constitute a menace to humanity or might do so, and so must be shot down. It is ironic that with these justifications for killing wild animals sustained over many generations in our country the only creature on whose head a general government reward was set was a beast that never has caused man's crop any damage, or caused him harm in any other way.
Actually the reward was paid not on the production of the head but of the brush of the Dhole popularly miscalled "Wild Dog" though it is much more distantly related to the domestic dog than the Wolf and the Jackal. Stray cases of Dhole killing domestic calves have been reported, but from diligent inquiry of herdsmen in places like Moyar border in the Western Ghats, Periyar in Kerala, west Chanda in Maharashtra and Mandla in Kanha, where both Dhole and cattle are common, I am satisfied that the killing of domestic stock by these predators is so rare that it can safely be ignored as factor provoking reprisals. Being through going carnivores, Dhole do not raid crops, and they have never been known to attack men. Why, then, were they singled out for being proscribed as vermin and a general reward being offered for their destruction?
The reason is plain to see, though it has not been specified by anyone so far. In the days of Sahiblog,Shikar was the one great solace and pastime of white men bearing their tropical burden in India, and quite a few Indians were (and still are) dedicated to the pastime. To shoot deer, buck and other "game animals" was (and is) the consuming passion of these noble sportsmen, especially those of them employed in the Indian Army and political services, and when the reach their favourite hunting grounds after week of strenuous preparations and eager anticipation, they sometime found the game sparse and fugitive because hunting Dhole had been in the field ahead of them. Later in this note, I shall return to the point, but the general belief is that when dhole enter a forest, the herbivores quit the area in a body. Now this was insufferable, an unlicensed rival hunting game in the hunts of these sportsmen and, worse still, doing it more efficiently. So the Dhole was proscribed.
Everywhere, in every period, men have sought pious, or at least plausible, justification for their capital decrees, and the reason given for outlawing the Dhole was that these pestilent predators would, unless kept sternly in check, kill off the beautiful deer and the other beautiful game-animals. Further, the mode of hunting practiced by Dhole was condemned, anthropomorphically as cruel and inhuman, and this provided an added excuse for their slaughter.
There is no need to argue the point tediously. Two self-evident and conclusive facts will suffice to prove my point. First, for thousands of years before sportsmen came forward to save the game (their game) from the hated predator, deer and other herbivores and Dhole have co-existed in India without any dwindling of the population of the former. Second, only men, and no other predators, have been responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the rapid, large-scale decline of the wild flora and fauna, both here and abroad.
True that Dhole do tear down their quarry and consume it piecemeal as they chase it, but they cannot hunt animals much larger than themselves any other way. A big Dhole weighs some 18 kg. and Chital, Pig and Sambar (their main prey) weigh from three to twelve times as much. On two occasions have closely watched Dhole killing, an adult Chital stag once and an adult Sambar hind the other time and in both instances the victim died in a few seconds, though its true that its death was brought about by many tearing mouths.
Tribal hunters who use nooses and hooks hidden in baits to kill deer and antelopes, inflict much greater and longer agony on their victims, and we are certainly right in prohibiting such cruel forms of hunting by our brethren, but it is not for us to try, anthropomorphically, to be wiser and more merciful than nature, and to take sided and interfere with the balance of nature. But for Dhole, Chital and Pig would have over-run the land in many tracts, and brought about the end of herbivores by exhausting the fodder, for example in the Masinagudi area of the Mudumalai sanctuary.
I have seen deer grazing un-concernedly while a party of Dhole trotted past -- more to the point, this indifference of the prey to the dreaded predator on occasion has been recorded by some of the old time shikaris, by the very men who built up the governmental prejudice against the Dhole. Of course it is true that much oftener the prey do panic and scatter when hunting Dhole arrive on the scene, but their fight is only temporary and only to areas immediately around where, probably, there is better cover. when not breeding, Dhole are much given to wandering over considerable territory in packs and frequently shift their hunting grounds, and if everywhere their prey abandoned their homes and escaped from them, the Dhole would have died of starvation long ago and the prey have no homes left. Moreover, having exquisite noses and hunting their quarry mainly by ground-scent, tiring it out over a long chase by virtue of their superior stamina and not by superior speed, Dhole should have no difficulty in escaping prey, and flight per se does not insure a better chance of survival to the prey. Finally, all close observers must have noticed that while the presence does panic and scatter the bprey, they do not leave the area en masse.
Even today, even in sanctuaries where all the animals are supposed to be protected, men kill or try to kill Dhole on sight I have seen sanctuary officials going after Dhole with a loaded rifle in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Mysore. The cause of conservation is not helped, bu only handicapped, by such partisan and traditionally implanted prejudices# in those who have the running of our sanctuaries."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 03 June 1973
# Such prejudices are no longer permitted in National Parks and Tiger Reserves now.
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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : The Cat that almost was : M.Krishnan : The Sunday Statesman : 23 Feb 2020
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The Cat that almost was
(SMALL INDIAN CIVET)
TWO months ago, I ate a variety of mango sedulously cultivated in the Deccan, in far away Madhya Pradesh. No one knows how and why these local fancies and preferences spread out centrifugally across the country.
And it what was the vogue in ratters in Anantapur a hundred years ago had extended to rest of India, we would have few cats in our homes. We would have CIVET-CATS, instead
Even only 25 years ago, when I was living in the Deccan and kept dogs and milch-goats and racing homers, a kindly old lady who lived next door used to deplore my taste in pets. We lived from harvest to harvest in those days, and stored grains and pulses and gram for the year in enormous earthen-ware jars as tall as man - and naturally we had to be on our guard against rats. My neighbour conceded the utility of my goats, but was critical of my dogs and pigeons and the dogs, perversely were very fond of her "What good are these big clumsy dogs?" she would ask. "they are much too large to follow a rat through drains and narrow passages and a rat has only to climb up to a shelf to be safe from them. Why don't you have the wits to get yourself a Civet-Cat? With a Civet in the house you need never to be bothered with rats".
Then she would tell me of her younger days and how she like many others there, kept Civets to keep the house free of rats. She assured me that taken in hand young, a Civet can safely be given the run of the house and would not run away when grown as a Mongoose will. It was lean, quiet and affectionate, and peerless as a ratter. The trouble was getting it in the first place: if only young Civets were as easily available as kittens, no one would keep cats.
I have no personal experience of keeping Civets, but can well understand their exceptional qualifications as useful and dependable pets - it is the small Indian Civet that I am writing of, of course. Years ago, a wilder and more nocturnal creature, a Palm-Civet, took up residence in the many layered tile of my kitchen roof, and lived there for years till the old roof collapsed and was replaced with a concrete slab.
Somehow, the potential of the Civet as a valuable and arrestingly attractive domestic animal does not seem to have been investigated outside the Deccan and the surrounding tracts. In the old days, before synthetic perfumes were produced in such profusion, Civets were kept in barrow, barred cages, for the sake of the secretion from their subcaudal glands which was scraped off and refined into scent, Civet. This was valued not only for its perfume, but also for its alleged therapeutic virtue. But the Civet-Cat was seldom kept and prized as a pet. Zeuner does not even mention it in his History of Domesticated Animals.
By nature,Civets are less strictly carnivorous than cats, and feed on variety of things - insects,grubs,crustaceans,birds when they can catch them, and such reptiles and small mammals as they can overpower, and also many wild fruits and even, I suspect, some tubers. A captive specimen I used to know was fond of bananas. Obviously such an omnivorous animal is not hard to feed and rear, and since it tends to stay where it grew up, returning home even if occasionally it goes away on a voyage of discovery, a Civet shall be easy to keep and can be given the run of the house instead of being cooped up in a cage. and it is not an animal that is demanding and wants to be noticed and petted from time to time, like some other domestic pets.
I have watched Civets hunting in the grass and shallow puddles of the borders of a lake; frogs, perhaps crabs, and insects were what they were obviously hunting. I have seen them eating the fruit of Carisa, and even of a Lantana, and other small jungle berries. Once I saw a Civet up a jamun tree that was in fruit; Civets can certainly climb trees if the want to, but I do not know whether it had climbed the tree for the ripe fruit, or for some other reason. It saw me when I saw it, climb down the tree, and made off."
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 26 August 1973
#The painting of a small Indian Civet has not been reproduced here.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. KRISHNAN : An in-between Bird : The Sunday Statesman ; 16 February 2020
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COUCAL
" THE COUCAL belongs to the Cuckoo tribe : it is one of those ground-cuckoos that do not foist their eggs on other birds, but laboriously build nests and hatch and their young. It is quite a common bird, being found both in forests and in countryside, and even in cities where there are trees and bushes, and it is by no means inconspicuous, a big blackbird the size of a crow, with a heavy corvine bill and a long, broad tail with the back and rounded wings alone chestnut.
The name by which it is known to many people, CROW PHEASANT, reflects both its long tail and addiction to ground cover. Not that it walks easily, as a pheasant does: it is much more at home in trees, but it is often to be found in low bushes and even on ground, and given to hiding in bush cover. But even when when it is hiding, its low booking voice gives it away.
In spite of being so common, most people hardly seem to know it.They have the oddest notions about it, and think it is some sort of crow not much given to flying. People will believe anything you may tell them about it - I myself believed that it is a lucky omen to see a Coucal when setting out to do anything. It is an "age-old superstition" entirely of my own manufacture, and in places where I established it 30 years ago, they now tell me this is an immemorial traditional belief!
Perhaps the oddest thing said about the bird by one of our official wildlife experts, when I was showing a party of foreigners (one of whom is a knowledgeable ornithologist) around a sanctuary. A Coucal happened to fly across the forest road ahead of their jeep, and the expert, wishing to impress his guests, turned solemnly to them: " That is the only endemic pheasant known in South India" he informed them, " and its modification is still a mystery".
But of course its nesting is no mystery. It builds a big, rounded nest deep inside a bush or a bamboo clump, and hunt painstakingly for grasshoppers and other plump insects with which to feed its young. Apparently, such insects stripped off the chitinous limbs and other hard parts are both digestible and nourishing- even the grain-loving finches feed their nestlings on such prey.
As bird-watchers keen on garden birds know, the Coucal is a voracious and omnivorous feeder. It lives on fruits, such insect or reptilian prey as it can catch, and eggs and young of other and smaller birds - it is an inveterate nest-robber.
Its call is a deep, sonorous, repeated hoot, which Dewar compares to the voices of some owls, but I do not think there is much in common - owls have less less sonorous and metallic hoots, and to my ear the call nearest the Coucal's is no bird voice but the joyous, early morning hoop of the langur, though of course the two are once distinguishable.
There is the only call of the bird you will find recorded in textbooks, but it has another and more private voice for intimate occasions. Waiting for a sambar stag in a primitive but more effective hide out a mango tree, I had the privilege of eavesdropping on a pair of Coucals seated on a branch just below me. They sat in close company, and indulged in a low, guttural conversation, punctuated with side way tilts of their heads, a muttering irresistibly reminiscent of two querulous old men grumbling together! They must have been a courting pair, I think, and what I overheard was their whispered sweet nothings to each other! "
- M. Krishnan
This was published on 19 August 1973
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