Leopards are notoriously hard to spot: they’ll observe you from hiding and duck when they think they can be seen. That’s why I was really fascinated by the relaxed posture of this juvenile, even though I had to take the photo at extreme range. After looking at this in monochrome, I recalled that most ungulates have dichromatic vision, with no ability to distinguish red from green. Now I wonder whether leopards are easier for us to see than their usual herbivorous prey. Since monkey vision is similar to ours, they spot leopards rather quickly. The difference in vision may be a reason why alarm calls of deer are less reliable than those of monkeys.
Tag: Bera
Treasures of the internet
How many farmers does the world have? There are around 570 million farms, most of them small ones maintained by one household. I guess that means more than a billion people around the world are farmers. How many soldiers does the world have? A little search told me that there are around 27 million people in armed forces around the world. But the number of games featuring battles and wars is overwhelmingly larger than the number of games that involve farming.
I tried to find how many pet animals there are in the world. I couldn’t find a definitive answer, but it seems that there are about 470 million dogs and 370 million cats kept as pets around the world. Add in less common pets, and I suppose there are about a billion pet animals to keep us 7 billion odd humans company. The chances are high that each and every one of us either has, or knows a pet animal. I wonder what fraction of humanity has seen any of the threatened mammals of the world in their natural habitat.
Some treasures I looked for. But sometimes, when you start typing a query, the Eye of Sauron suggests a different one. I clicked on the suggestion “are video games athletics or not” and came up with interesting nuggets. A clearly biased site, FunTech, offered up the nugget: “professional gamers exhibit high levels of physical strain during competitions” and therefore video games should be considered athletics. I’m sure you’ve realized that the photos have as much to do with the rest of this post as “physical strain” has to do with athletics.
Inevitably, using the kind of logical shortcut that video game makers are apt to employ, that brought me to the question of how many treasure hunters there are in the world. The Eye of Sauron could not see a definite answer. The best it could provide was a Wikipedia list of treasure hunters. Someone thinks there are few enough that they can be humanly listed. They probably forgot people like you and me, those who find invaluable treasures.
Living in 402
Tomorrow the day dawns on a new year: 403 ME. The last day of the year, today is an appropriate time to look back and rid yourself of ghosts. If 401 ME was the year we spent in fear, then this past year, 402 ME, was the year that the world burnt. Uncontrolled forest fires blazed through the hills and forests of Uttarakhand, and a wave of the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 burnt through India. But the year brought its good times too: meetings with family, friends, a slow return to more regular social interactions.
It was the end of an interlude between two waves of the pandemic. We’d spent the early part of the year travelling. I have great memories of two walks during that time. One was the steep trail in Mahabaleshwar which leads from the plateau down to a lovely view of Arthur’s Seat (I don’t know who this Arthur was). The other was the a few kilometers along a historic trade route which once crossed the Himalayas and connected Bengal to Sichuan province in China, through Bhutan and Tibet. The mule you see above is one of the broken line which once facilitated this trickle of trade.
Our long-planned series of trips through the Himalayas, watching birds and following in the footsteps of the 19th century botanists was brought to an abrupt halt. Soon after we were vaccinated, the great wave of delta started. Travel was restricted again, and the trip we had planned to watch the blooming of rhododendrons in Sikkim, and the subsequent push to cross the 5000 meter mark of altitude had to be cancelled.
The end of spring and the following hottest months of year could have been the most depressing months of our lives. The sudden pruning of our circle of friends and acquaintances was drastic. It seemed like a diminished world when we could finally venture out to the Western Ghats in the monsoon. We had missed the flowers of spring in the Himalayas, but we were in time to see the great blooming of the Ghats.
Then, before you could say Sharad Ritu, it seemed that the monsoon was over and the season of migratory birds was on us. Mumbai is at the very edge of a migratory highway, and every season there is great excitement about vagrants having stopped in the city. This year we joined a group of other birders to travel into the center of the passageway, a few hundred kilometers to our northwest, to watch passage migrants crossing India. It was interesting to see exhausted European roller bird (Coracias garrulus) take a halt in their three day long flight from north west Asia to Africa. The chestnut colour on their backs and the blue in front in a complete reversal of the coat of the Indian roller bird (Coracias benghalensis).
The end of the year was a good season for travel. We were fully vaccinated, the pandemic was at a low ebb, and the weather was good. Perfect for a series of visits to nature parks (a special mention of a fantastic sighting of a clan of dholes, Cuon alpinus, the Indian wild dogs) and historic towns we had always wanted to see but never made time for. Now, as the omicron spreads, we are wondering about the best way to ride out the next year.
Silver cockscomb
Silver cockscomb (Celosia argentea) is a common weed. I must have seen it since I was a child, but my first clear memory of it is rather recent. It dates from about two decades ago, when I began to haunt scrublands around Mumbai and in the Sahyadris in search of butterflies. The spiky inflorescences attracted several large and colourful nymphalids, and eventually I began to photograph the flower. In recent months, after the end of the monsoon, I’ve noticed it wherever I go: Mumbai and the Sahyadris of course, but also the edge of the Thar desert, in Bera, and in the central Indian plains, in and around the Tadoba national park. I’ll have to look for it further east in coming years. I’m certain I’ll find it there, because it is considered to be as much of a weed in China as well. It is invasive, having originated in the tropical regions of Africa.
Open patches in the jungle were completely overrun with this flower. I find it quite strange that the widely grown garden plant, the cockscomb, is the same species, usually called Celosia argentea var. cristata. How many generations of selective breeding must have gone into creating those showy flowers! I always found the velvety curls of the garden flower faintly repulsive. I like the clean lines of the original wild stock much more attractive.
I stared at a patch of these flowers while everyone around me wasted their time scanning the jungle for a glimpse of the tiger. I love these tiger safaris; the herd of tourists act as lookouts, and their alarm calls are easy to recognize. I can leave the spotting to them and concentrate on these other aspects of the surroundings. The flower bearing stalks rose perhaps a little above knee high, certainly less than a meter tall, but high enough to make the flowers the first thing that a pollinator would spot from far. The bodies of the plant are visible in the photo above.
Historically in India the plant has been eaten when times are hard, and in parts of India it finds regular use as food. It is used traditionally to treat various ailments, including as an anti-parasitic agent. The literature on isolating medically active molecules from the plant is too large to quote here. Interestingly, there have been recent studies in using the plant to suck up heavy metal pollutants (manganese, cadmium, copper) from contaminated soil. This ability to quickly accumulate poisons should make it less attractive as a vegetable. Perhaps this is the reason its use as food persists only in remote places which may not have seen much industrial pollution of the soil. Not being prone to eating random plants, I’m happy to explore waste ground where I see these flowers.
Abstract Rock
The landscape of Bera. This is what tendua (leopard) country looks like. Old and weathered granite, interspersed with spiny bushes of thor, and lots of babool (Acacia). It’s a beautiful subject for photography.
A kite is not a kite is never another kite
There are times when the hyper-connected world really bothers me. I know the bird that you see here as the black-shouldered kite. But I must learn to call it a black-winged kite (Elanus caeruleus). There is a different bird called a black-shouldered kite in Australia, and I rant about the jetset bird-watchers across the world for whom we must change the common name for this bird. Would this coincidence mess up their lists all that much?
This is a misplaced rant, though, because the real reason for this distinction is different. The black-shouldered kite was long thought to range down to Australia and across the Atlantic to the Americas. It was only realized recently that the label hid three distinct species: E. caeruleus, which ranges from the Iberian plateau across Africa and India to Sundaland), the Australian E. axillaris, and the new-world species E. leucurus. The change of names is necessary because of a new discovery. Still, I rant because common names need not change by the fiat of a committee. Tracking species is the domain of the Latin binomials, not of the common tongue.
That morning in Bera when we halted the jeep near this docked tree and watched the bird, we were content just to look at what was in front of us. I had a close look at one after months, and I studied its scaly claws. These scales are distinctive to the genus, and not found in the Milvus kites. In fact, Elanus are thought to be the link between owls and kites. Looking at the recessed eyes, and somewhat flat face, I could imagine it. I waited for it to fly, but when it did it pushed itself back, away from us, and turned instantly away. This manoeuvre was so owlish that I hadn’t expected it, and missed the shot of its take off. Another time. They are common, after all.
Familiars
Once upon a time, the story goes, every part of India was teeming with birds. I’ve heard this story from my grandmother. So it is nice to spend a weekend in a place where this could almost be true. The moment we get out of the village and into the fields around Bera, we began to see birds. There were the passage migrants which we had also seen in the Rann of Kutch, and the utterly familiar endemics.
This was a varied habitat; the edge of the Thar desert, but the dammed river nearby held water. Ibises and herons, wagtails and sandpipers could be seen there. In the thorn bushes we saw francolins, bushchats, and larks, as well as doves, fork-tailed drongos, and bulbuls. The small birds of prey, black-winged kites and shikra, told us of the numerous rodents in the area. Nightjars and owls could be seen at night, flying from the headlights of the jeep. We were told this was early for the winter migrants; they arrive in November.
Bera is known only for its leopards. But it turns out to be a good place for birds too. We did not see anything we hadn’t seen before, but we did spot some passage migrants without really looking for them. I’m sure there is much to discover here.
Change and travel
You cannot change into a leopard: your eyes and nose are not keen enough, and your circadian rhythm is tuned differently. The best you can do on a holiday dedicated to watching leopards in the wild is to change into a creature of dusk and dawn. The trips dedicated to watching wildlife are structured differently. You don’t get to do much people watching. You sleep in the afternoons, have a quick tea, and jump into a jeep to drive into the granite hills where the leopards live. You arrive back at your lair for drinks and a dinner, and have another short bout of sleep. In the mornings you wake before the kitchen staff has stirred from bed, sit in the jeep again and drive out.
You could stop for a chai in the village. One is full of packaged food, the other uses the LED in the phone for lighting the stall after dark. You largely miss contact with the people of Bera. In compensation you have the sunsets and sunrises. Away from city lights they are spectacular.
At dusk we found ourselves in a jeep on top of a granite hill, still watching the next mound intently. We knew that there was a female leopard in that hill, with two cubs to feed. We’d seen the female watching for prey. She didn’t walk around to this side before it became too dark for us. In the deep darkness broken only by the headlights of the jeep we drove down the 45 degree incline. We are lucky to have one of the most experienced drivers in the place. He told us that on the day we leave he will go to the town to get his second shot of the vaccine. The nurse at the local health center wants him to bring along a refrigerated box of vaccines, since she can’t travel that day.
Under other circumstances we would have spent more time exploring the houses that you see rattling by us in the video above. They are big houses for a village that seemed to have little apart from tourists and agriculture. Baljeet, our host, had the answer. People have moved away to the cities, and with the money they have earned there they build these houses. All are in the traditional style, with little verandas running outside, the inside guarded by doors and gates. The houses are large, but the village streets are still the same.
The way of life may be different from a city, but definitely modern. Many people oscillated between a normal city life and the village. Our host talked about traveling on work to Vietnam and Japan before returning to Bera. A train line cuts through the heart of the leopard country. Trains have to slow down and sound a horn continuously as they pass, to warn wildlife of its approach. Trucks and buses pass through the village, bringing industrial consumables. The tailor promises to courier a bespoke Bera jacket to Mumbai. Everyone has a phone, and the young are glued to theirs like anywhere else. I wish social media were subject to the kinds of rules which bind trains. The Family took me on a brief walk through the village, capturing photos of doors and windows, and the rangoli on the road.
Sunrise
At the beginning of Navaratri I watched the moon rise in the east through a thin haze of clouds. The atmosphere affects our view of the sky quite a bit. On the moon, the line of sunrise had just crossed the shores of the Sea of Crisis (Mare Crisium). The same sun that rises over the moon also rises on earth.
The next morning in Bera I watched the sun rise. The sky turned from black to red. And then, as the horizon fell away below the sun, the air turned blue and bright. On the airless moon will you only see the bright yellow sun pop over the horizon in an airless black sky? Interestingly, the sun creates its own drama as it rises over the moon. The solar wind kicks up dust in a narrow 150 km band around the terminator. Diffraction of sunlight through the dust will produce spectacular, albeit dimmer, colours. I can’t wait to see the first photos of the colours of sunrise from the moon.
Landscape with dinosaurs and a shoe
On our last morning in Bera, we woke before sunrise again, and scoured the hills for the sight of a leopard. Alarm calls of peacocks echoed between the rocks as we waited patiently for the animals to appear. But one by one, the clusters of calls fell silent. The leopards had hunkered down to sleep out the day. We were close to the Jawai dam, and I thought a drive down to the lake might be interesting.
The landscape here is interesting. To my untrained eye there is a similarity between the look of this area and parts of Karnataka, for example, around Hampi. But the resemblance is superficial, nothing but the appearance of granite boulders. The rocks here are a respectable 750 million years (or so) old, having been created during the rifting of the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia. The Hampi region contains some of the oldest rocks in the world, perhaps as much as 3.5 billion years old. In parts that Dharwar craton is overlaid by the sprightly young Deccan shield, a slight 65 million year stripling. There is no geological resemblance between these rocks.
White-browed wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis) 
Black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) 
Asian open-billed stork (Anastomus oscitans) 
Asian open-billed stork (Anastomus oscitans)
The dinosaurs have not given up on this land that they claimed at birth. They may have evolved into what we call birds, but they still range over the lands from under which people dig out the fossil remains of their ancestral eggs. I saw wagtails and open bills after almost two years. Do they regret the end of the anthropause as much as I loved seeing them again?
A shoe? How could you lose one in this flat land? Did it fall out of a careless jeep? Or did it break during a long walk across these flats? A mystery.
Don't hold your breath 