The Bad in 402

With three days left of the year 402 ME, I have just enough time to squeeze in a few words about the real bad guys I saw this year. The very baddest of the year have to be these two goats. The one on the right leaped into the air as I watched and head-butted the other one with a loud thunk. That must have hurt! If I’d gone head to head with another person like this, I think my brains would have ended up scrambled. They continued butting heads until the goatherd came and broke it up.

Don’t ever believe that the small Indian Robin (Copsychus fulicatus) is a cuddly little thing. It is highly aggressive, not only picking lizards bigger than itself as a tasty snack for the chicks, but is also highly territorial. It’s sense of self is utterly contained within its body, and it is aggressive enough to attack its own reflection!

He who underestimates scorpions learns a painful lesson. So I was taught by one who found a scorpion curled up inside trekking shoes. They are aggressively territorial, but are also prey to several larger predators. The really badass thing about this photo is the UV fluorescence. I must get one of those black light lamps for the future.

These centipedes (Chilopoda) have lived in the Indian landmass from before the times when it broke off from Gondwanaland. These original inhabitants of India are decidedly bad for interlopers like H. sapiens, leaving painful welts on the skin if they crawl over you. If you see a swarm like this you better move quickly, these carnivores are faster than you may think.

How bad can these pretty mushrooms be, you ask? These looked similar to the poisonous and widespread Galerina marginata, and I would not take chances with it. Those cause, at the very least, permanent damage to the liver but also result in death in a very significant fraction of cases. Visual similarity is not a great guide in choosing mushrooms, but I would not risk picking them. Foraging for mushrooms is not common in India, and there is little know-how. What you see here is a possible bad guy, but the real baddie is the camera with which took the photo. It’s a small, light thing that fits in my pocket and takes sharp and bright macros. I’m so happy that I got it this year.

An odd bird

While birding in Hampi, I was so focused on a few new species that I didn’t remember taking these photos of the Indian robin (Copsychus fulicatus). It remains common in ruins and edgelands around towns, but rare in both parks and open spaces inside towns, and in dense jungle. In any case I’d seen it so often that I pointed my camera at it, took photos, and forgot about it until I went through my photos later. Then I realized that I’d caught my best photos yet of the southern variety of these birds. The shiny dark back is so much more attractive than the khaki and brown of the north Indian variety. The bird is slender in outline, and this plump shape is probably a territorially aggressive display by a male. Typically I would identify a male by a white patch on the shoulder, which I don’t see here. Perhaps it is hidden when the bird fluffs up. In any case, the bird is so common that I seldom give it much attention.

But perhaps I should, because of a long back story. Most African songbird groups evolved in the northern part, and migrated southwards in eras when forests expanded. Then, when forests contracted again, some of the isolated populations evolved into different species. Successive pulses of expanding forests led to songbird lineages populating Africa from north to south. In several of these lineages one can also trace the founding population to a migration event from Asia and India into Africa, over the Indian Ocean, through the Seychelles, and the “Lemurian” islands, which emerge in eras when the climate is dry and the ocean is low. The Indian robin is a different story. A molecular genetics study reveals that the small group of related birds in the African genus Erythropygia and their Asian relatives in genus Copsychus are odd birds indeed. These non-migratory birds have made the reverse journey from southern Africa to north, and then out of Africa to Asia. A whole clade inside Copsychus, including C. fulicatus, started with this unusual migration in the early Neogene. This is definitely an odd story, first pulished in 2014. I look forward to seeing either verification or dispute in future. In the meanwhile, I look at the Indian robin with more interest.

Free birds

Ruins and villages may be closer to nature than cities, but they are not exactly forests. The birds that you see in such places are ones which have adapted to profit from the disturbances that humans create. Around Mandu we saw several birds, but a bird watcher in a city will see most of them. The featured photo shows the green bee-eater (Merops orientalis), common across a huge swathe of sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia: from Senegal in the west to Vietnam in the east. I love this colourful and commonly visible bird. I hadn’t realized earlier that it is appropriate for Independence Day; it has the colours of the flag.

The white-breasted kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis) is another common and widespread bird, being found across Asia, from Turkey to the Philippines. It has learned to supplement its diet by scraps of meat from kitchens, and is now commonly seen around human habitation near water. It allows a photographer to get reasonably close, so this shot against the sky is not among the best I have.

The red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus indicus) is not easily visible inside a city. But this large wader is common in wetlands anywhere in southern Asia, from Iraq to the Philipphines. I saw these large birds everywhere in Mandu, even in Jahaz Mahal. This photo was taken in the garden just outside the palace.

Although this is not a high-quality photo, I’m fond of it because I caught two different species in the same shot. The spotted dove (Streptopelia chinensis) is common is various terrains, including cities, across Asia. It has been introduced in Hawaii, California, Australia and New Zealand. The other bird is a coppersmith barbet (Psilopogon haemacephalus) was common in our garden till recently. It is a common Indian bird.

Like the rose-ringed parakeet, the Indian robin (Copsychus fulicatus) is another species which I notice around ruins. I watched this one as it hopped and flew along ruined walls in Mandu. Unlike the parakeet, it does not take to gardens inside cities. We were not really looking for birds, but were happy to have this added extra.