Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: VOICE OF THE DUSK: M.Krishnan : The Sunday Statesman 05-January-2014
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Voice of the dusk

(Nightjar)
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" WHEN the sun is set and outskirts of the village is lost in the gathering darkness, the NIGHTJARS wake up from their daytime repose and bestir themselves. There is much 'chuck-chuck-chuckering', calls melt together as the birds begin to answer one another and ghostly forms circle around on wings that are soundless, whether sailing or flapping. One evening last week I sat on a clearing outside a village, still as a rock beneath me, watching the circling and settling nightjars, almost invisible in that light even on the wing, and listening to their voices.

Those who associate fluty tones with birdsong will be pleasantly surprised at the soft rhythm of these voices of the lonely dusk. There is no resonance or "full-throated ease" in a nightjars call, it is a subdued 'chuck-chuck-chukr-r-r-r' that has been justly likened to the sound of a stone sent scudding across ice. But it has a sure rhythm in it that is all the more enchanting for its lack of emphasis; it is so much or so naturally the voice of uncertain greyness. He who has not been alone and listened to the chorus of nightjars and has not inhaled the sudden perfume of the wild night-flowering jasmine does not know the charm of dusk in the Indian plains.

However, as I sat listening to the nightjars that evening, more prosaic thoughts passed through my mind. Some two years ago, when I wrote in these columns about birdsong at dawn, a correspondent has suggested that it was some actinic property in the early night that stimulated birds organically to sudden and unhappy song - I had heard the theory before, but I have been observing the vocal behaviour of birds whenever I could during the past two years and am now convinced that actinic stimulation (the theory is really as old as Vedas) cannot account comprehensively for birdsong in our country.

Crepuscular birds, nightjars in particular, greet the coming darkness as diurnal birds greet the dawn, with wings and voices. More strictly, nocturnal birds are vocal and very active for a brief spell after emerging from their daytime retreats and gregarious day-birds, like sparrows and mynahs in September-October, are specially noisy and keep shifting around till it is quite dark when roosting and some like crows and lapwing, invariably call and fly when the moon is bright. It was such things that I thought of that evening.

When it is quite dark and night has definitely arrived, the chorus of nightjars dies down and the birds appear to drift away from the open gathering ground. Their huge eyes are admirably suited to seeing through the dark, just as their softy-barred plumage and owlishly silent wings, and the ear to ear gape of their mouths, are suited to their hunting of night-flying insects. However, as anyone who has travelled across the country roads at night knows, quite a substantial part of the night is spent by these birds on the ground, squatting in the dust of the roadside.

You see a pair of ember-red eyes in the glare of your headlamps, eyes that seemed buried in the dust of the road, then you see the mottled, indistinct form of the bird squatting low and then, as the relentless tyres are about to crush it under, it rises on soundless wings to go floating ahead of the car, or low overhead, the sudden white bar on each wing proclaiming its identity.

Sometimes it flies so low overhead that you feel you can reach up and pluck it out of the air - in fact, I have known a nightjar so captured. And not always is its last-second swerve infallible; once I saw the bird hit the side of the mudguard and fall back on to the road.

Motorists who know only the hard-surfaced and tarred main roads will probably be less familiar with the bird, but sometimes it is to be seen even on such roads when the scrub adjoins the roadway and there is dust enough at the sides. Why it sits so constantly on the roadways I do not know; other birds, like finch-larks, also love the earth-road, and perhaps the loose-plumaged nightjars likes a frequent dust bath - or perhaps it finds the road convenient for the hawking of insects. The only thing I can say is that if I had to spend much time reposing on the road, I too would prefer the cushioning dust to the metalled surface.

-M. Krishnan



This was first published on 2 October 1955 in The Sunday Statesman


#One photograph not reproduced here.