An afternoon in a Nilgiri shola

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which includes the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu apart from regions in Karnataka and Kerala, has some of the highest ranges in southern India including Dodda Betta, the second highest peak in the Western Ghats. These high ranges are notable for a peculiar kind of forest habitat unique to the southern Western Ghats - the Sholas. The name is derived from the Tamil for grove or forest.


Moist broadleaved forests of stunted evergreen trees, the Sholas occupy the higher altitudes of the southern Western Ghats in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Tracts of dense, verdant forest, usually clumped around and overgrowing a stream, are separated by gentle undulating meadows of short, mellow-green grasses known to be resistant to fire and frost. Together, meadow and forest comprise the shola-grassland complex. Usually, shola forests are found above 2,000 m (over 6,500 feet) -- an exception being the sholas that occur in BR Hills at 1,600 m (over 5,200 feet) -- and bear a marked semblance to evergreen forests in northeastern India and southeast Asia. The sholas harbour unique biodiversity including endemic species separated from their nearest relatives in southeast Asia.


The Sholas, which function as effective moisture and carbon sinks, remain temperate year-round. Everywhere, this fragile and important ecosystem is threatened by increased fragmentation and encroachment by plantations and commercial afforestation. In the Nilgiris, the major invasive species are Tasmanian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) and Black Wattle (Acacia mearnsii), as well as monocultures of pine, cypress and silver oak. Shrubs like Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius), known locally as Kothagiri Malar, have also invaded the grasslands.

Black-shouldered Kite perched on an invasive Blue Gum

Great Tit in a dense clump of Black Wattle

Scotch Broom or Kothagiri Malar

To appreciate the magnificence of the shola ecosystem, you must enter it and experience it for yourself. Many sholas in the higher reaches of the Nilgiris are quite accessible to naturalists and nature enthusiasts -- as well as poachers, encroachers, wood-cutters, grazers and forest-produce gatherers. The one that I visited was tucked away behind a pine plantation. To enter it I had to step across a stream bordered by a lichen-encrusted tree hirsute with moss. 


At this enchanting portal, I was greeted by a soft, wheezy single-note call, which stopped abruptly at my arrival. Expecting a bird, I waited noiselessly for the source to show itself. Presently, the owner of the voice scurried down the tree, pausing just long enough for me to take a good look at it. It was a beady-eyed rodent, small and smoky grey with ears pressed flat against its head. In my mind, I ruled out the immediate possibilities -- the shape of the tail dictated that it was not a Malabar Spiny Dormouse (Platacanthomys lasiurus). The shape of the muzzle ruled out the Madras Tree Shrew (Anathana ellioti). 


It was a squirrel and markedly different in appearance from the Jungle Striped Squirrel (Funambulus tristriatus), which I have seen in Meghamalai (High Wavys) and Valparai (Anamalais) - that species has a rufous wash to the pelage. I was staring at a creature that was classified as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. This was the Dusky Striped Squirrel or the Dusky Forest Squirrel (Funambulus sublineatus), and it was too nimble for me to photograph (ARKive.org helpfully offers a picture we can use). 

Dusky Forest Squirrel (Funambulus sublineatus) (ARKive.org)

The shola-grassland complex is made up of dense evergreen forests alternating with meadows of grasses resistant to frost and fire

The shola canopy is so dense that sunlight rarely strikes the ground

The occasional rays do penetrate the foliage to nurture new life on the mulchy forest floor

Ferns flourish in the corridors of sunlight

A flower picked from the forest floor

The moist conditions are hospitable to bryophytes such as mosses

It is a world engrossed in the soft babble of water - and here you can relate with poets who believed that brooks chuckle to themselves

Morning frost has glazed the wildflowers with silvery ice, but the birds don't seem to mind

Beside the brook, a dragonfly soaks in the mellow sunshine

Some sholas accommodate a hard woody tree of the high-altitude Western Ghats - the Rhododendron (Rhododendron arboreum nilagiricum) 

January in the Nilgiris sees this tree in bountiful flower and it goes by the moniker Pongal Poo (or New Year Flower)

The canopies are patrolled by troops of Nilgiri Langurs, classified as 'Vulnerable' due to overhunting for their flesh, which is prized by indigenous medicine men

The Nilgiri Laughingthrush (Trochalopteron cachinnans) is classified as 'Endangered' as its natural habitat is fast shrinking

The Black-and-Orange Flycatcher (Ficedula nigrorufa) may be common in this part of the world but its range has declined severely in the last few decades due to the loss of its evergreen forest habitat

The Nilgiri Flycatcher (Eumyias albicaudata) is a common resident of the Sholas but is classified as Near-Threatened due to the decline of the shola habitat

A female Nilgiri Flycatcher

Black Bulbul on the verge of the shola thicket

Wordless Wednesday - Shadow-play

Common Bush-Brown butterfly (Mycalesis perseus) in wet-season form flirting with the shadow of a Tulsi plant (Ocimum sanctum) on my balcony on a sunny afternoon, and eventually perching on it. Enough said. Well, that was almost wordless.

Photos: Beej

Lichens, Beatrix Potter and Symbiogenesis

The unpresented paper 

In 1897 the eminent chemist Sir Henry E Roscoe, know for early studies on vanadium, presented a paper to the Linnaean Society in London on behalf of his then unknown niece, Beatrix Potter, a mycologist and gifted illustrator. Beatrix loved illustrating lichens and fungi and these detailed studies had led her to a definite conclusion with regard to the origin of lichens. However, neither scientific temper nor talent enabled her to present her research. Being a woman, she was barred from the precincts of the hallowed temple of Victorian science. Her paper, titled “On the Germination of Spores of Agaricineae", contained the radical suggestion that lichens are not a pure species (lower plants as they were then believed to be) but “a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae”. In other words lichens are a compound species, a combination of fungi and algae.

Incidentally Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace’s paper on natural selection titled “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection” too had to be read to the Society on July 1, 1858 by its then  secretary John Joseph Bennett. Neither author was present. Darwin was attending the funeral of his son, and Wallace was still in Borneo. The gathered audience, among them many eminent men of science, lost no time in rejecting her paper. Her thesis ran against the very grain of scientific thought of the time, which was schooled to arrive at neat classifications of life forms in the tradition established by Carl Linnaeus himself (the author of Systema Plantarum and Systema Naturae also invented the index card). Moreover, the world was just coming to terms with Darwin’s radical thesis on evolution, and could ill-afford another paradigm shift. The idea had arrived, but not its time. The battle would be fought another day. 

Encounter - Draco dussumieri, master of camouflage

I came across this miracle of nature towards the fag end of my supposedly "spend-time-with-family" trip to BR Hills. At the Jungle Lodges camp, I was about to return to my room after breakfast when our safari jeep driver called out to me. He pointed to something on a tree, saying it was a Southern Flying Lizard (Draco dussumieri).

Can you spot the lizard?

Well, I looked at four tree trunks over and over for a couple of minutes before I could spot it. There it sat on the tree trunk closest to me, and there was absolutely no way I would have spotted it had it not been pointed out. 


On the dull, ash-brown coloured trunk, interspersed with mottled lichen patches, I could make out a basilisk foot... As my eyes traced out the borders, I could slowly spot the other leg, the body and the tail. The head was the toughest to decipher from the background.

And now?

I changed my vantage point and tried a lateral perspective but I was amazed to find that so pressed was the lizard to the trunk that barely an outline was visible that would betray its presence. I waited to see if it would display its marvellous tree-to-tree glide, without luck. But in the end I considered myself lucky to have had such a good look at this amazing reptile!


Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan


Further reading:
Southern Flying Lizard on Wikipedia and the Reptile Database

Wordless Wednesday: Sarus Crane gestures hypnotically

Caption this!

Photograph: Sahastrarashmi

Encounter - Pacific Swallow

The Pacific Swallow - note the rufous throat and face

'One swallow does not make a summer' is part of a quote attributed to Aristotle. In truth it represents a very Eurocentric position on swallows, in this case the Barn Swallow that migrates south to India in winter. On my visit to the Nilgiris last week in the middle of winter I encountered a number of swallows that seemed familiar yet not altogether so. While they were not hawking insects in the air with elaborate swooping sallies, they were huddled inside cowsheds and horse stables or perched on electric wires. That they were not Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) I could tell from the absence of the dark chin-strap. Their throats were rich rufous and so was the face above the bill and below the eyes. The underside was streaked slightly and not whitish or infused with rufous as in the Barn Swallow. The upperparts were glossy blue-black and the underside of the tail was marked with white, visible clearly when the birds fanned out their tails while maneuvering in the air or preparing to perch. The tail is also shorter and less forked than in the Barn Swallow and much shorter than in the Wire-tailed Swallow (Hirundo smithii).

Encounter - the Short-toed Snake Eagle

Meet the Short-toed Snake Eagle (Circaetus gallicus) or plain "Short-toed Eagle". It is a raptor of open countries, grass/ scrub-lands and semi-deserts, which, as its name suggests, loves to devour snakes and reptiles and occasionally mammals as well. And yes, the toes (or talons) are shorter compared to other birds of prey. Among raptors, this one is quite easy to spot and differentiate. When flying, it showcases a wide wingspan, and pale, almost white underside. When perched, its yellow eyes and almost owl-like two-eyed stare bores right through you...

Sundarbans Diary - The Enormous Estuarine Crocodile

Cruising through the backwaters of the Sundarbans in India, Jennifer Nandi marvels at the estuarine crocodile, even as her thoughts turn to the conflict between these fascinating reptiles and the ecosystem's human inhabitants

Estuarine crocodile sunbathing in the squelchy ooze

The plan for today begins with breakfast on board. Once again, to ensure a fairly decent meal, I do what it takes. It is rather surprising that the guide, the camp crew and boat crew have little idea of what standard quality of a meal implies. Nevertheless, all are co-operative and aim to please, which is a wonderful attitude to work with, and so my suggestions of difficult alterations to the breakfast menu are charmingly accepted.

At Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, was the leopard watching us?

Off we went, my namesake Arun and I, early Saturday morning on the Diwali weekend. Our destination - Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, a hill in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district. At the top of the hill is a temple but, of course, our visit was a pilgrimage of a different kind. We were there for birding and to salvage some peace and quiet, which is impossible in the city during Diwali. 


Due to several unfortunate reasons we reached the foothills quite late. I tried to take the bike on the jeep track but soon gave up as I didn't want it to end up in a garage the next day. Parking it beside the track we continued on foot. The first thing that greeted us was not something from the sky, but from the earth.


Fungi -- pale, thin, strand-like filaments shooting up from the ground.

Curious fungi

Birding soon proved a disappointment that day. We didn't see much except for a couple of unidentified raptors, bulbuls and some macaques on a rock next to some plantations at the top.

Offbeat - My family and other animals

Today, January 7, is the birth anniversary of Gerald Durrell, beloved author to some, and to others a path-breaking conservationist who changed the flavour of the word 'zoo'. I have been inspired by Durrell for most of my life, although circumstances (and a general lack of guts and initiative) have prevented me from following in his footsteps. As a child, though, I kept whatever animals I could find around the house - and these included but were not limited to snails, scorpions, toads, centipedes, millipedes and those delightful transit passengers - caterpillars. Often, I journeyed far to collect specimens for my menagerie. They were well looked after and never suffered for want of nourishment, exercise or entertainment. I had then a band of schoolmates with similar afflictions and, frequently, we fell in and out over ideological and egotistical issues. Yet, we remained united in our reverence for Gerald Durrell.

January 7 also marks the day, six years ago, that my wife and I decided to be fellow-travellers on life's journey. I have her to thank for enduring my babble 24x7, and for her encouragement for keeping this blog alive.

This piece, titled 'My Family and Other Animals', was written for the October issue of M magazine. Wildlife Week is observed in October.

Gerald Durrell (1925-1995)

The Octobers of my childhood were awaited eagerly for Wildlife Week. I’d re-read Gerald Durrell until the red colobus monkey appeared in my dreams. I’d wear out tapes of David Attenborough’s Living Planet recorded from TV. I’d win painting and essay competitions urging the world to save wildlife. It was a time of celebration. 

It was also a time when neighbours kept away from my family.

At first it puzzled my parents why the sight of me made the usually affable Mr Murthy bound across the road like a wallaby. Or why Mrs Ambujam, the fat lady next door (who never sang, mercifully), forbade her son from speaking to me.

The answers weren’t blowing in the wind, but in time my parents learned that they crawled in a cubbyhole at the back of the house. Here I kept racks of bottles, buckets of dark fluids trembling with unseen life, and glass tanks that seemed to most people to contain nothing unless they looked very carefully (and then shrank back in horror).

This was my Laboratory of Life, a place of many happy discoveries.

Echoing the darkness - Water wells after the borewell revolution

As a child, they could not keep me from wells 
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. 
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells 
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. 


~ Seamus Heaney

I vividly remember the first time a bore well was dug on our fields. It involved a manual dig to locate water and then began the long and back-breaking effort to create the deep shaft, all the time praying that the initial promise of water at the site held.

Beachcombing - a littoral treasure hunt

A walk on the beach can yield untold treasures

The beach on a wet, windswept day

Most people pick seashells on the seashore, and there's that old tongue-twirler about some old sheila selling them, too. Often, it's the smelliest, filthiest beaches littered with landmines of human dung that offer the happiest pickings, as long as you keep your fingers clean and your feet out of trouble. 

So it was when three out of four ogres went looking for waders beside an estuary. A little north of Kaliveli wetlands, near the village of Marakkanam north of Pondicherry, we found ourselves on a very picturesque beachhead. It was a blustering windswept day that threatened to blow our hopes away. 

It was a chaotic stretch of beach but fairly empty but for a few fisherfolk kids playing. The weather being most inclement, fishing boats were moored like cars jammed into a parking lot on a Saturday evening. A wash of seaweed stained the shore for its entire length and the sea spat gnashing waves in contempt. Occasionally a drift of rain carried to us like a fine spray and our optics, like the sand crabs scurrying about, were ever ready to duck back into their shelter. 

But there's that thing that Lady Luck does once in a way even when she's haunted by meteorological hormones – she smiles. 

But what a magnificent treasure trove it turned out to be! There was not a stretch of beach that wasn't littered with the bric a brac of the ocean. We felt like little boys all over again. And that's why the rest of our littoral treasure hunt is presented in pictures. I must add that but for a couple of sea urchin shells, we took no souvenirs. And yes, we left footprints.

A stain of spent seaweed

Pandora's vanity bag must have burst at the seams

"Uncle, so rahe ho?"*

A natural portrait of an owl and a squirrel is when the latter is in the claws of the former. Owls and owlets are generally fond of rodents, and squirrels do fall under their diet regime. Strangely though, I have witnessed squirrels quite often in and around owl territories. And they seem to be more curious of their predators than afraid. In large abandoned quarries, they hop around while huge eagle owls rest a few feet away from them. In this case, while the Spotted Owlet was dozing on a lower branch, this inquisitive little Three-striped Palm Squirrel came sneaking upon him, sniffed around a little, and hopped past him. Upon giving it deeper thought, the only logical explanation I could come up with is that the owls are not diurnal hunters (except perhaps on dull days). So when the owls are not hungry, even the meekest of prey can fool around -- as long as the sun is high in the sky!


*For those unfamiliar with Hindi, the title translates to "Uncle, are you asleep?"


Text and photo by Sandeep Somasekharan. All rights reserved.

Entering the Indian Sundarbans

With the Sundarbans of Bangladesh behind her, Jennifer Nandi explores the Sundarbans of West Bengal, India. Political boundaries, she finds, are not the only dividing line between the two nations. Beginning her journey at Kolkata, she despairs at the atmosphere of abject neglect and callousness...

It is hard to believe that Calcutta (now Kolkata) was once part of the Sundarbans – that mangrove-jigsaw spanning across two countries; land which had conquered the accidents of geography, the frailty of human beings, and distressingly, left only the cyclonic weather beyond control. 

A three-hour drive from the Oberoi Grand to the jetty at Gadkhali takes us through countryside more peopled than what we witnessed in Bangladesh. A mayhem of cows jostles with pedestrian life while village life spills onto the main road. Crowded around the street frontage of tented tea stalls and shops selling Bengali sweetmeats, are gangs of unemployed youth. The younger boys play cricket on a patch of wasteland and tyre-repair shops do brisk business.