Finally after many futile attempts I am able to photograph the Long Billed Vultures of Ramanagaram. My plan was to go early morning since when the sun is out air gets heated they create pressure variants-thermals- these are used by these birds to soar and lookout for food-I read that in the net-so if you are late into the day you won’t find these birds. They will be soaring high in the sky. That precisely what had happened in my other occasions, it really was quite frustrating. But this time the climate was damp and the birds were in some kind of hibernation, they weren’t in any mood to fly, occasional flaps nothing much or maybe their stomach were full (they eat to fill about thrice in a week). I took these pictures from quite a distance, you can climb up the cliff if you want to but I thought against that course of action, since it is against one of the cardinal principle of bird watching and that is: Do not disturb the bird or its habitat.
My reason of excitement on spotting these large and magnificent birds also has to do with the fact that Long Billed Vultures (also referred to as Indian Griffon Vulture) are extremely rare birds and IUCN has classified it as Critically Endangered. The long-billed vultures are one of the 20 most endangered birds in the world. IUCN report states “It was common in parts of peninsular India until very recently, but since the mid 1990s has suffered a catastrophic decline (over 97%) throughout its range. This was first noticed in Keoladeo National Park, India where the population fell from 816 birds in 1985-1986 to just 25 in 1998-1999. Just one tiny population in the Ramanagaram Hills of Karnataka remains in inland southern India, and it is rare elsewhere within its former range”. According to the BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society), 99 per cent population of the bird has declined at the rate of around 50 per cent every year. "At present there are only 11,000 vultures remaining in India. If it continues to decline at this rate, then only around 6,000 vultures will be left and finally they may become extinct". They suffered an extremely rapid population decline as a result of feeding on carcasses of animals treated with the veterinary drug diclofenac leading to renal failure. The drugs are harmless to humans and to cattle themselves but highly toxic to vultures (the governments of India, Nepal and Pakistan announced a ban on the production of veterinary formulations of diclofenac in 2006 after the discovery and publication of the role of diclofenac in 2004). A second veterinary drug in use in India, ketoprofen, has also recently been identified to be lethal to the species, and population modelling indicates it may be present in sufficient concentrations to also cause population declines. Other likely contributory factors are changes in human consumption and processing of dead livestock, avian malaria, and poison and pesticide use, but these are probably of minor significance. The increasing air traffic in big cities too has taken its toll. Also the reproductive cycle of vultures is very slow. The vultures do not start breeding until they are four or five years old, and even then they only have a single chick.
Vultures are large carrion-eating birds and play a key role in the wider landscape as providers of ecosystem services, and were previously heavily relied upon to help dispose of animal and human remains in India. Its scavenging habits are an important link in checking and containing the spread of infectious diseases among animals and even human beings (vulture declines have been associated with an increase in feral dog populations across the region. At carcass dumps the situation is even more severe, with packs of several hundred dogs occurring in the place of the hundreds or thousands of vultures that used to be present. Such large packs of dogs are very aggressive). In India cows have a sacred status for Hindus and are not consumed. As a consequence very large numbers of livestock carcasses became available for vultures in Asia and became the principal food source for the resident species of vultures. Vultures were so abundant that the Parsi religion in India and Buddhist communities on the Tibetan plateau utilised vultures for sky burials in order to cleanly and efficiently dispose of human bodies.
Nine species of vultures have been identified in the Indian subcontinent, among which three Gyps species – Oriental White-rumped Vulture, Long-billed Vulture and Slender-billed Vulture – declined quite rapidly. The three species of vultures continue to decline at an alarming rate. The number of Oriental White-rumped vulture declined by 99.9 per cent between 1992 and 2007. The equivalent decline in the combined total of Long-billed and Slender-billed vultures was 96.8 per cent, as per the surveys conducted.
For years, it was believed that all vultures were raptors. In 1994, however, it was discovered that the vultures share a common ancestor with storks and ibises. Vulture Centre, Pinjore in Haryana set up with BNHS is India’s first and largest vulture conservation breeding centre.
Bharathidasan: The revolutionary Tamil poet
Did the sky sing
or the moon?
Did the honey sucked beetle
give the sweet note?
Did the roaring thunder
after learning subtle music
give such a sweet melody?
(from the poem Skylark)
I had been to Connemara library (Chennai, i am coming here after almost 15 years...unbelievable!!... those days I was quite crazy ab
out aircrafts, and so would try to get more info and find some pictures) to collect information regarding Avvaiyar(Tamil poetess of 1BC, I took the pic of the statue of her at Marina beach), quite shockingly there are only four books that too in Tamil. Bharathidasan was the other choice in my mind (the pic too taken at Marina beach). Bharathidasan (1891-1964) was a major figure in modern Tamil poetry (i recall studying him in school). His poems carried the revolutionary zeal and lyrical expressiveness (all the below are translated from Tamil), in many sense he was a visionary and his poetry tend to be messages to downtrodden and exploited, that was sought to be ingrained. He symbolised the conscience of Tamil people and its civilizational angst and insecurities.
Crabs on the Sand Shore
Like the silvery brood of swans
tumbling down in sporting mood
The leaping waves again and again
fall on the shore twirling
When the silver tide after touching the shore
withdraws, the crabs with tiny legs
run hither and thither
And create a scene of wonder
Sweetness of Tamil
The succulent pulp inside the fruit,
The juice of full grown sugarcane,
The honey in dew moistened flower,
The sweetness of well heated syrup,
The milk yielded by wholesome cow,
The cool juice given by tender coconut,
Are all pleasent i say; but still
I maintain tamil is my life-ye know!
Let me add here that his liking of Tamil did spiral into linguistic chauvinism, unfortunately aggravated anti Hindi sentiments, shocking from a poet who has written some amazing lines. But i think we need to put it into the perspective Dravidian assertion. These lines from ‘The Sacrificial Altar’
Thou toiled hard but without a morsel of food
thou live like cattle lodged in a fold
at the of men thou prostrate
who do evils in the name of religion
and thou sink low without a shelter
If thou complain to them of thy hunger
they’ll call it the result of thy sins of the past
and talk at length to support their stand!
If thou counter their views, they will unite and fight
When thy kids and spouses in all
are famished and crave for gruel
there are temple festivities in the streets
will thou pay heed to the customary words of the wealthy?
Raise thy arms to annihilate
religion that nourishes superstition
Free yourself of the sacrificial altar
and win for thyself this prosperous land, o men!
Needless to add Bharathi was unabashed firebrand communist, i found this particular poem ‘Foreign names for various forms of Government’ rather interesting
If two cows you have
Give one to your neighbour:
That is ‘Socialism’
One you sell
and buy a bull-
That is ‘Capitalism’
Sell the cows to the government
and procure the milk you need:
That is ‘Communism’
Confiscating your milch cows
And making you pay for the milk:
That is ‘Fascism’
Kill the owner of the cows
And seize the cows at once
That is ‘Nazism’
Collecting all the milk
And pouring it into a ditch
That is ‘New Dealism’
Which of these
will you choose?
that be your country’s creed
comrade!
Shikras were seen quite often in the gardens of Bangalore (Bengaluru), at least that is what i read. I tried my best in last one year just couldn’t locate even one. I found this majestic looking bird at Dhauli. I was walking around the garden behind the rock edict, it was hot sunny noon, air heavy with moisture with impending rain ideally i shouldn’t be out here at this time but my morning engagement took more time and i had already walked some ten kilometres, and so was running short on time, had to catch the evening train, doesn’t really mean that i was rushing around on the contrary i was moving quite leisurely, at my own pace. The garden was still and silent with nobody around that is when i saw the Shikra; busy on the ground negotiating a prey, it seemed a futile effort and the miniature hawk looked disoriented, moments of musing over its lost chance and it flew back to the nearest branch. It really is a magnificent looking bird. Rarely seen in heavy forests they favour well wooded surroundings on the vicinity of cultivated lands, prefers to laze on large leafy trees. Once quite popular with falconers as they trained with ease.
is a believe in ancient Ao-Naga religion that when a person dies, the soul takes the shape of a bird, an insect or sometimes even a caterpillar. The sighting of birds, especially of hawks, is considered to be the last appearance of loved one on earth. I quote these last few lines of contemporary poetess Temsula Ao (i guess she is from Nagaland, based in Shillong) from the poem Soul bird (bought the book from Shillong) 
