Bluethroats (Luscinia
svecica) are seen wintering in the
reeds and bushes along the swamps, not quite unlike from where it migrates; in
Europe Alaska region they inhabit edges of wet forest, often near water. He
tends to freeze and remain motionless to avoid detection so gave me enough
opportunity to click some good pictures. Bluethroat can be spotted along the swamps
of Indian plain during winter, except the south tip. A rather shy insectivore,
forages in the low vegetation and can be spotted scampering across the ground
at water edge.
Before
I get into something else these lines I thought were hilarious “…when the
spring ran hot and strong in blood, and the manically manicured market gardens
were washed in silver light, the Chinese cuckoo sang all night. ‘One more
bot-tle! One more bot-tle!’ If ever a bird sang the national anthem of a place,
it was the Chinese cuckoo. In those boozy days at the far end of the empire’s
tether, it was a recommendation we seldom rejected” (Simon Barnes, How to be a (bad) Birdwatcher).
Rediscovering two
birds and the story behind it…
There
are two birds in Indian subcontinent that were thought to be extinct but
emerged miraculously from oblivion to the delight of everyone, particularly the
ornithologists. Jerdon’s Courser by Bharat Bushan in 1986 after 187 years (you
may also visit http://iseeebirds.blogspot.in/2011/04/in-pursuit-of-jerdons-courser.html) and Forest Owlet by Pamela Rasmussen in 1997 after 133
years, both are fascinating stories. Here are some excerpts…
…I
had been waiting at the Renigunta airport to meet Dr Salim Ali, to escort him
to Suddavatam near Cuddapah in Andhra Pradesh. The Jerdon’s or Double-banded
Courser had been rediscovered three days previously and had made great
ornithological and natural history news all over the world. Dr. Salim Ali, the
President of the Bombay Natural History Society, was the Principal Investigator
of the Endangered Species Project…
On
his arrival at Renigunta, I went with all the pride that I could muster at
being able to talk to Dr. Salim Ali about the rediscovery of the Jerdon
Courser. He had barely walked four steps when he turned to me and said, ‘What
is your name? Are you from the forest department?’
Bang!
That was the end of my pride and ego. I had met Dr Salim Ali atleast five times
and presumed that I had impressed him to remember me. And now he did not even
remember my name, or worse, that I was from the BNHS! I turned helplessly to
Mr. P.I.Shekar, his Man Friday, who was walking behind us, lugging all sorts of
shapeless cabin baggage. Mr. Shekar was laughing and enjoying my discomfiture.
Realizing that there was no help from that quarter, I patiently explained that
I was from the BNHS and had participated in the rediscovery of the Jerdon’s
Courser. The ‘Old man’ did not even smile and in a very serious undertone told
me (I remember his words to this day) ‘Are you sure it is the Jerdon’s Courser?
If you are wrong, I will not bother to hang you from the nearest palm tree. You
should do it yourself!’
Well,
up to that point I had been very certain that the bird I had seen in Cuddapah
was the Jerdon’s Courser. But the menace in Dr. Salim Ali’s voice made me very
very uncertain. Was the bird indeed the Jerdon’s Courser? What if it wasn’t?
And now this ‘rediscovery’ thing! What if I was wrong? I did not speak for an
hour. Just escorted him mutely, until Mr Shekar, now shaking with silent and
uncontrollable laughter, told me relax, to watch the Old man’s eyes to see how
he was enjoying himself at my discomfiture. Dr. Salim Ali, guessing at the
exchange, smiled and said, ‘So? That bird is the Jerdon’s Courser?
Congratulations. Are you going to give me a party? Chilly Chicken?’
Ornithologist
Pamela Rasmussen felt both panic and elation one morning in 1997 when she
gazed, only half trusting her eyes, at a long lost species of bird perched in a
bare tree in western India. Panic because, Anthene
blewetti the forest owlet that Rasmussen had sought for two weeks from one
side of India to the other, might fly off before it could be positively
identified and captured on film. Elation because the chunky, 9-inch-long owl
that she was staring at was a species that had gone unseen by any scientist for
113 years. Seven stuffed skins in a
handful of museums were all that seemed to remain of a species that several
experts had crossed off as extinct.
Fortunately,
the forest owlet was not only alive, but ‘absurdly cooperative’, says
Rasmussen, a museum specialist in the Division of Birds at the National Museum
of Natural History. ‘It just sat there,’ she says…
…If
nobody had looked in the right places, maybe the owlet still existed, Rasmussen
reasoned. In November 1997, she headed for India with Asian owl expert Ben King
of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and with Virginia birder
David Abbott. The owlet hunters concentrated on forests near sites where the
bird had been collected by Davidson and others more than a century before.
Near
the end of the their stay, they were searching in the foothills of the Satpura
Range, northeast of Bombay, by 8.30am on November 25, they had been in the
forest for hours. It was hot, and Rasmussen was uncapping a water bottle when
King quietly said. ‘Look at that owlet.’
‘And
terror struck,’ she recalls. She dropped the bottle. For a split second, she
struggled to decide whether to aim her binoculars or video camera at the bird.
‘It was like this huge decision –what am I going to do first?’ but there was
time to do both, as the forest owlet, missing no more after 113 years, sat
tamely in the sun flicking it tail for 30minutes.
…but
nothing she learns about the species seem to top the thrill of finding the bird
itself. ‘It is certainly the most exciting bird related experience I’ve ever
had,’ she says.
‘It
was incomparable. And afterwards, we were all just grinning,’ Rasmussen says,
still smiling at the memory of the tail-wagging owlet that flew back from
oblivion.
So
those were some interesting write-ups on rediscovery of two amazing birds. Some
others like Pink headed Duck, last spotted in 1950s and was not uncommon, is
now almost extinct. It is believed that they do exist somewhere in the
inaccessible swamps along the India-Myanmar border. The next one is Himalayan
Quail, last spotted in 1876, and could be surviving in higher terrains of
Himalayas. The hunt is on...
From my
scribble pad…
The day
Every
day the sun is dissected at my window
into
rectangular boxes.
It
lies on the mosaic floor, climbs the wall
squiggles
in the cupboard
and
takes baby steps into the night.
In
the bylanes of a village
a
child plays in the mud
a
cow licks the child
the
child playfully holds cow’s ear.
Time
stops.
