Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Very interesting incident. I would not have thought of catching a curlew. However, I had thoughts of catching a peacock. When I was in class 7th, a peacock had come to our colony. Since the Principal's house had a much larger compound, it was moving around there and was perched on a wall and was calling loudly. I could creep close to the wall and was about 3-4 feet away. Our neighbours screamed that the peacock will gouge my eyes which scared me and I turned back.

M. Krishnan's prose is beautiful. Love reading it. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

" I was far from the recent earthquake that rocked eastern India, but a correspondent has asked me for opinion on appoint. " Several people to whom I have spoken mentioned that just before the earthquake the other day birds in their respective localities were unusually active and restless," he says, and asks if there is anything in this or if I think the observations of his informants is suspect. He adds, " After all, birds are usually active here by 5 o' clock at this time of the year. Dawn is about to break. The earthquake took place at 5:13."

A truly interesting point, but I must confess that I have no experience of earthquakes. However, I think I know the answer to this query. No, I do not think there is any point in suspecting the observation of a number of independent witnesses. And why should these people ascribe the excitement of the birds that they noticed to an apprehension on the oncoming shock rather than to the everyday dawn? That is the question, really, and it provides its own answer.
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Tumbled out of bed at a too early hour, a number of people noticed an avian activity that they usually miss, or else half hear without seeing, through drowsy curtains- naturally, in the confusion of their rude awakening and shock following it, they subconsciously exchange the priority of avian excitement and the earthquake which they presumed was the cause. This seems a reasonable explanation to me, because my faith in humanity does not permit me to believe that a number of people in different localities (unrelated even by membership of some faddist cult) were all up and about at 5 am on 22nd March, solely out of deplorable habit.

However, it could be that the birds did really apprehend the earthquake. In spite of the vast experimental work and the voluminous theories on the instinctive behaviour of animals (especially birds) that feature recent science, we are not very sure of the scope and directions of their perceptions.

In his detailed and authoritative note (in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. 50, No.3) on the Great Assam earthquake of 1950, EP Gee has only this brief observation to make on bird life, "It is difficult to estimate the destruction caused among birds. Occurring as it did under nightfall, when birds would be roosting, the earthquake must have paralvsed some of them in fear and swept them with the forest to their doom." The possibility of birds having advance intimation of seismic disturbances does not arise in this case. Mr.Gee estimates the loss of terrestrial wildlife must have been staggeringly heavy.

We know that birds are sensitive to atmospheric conditions like heat and humidity and to light. They are usually reliable harbingers of seasonal changes. In many parts of India, the arrival of Pied Crested Cuckoo foretells rainy weather, and each year I date the official commencement of summer by the stern ring of purpose in the noontide voice of Coppersmith. Cannot birds also foretell, by a few minutes at least, a heavily brooding earthquake?

That brings us back to starting point, and again I am acutely conscious of my ignorance. It seems to me that here there is an unforced occasion for the technique that was my standby through so many university examinations, when no inkling of the answer to the question inspired me. I know nothing about earthquakes, but so what? I KNOW ABOUT FOREST FIRES. Let me tell you about forest fires.

Many of the forest fires I studied were major conflagrations that swept across entire hillsides devastating thousands of tons of desiccated fodder grass and even valuable timber. There were no firelines in those hill-jungles.

Following painfully in the wake of some of these fires, looking for the animal victims, I found only one dead snake. It was very dead and it seemed likely that it had died of burns and nothing else, for it was in a patch of scorched grass. Heat is one thing that can kill a snake at once and all along its length.

The other animals have seemed to have escaped, in spite of the pace of the wind-sped fires. The literature I have read about forest fires (largely fictional) suggests that in the face of blazing common danger mutual animosities are forgotten (a thing that is not at all unlikely, for the confusion of large beat, predator and prey sometime emerge side by side) and if there is any water nearby, the animals make for it. It was during a comparatively minor scrub fire, far from water, that I had the good fortune to witness the way animals react to sudden and swift danger.

I was with a party of guns having the bush-dotted cover beaten for pig. The scrub was level and clad only in ankle-high grass in the more open places, but clumps of bushes and rock dotted flatness and along the dry, sandy stream beds there was heavy cover (mostly belts of wild date palm). There were pig in the beats, but somehow they sensed where the guns lay in wait and avoided them, a few affording shots that were ingloriously missed. As we drove to the scene of the last beat it was long past lunchtime, everyone was tired and hungry, and tempers were frayed.

One of the beaters noticed the fire first. It was advancing towards us on a wide front, coming very fast and low. There was a patch of fairly open cover between us and the fire, and this ran past the road on which our cars were halted, some half-a-mile downwards- by retreating rapidly the guns could get to the end of the patch and be ready for the fire-beaten animals.

To me (who does not shoot) that seemed a mean thing to do, and I told my companions so.I also referred to the truce between wild beasts that is said to prevail during fires and floods, and drew obvious inferences. They left me behind in a lorry, with only its massive driver for company(a man whose rugged bulk lent the three-ton chassis a certain slimness), and departed in haste to their evil assignation.

Our lorry was safe, in an open plot of sand, but I have an old-fashioned dislike of being blown to pieces, and so laboriously climbed a tree some 30 yards away. The driver whose mass and philosophy discouraged simulation, sat in his seat with stoic resignation.

The fire was approaching at a great pace and was now quite near. It was a hasty, light-footed fire that hurried low over the crackling grass, leaving bushes in the patch unscathed, but the smoke rendered visibility confused. I watched narrowly for escaping wildlife, but saw nothing. Then the fire passed us, jumped across the road and soon racing away from us. It was then I noticed something scudding through the unburnt grass towards the line of fire and smoke. A hare leaped effortlessly over the flaming grass and bounded away through the burnt stubble towards a green bush- a minute later I saw another hare repeat the move.

Then a small leopard (it was known that the beat might hold a leopard) came streaking through the line of fire and crossed the burnt grass into the green cover in a grey flash- one of the guns told me later that he had also seen it, and both the driver and I had a clear view.

Nothing else came our way, but what we had seen was remarkable enough. The beast seeking escape from the flames actually ran into it and past the line of fire, so gained the safety of burnt grass and green bush cover. It was much the sensible thing to do in the circumstances- perhaps animal react differently when the fire is slower and deadlier, as in forest fires I cannot say whether intelligence or instinct guided their escape, but doubt if I would have had the sense to do what they did had I been caught up in that fire. I may have realised the safety of rapidly burnt grass only after the fire had pursued and overtaken me."
- M.Krishnan

This was first published on 4 April 1954 in The Sunday Statesman

*Two paragraphs not reproduced here.
**The sketch of a hare leaping over the flaming grass not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : Exercise in Barbet-watching : The Sunday Statesman : 12 April 2015
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EXERCISE IN BARBET-WATCHING

"ALTHOUGH I admire Wordsworth greatly, I am unable to see quite eye to eye with pundits over some of his poems, particularly the much-vaunted 'Solitary Reaper', which strikes me bathetic in places and sustained by mere euphony with no underlay or thought. And the other day, standing in a hollow between two hills that rang with the never-ending " koturrr, koturrr, koturrr" of the 'Small Green Barbets' I knew at once what was wrong with the poem.

O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound

When a valley overflows with sound like that, you don't need to listen -- what you need is cotton-wool, to plug your ears with!

Few birdcalls are more characteristic of low-elevation hill jungles in the South than that of this Barbet. It is a predominantly green bird all right, though brown on the head, but it is not small, it is a mynah-sized and very chunky in build, with a square, top-heavy head. Its call is so penetrating that you can hear it a furlong away, and it can keep up its persistent, unvaried "koturrr" for 10 minutes on end and then, it is a sociable bird, not much given to lone calling, and what you hear all day in the jungles is not one Barbet but a congregation of them calling and answering, one taking up when the other gives over!

In a nullah flanked by 'gulmavu' (Machllus macrantha) trees in the fruit, I found dozens of Small Green Barbets and was able to observe them from close by. In a tree holding a dozen birds, only a few, usually only one or two would call. From another tree some 50 yards away, there would be an answering call, then from still another tree, and then the chorus would be kept up full blast for 10 or 15 minutes. Then suddenly, as if on a prearranged signal, the birds would give up and a blessed silence would descend on the place. But not for long. Presently, another Barbet would initiate the chorus again and in no time at all the hillsides would be echoing the calls.

The most familiar of our Barbets, the flamboyant little Coppersmith, which you can hear all over the plains of India just now, jerks his head as it comes out with its endless "tonk, tonk, tonk" -- this makes it difficult to place the bird from its call. The Ceylon Green Barbet (which too has a "koturrr" call) is said to close its beak and quiver its head strongly while calling. The Small Green Barbet has its own way of rendering "koturrr".

Over a week I studied several of these birds calling from a mere 15 feet away or else through a small telescope and am quite definite on the point. As with other major Barbets, the call begins with a loud, long "krrrrrrr" on an ascending scale: then the bird settles down to its "koturrr" call, some birds (timed with a watch, of course) coming out with 64 calls a minute, others (especially in the mornings) with only 56 calls, but once a second is accurate enough. The bill is closed while calling and there is some movement of the head, but that rolls the rs in the "koturrr" isa noticeable and powerful pulsation of the chin and the upper throat -- the skin over this area (what would be the skin over the larynax in a man) vibrates like the tymmpanum of a drum, a vibration that is so pronounced that in profile the chin is blurred by the quick, up-and-down throbbing, like a plucked violin string. The syrinx or voice-box is much lower down in a bird, and I take it that the Barbet's call also originates in the syrinx, like most birdcalls -- when it is rolled and given its peculiar ventriloquial and penetrating quality by the throbbing of the chin and upper throat.

Incidentally, I did not see any of these birds eat anything except fruits, but the sort of negative evidence proves nothing, and I believe they do take in insect fare ( all fig-eaters do willy-nilly! ) and perhaps even other animal food.

At the end of my week of Barbet-watching, I had occasion to reflect on the remarkable adaptability of man. By that time I had got so used to the din around me that I had to look at a Barbet to know that it was calling. And when I left the place, I actually missed the chorus that I had been hearing every day and I thought of Wordsworth again:

The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more. "

-M. Krishnan

This was first published in on 17 May 1959 in The Sunday Statesman

#The photograph of the Barbet not reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : A Jungle Mystery : The Sunday Statesman : 19 April 2015
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A JUNGLE MYSTERY

" THE first time I saw a Sambar hind with parallel scars down the flank, I did not give the matter another thought. Three days later, in the same block of forest, I saw her again; only after she had tripped daintily away, pausing momentarily to give me a snapshot before disappearing behind a clump of bamboo, did I remember a detail -- the Sambar I had first seen had the scars on the right flank, but this one had the marks on the left side and, moreover, had only two lines scored on her skin.

A week later I saw a third hind with the same kind of scars on the flank. Undoubtedly this was a different animal from the two seen earlier; neither of those had the raw, red sore patch on the throat that most adult Sambar in most places have, but this one had a glaring throat patch (incidentally, no definite and conclusive explanation of the cause of these sores seems to have been provided so far). All three hinds had well-shrunk, healed scars with the skin showing dark and hairless along the lacerations.

That evening I discussed the mystery with Bomma, the Kurubar tracker, and a local officer. After all, they belonged to the place and might know its secrets.

Beyond clearing his throat noisily, Bomma had nothing to say. The officer, however, made up for this by providing the choice of two explanations. First, he said the scars might have been caused by the spiky giant bamboo that abounded the jungle. Then he pointed out that this was not unlikely. The slender, villainous, steel-tough hooks of the bamboo scratch the human skin but not the hide of Deer; anyway they wouldn't have left behind a set of short, longitudinal, parallel scars; the bamboo could be dangerous all right and split a man right through if he rushes blindly through a clump, but it claws neither man nor beast. So what if it wasn't bamboo? He then said it was a Stag.

I had noticed the marks on the Sambar seemed weird but, significantly, no stag had inflicted those marks on them. Stags are quite rough in their courting, and often furrowed their mates with tips of their antlers but what he was suggesting was fantastic and I didn't even have to say that it would be a complaisant hind, indeed, that would wait for a stag to inflict three or four "furrows" along her side.

From the first, I wondered if those marks on the Sambar were the results of a predator's claws -- a Panther or a Tiger. But how come no less than three hinds in that limited block carried those healed scars? An immature or incapacitated Tiger, perhaps, sojourning in that forest some two months previously?

The next morning Bomma and I came across a big Stag that carried the same kind of claw marks, only this time the wound was fresh and bleeding, high up though, almost on the rump. It was obvious that the Stag was in pain but it bolted at the sight of us.

I don't think a Panther, particularly the smallish kind of Panther found in those parts, could have attempted to tackle the Stag. There was a Tiger in the jungle, a three-quarters grown tiger, whose lean body and proportionately big feet and head betrayed his immaturity even in the brief glimpse I had him. But if he was the cause of these claw marks, how was it that only the Sambar of the forest carried these raking scars and not the Chital, or Pig or other animals that were more common there?"

-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 31 May 1959 in The Sunday Statesman

#The photograph of a Sambar hind not reproduced here.
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Note:
Madam Shyamala's photograph of Sambar posted on 03-03-2015 under 'Mammals' column may be of much interest to the viewers.
-SaktiWild

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