Encounter: Russet Sparrow

Like thousands of coins jingling in hundreds of fists, the chirruping of sparrows heralds dusk. Trees quiver as roosting flocks fuss like train passengers arguing over berths. The din dies down with the fading light and all is quiet again. Until the morning, when breakfast squabbles are made public and flocks prepare to go about their business foraging around homesteads, fields and forest clearings. Few people give sparrows a second look, but the first glance itself evokes tender smiles because nearly everybody has observed the disappearance of House Sparrows from cities. However, they are still up and about in villages where old-fashioned houses offer them the shelter of eaves and awnings and their pastoral environs an ample supply of food. In the Himalaya, though, it may serve us well to keep our eyes peeled for the Russet Sparrow (Passer rutilans cinnamomeus). Its call is similar to the House Sparrow's, but males in breeding plumage are easy to tell by their rich cinnamon crowns and backs. For this reason, it was earlier called the Cinnamon Sparrow (a much more evocative name, in my humble but effete opinion). This male (in winter plumage) was photographed at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam guest house in Ukhimath, Uttarakhand among a flock of House Sparrows (Passer domesticus). The House Sparrows, of course, were busy making their tribe increase. Which raised the following questions: a) Do the two species interbreed where their ranges overlap? b) Do House Sparrows breed year round while Russet Sparrows have a fixed breeding season? Someone in the know might be able to tell me. Photographs © Bijoy Venugopal. All rights reserved.

Encounter - The Himalayan Monal

Even a peacock must bow to this unchallenged monarch of Himalayan fowls
 
In May 2007, on my first visit to the Uttarakhand Himalaya, the Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) proved utterly elusive. Fighting altitude sickness in the foggy heights of Bedni Bugyal, I was offered a tachistoscopic glimpse of a metallic blue streak with a white rump and an orange tail. That's about all. Out of reluctant pride, I ticked my checklist. But all along, I felt guilty that my sighting was of such low quality that it hardly merited an entry. Payback time arrived two years later. 


In the third week of September 2009, my friend Sahastra and I trekked through the alpine forests and grasslands of Chopta and Tungnath. Tungnath, at 12,073 feet, is the third of the five Kedars (where Shiva's dismembered body is believed to have fallen on earth) and the highest Shiva shrine in India. It is believed to have been built a thousand years ago.

At 12,073 ft, Tungnath is the highest Shiva shrine in India, and possibly in the world

The grey stone temple blends well into its backdrop: plunging cliffs watered by a trickle of sweet springs and rock faces slathered with alpine vegetation -- grasses, daisies, primula, gentian, marsh marigolds, docks, and arrangements of ferns, lichens and mosses that would chasten even the most sylvan of landscape artists. A few hundred feet below, the grassland (or bugyal, as it is known locally) is broken by shrubs like juniper and a dense undergrowth of dwarf rhododendron. Here, rufous-bellied tits and orange-flanked bush robins dart inconspicuously along with Hume's warblers and grey bushchats. Lower down, the grassland meets the first trees of the forest -- stands of fern-girded oak and the relatively inviolate deodars.

Mist cloaked the forest, making birding impossible

But it was not here that we spotted our first Monal. On a misty afternoon in Chopta, 4 km downhill at the base of the Tungnath trail, we took a walk along the road hoping to spot something. Two days ago, we had been gifted with the lucky sighting of three (first, one for sorrow and then two for joy) Yellow-throated Martens, whom I dubbed Marten, Luther and King. But this afternoon's pursuit appeared to be fruitless. The dense fog made photography impossible and walking dangerous. We kept to the road to avoid toppling off a cliff. Halting abruptly at a bend, where a shepherd's trail branched off into the forest, Sahastra hissed: "Pheasant!" 


Sadly, the human eye does not come equipped with fog-lamps. We could tell the shape of a large brown bird, not quite peahen-sized, with a mottled back and a prominent white ring where its folded wings met the base of its tail. We froze to avoid flushing it but it ambled into the thicket and into the cover that the fog offered. That evening, a look at the pages of Grimskipp told us that it was indeed a female Monal. Not quite the appetiser we craved, but enough for a tick on the checklist. But that first morning at Tungnath was where the Himalayan Monal revealed itself to us. We saw two males foraging unconcernedly on the verge of the forest. And then we flushed two hens, which whirred up in the air like partridges, arced and descended into the oblivion of the rhododendron shrubbery. Thus encouraged, we descended into the shrubbery and were rewarded with the sight of three more male birds. We heard them call -- a loud, not unmusical bugling -- and saw them flash their white rumps in flight. We were quite overwhelmed by the glut of good fortune. 


We returned to Tungnath again two days later, riding mules at the crack of dawn to get to the summit of Chandrashila (13,386 feet above MSL) in time to catch a glimpse of the snow-capped peaks of Trishul and Chaukhamba before the rising mists blotched them out. At a tea stop, a beautiful red fox slunk past us, its coat rich russet and slightly grizzled with a creamy white tip to the tail. Further up, we glimpsed a magnificent male Monal, and then another with two hens. We flushed another bird off a cliff edge, and its brilliant metallic blue plumage glimmered as it caught the sun. We felt so accomplished that we wanted to take the rest of the day off and laze. But like diligent birders, we put indolence aside and got down to work. Through the day, more Monals showed themselves to us. This was indeed a happy hunting ground for the state bird of Uttarakhand (and the national bird of Nepal). 


That evening, we heard the Monal call as dusk darkened the Himalayan sky. On our second descent of Chandrashila, we saw more than three or four birds foraging late into the twilight. Early next morning, as we left Tungnath for Chopta, we came upon a Monal cock foraging at eye-popping proximity near a cliff edge. It seemed unperturbed by our presence and took a few unhurried steps as we approached. The sun was not yet up and the dawn light was very tricky. Sahastra called out metering instructions to me as I battled vertigo in my attempt to photograph the bird. As I struggled with the exposure, a hen walked into the frame. And for the next five minutes we had the time of our life as the cliffside became dotted with Monals -- at least three males and four females. Finally, my encounter with the Monal had been fulfilling. It was hard to leave the hills without a pang gnawing at my heart.

The interzone between forest and alpine grassland is the typical habitat of the Himalayan Monal

While foraging, Monals seek the shelter and obscurity of the dwarf rhododendron thickets

From behind a rock ledge, a helmeted head peeks

Suddenly, the hillside was alive with Monals

Not to be outdone, a queen joins her king

Stately enough to dent a peacock's pride

ALSO SEE: My Facebook photo album 'Himalaya: The Monsoon's Last Breath' 




 Sahastra's video of the Monal:


Monal at Dawn from Sahastra Rashmi on Vimeo.
Photographs © Bijoy Venugopal

Can we refuse the world's trash?

It's something we have read about before, but this story by Tehelka puts all the canards and reports in perspective: India has become the ultimate receptacle of the first world's trash. As if we don't generate enough of our own. Excerpt:

According to an estimate, India imported around 16.8 lakh tonnes of ‘waste paper’ in 2005-2006, valued at about $290 million. However, environmental activists say that much of the socalled recyclable waste that is imported is trash and ends up in Indian dumps, landfills and sometimes, even farmlands. In September last year, environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman discovered that ITC’s paper factory in Coimbatore had dumped hundreds of tonnes of municipal solid waste — household garbage, in other words — from the UK into agricultural wells in the area. “These paper factories import only ‘low level sorted’ waste since that is cheap. However, usually only about twenty percent of such waste can be reclaimed or recycled. The rest is trash and is dumped,” says Nityanand. Given the millions of tonnes of ‘waste paper’ entering the country each year, if this is the ratio of recyclable to non-recyclable items in imported waste, this could mean that India, a country with enough waste of its own, could be importing a truly colossal amount of non-recyclable waste from other countries. According to details in TEHELKA’s possession, the top five importers of paper waste at the Tuticorin port account for about 2 lakh metric tonnes annually. ITC, Kolkata alone imported about 1 lakh metric tonnes of paper waste through this port in the period between 2007-2009.

To think that we are greedy for the world's trash is a frightening indicator of what our people will do for money. What else the floodgates of greed will let in we do not know. And then again, from The Fun Theory, a nice reminder that getting people to put their trash in the right place is actually possible. All it takes is some imagination and a sense of humour. So effective that people will refuse to throw their trash anywhere else.