Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"THERE are three wells around my compound, just outside, in the territories of neighbours.The brackish water deep down in them is not potable, but my neighbours use it for their kitchen-gardens. They have dug irrigation channels from the wells to the plots of vegetables, with steep earth banks and miniatures dams to regulate the flow of the precious fluid. Frogs, tadpoles, water-boatmen, mole-crickets, and a variety of worms, grubs and flying insects inhabit this region and recently a White-breasted Kingfisher* has taken up residence in my backyard from where it can command a comprehensive view of the aqueducts.

It has many perches here, and shifts from one to another, but its favourite seat is at one end of a clothesline, in the shade of foilage. It sits inert and slumped and seems wholly lost in moody introspection-but in fact it is watching for lesser life in the inundated field of vision. Other birds that sit up for their prey adopt a similar attitude in vigil, rollers, bee-eaters, buzzards. The concealing value of such repose is obvious even to colour-sensitive human eyes. I have to look about me to locate this kingfisher in spite of the dazzling contrasts of maroon and blue and white in its plumage. Vivacity, even a perky stance, undoubtedly catches the eye; our dusky robins prove the truth of this.

This kingfisher has little fear of men, or else it is so absorbed in its watch for small fry that it does not notice my ponderous approach. If I do not make straight for it but observe a certain circumspection and silence, I can get to within three yards of its perch without alarming it (incidentally, what matters is a slow approach without jerky movement rather than silence-the bird seems indifferent to my whistling). It is then that I see how brilliantly it is coloured, and it is wide awake for all its slouched stillness.

I venture too near and it is away in a vivid streak, with a hash cackle. The great sword bill, sheathed in immobility and shade when the bird is sitting, flashes redly in flight, followed by the blue and white of the wing and tail. It flies straight to the well, then dips sharply and alights on the well-post, and is once more lost in dejected reverie.

The government, trying to induce the rice-eating peoples of the riceless South to sample other grain, could well this bird for its emblem, for it has renounced the limited diet of its tribe and taken to more varied and cosmopolitan fare. Its build is the build of a kingfisher, and its great bill is the authentic implement of a fish-hunter, but hundreds of generations ago it grew independent of pool and stream and finned prey, and often it lives far from water. It feeds on any small thing that it can seize in its big bill and batter to death-lizards, insects, grubs and worms, tadpoles, and even fish on occasion.

In summer it hunts the vicinity of wells, not for the sake of fish in them, but for the creeping and crawling life that the moist earth attracts. During the monsoons, when the water stagnates in roadside ditches and dips, I have often seen this bird fishing for tadpoles and minnows in the puddles-but the monsoons have not often been with us lately. The five successive years of drought that have afflicted this area must have fixed the tendency to hunt land-living prey even more firmly in the White-breasted Kingfishers here. This is the only Indian kingfisher that has developed this terrestrial bias, but in Australia there are kingfishers that have forsaken the water completely.

There is one peculiarity about this kingfisher that I have noticed, and that I am quite unable to explain. Sometimes it flies into limited settings, into a room or verandah or shed, and then it seems quite helpless and flatters weakly about, suffering itself to be caught where other birds could have escaped with ease. So weak is it on the wing then, so torpid and slow, that it seems acutely ill, or else quite dazed. I have caught White-breasted Kingfishers in this way thrice or four times, and I have known others catch the bird in similar circumstances. It lies unprotesting in the hand, and the amazing lightness of the bird (birds are much lighter than we think) lends further probablity to the feeling that it is very ill- but toss it clear into the air, and it flies briskly away, to resume its hunting. This kingfisher nests in long, narrow tunnels in the earth, and one would think that it is used to restricted spaces. Perhaps it is sudden fright, at being cornered by men, that is responsible for its lassitude on such occasions."-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 23 March 1952 in The Sunday Statesman
Republished on 2 September 2012

* Sketch of the bird not reproduced here
**In the heading, the date may please be read as 2 September 2012