Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Aha at last dear me the vultures!!

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 about 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!