When Sky Jasmine rained down

The Indian Cork Tree's expended blossoms infuse rare magic into the morning after a stormy monsoon night

I stay on the coast in Pondicherry. My sense of infinity is linked to the sea. It is not confined to poignant gazing at the horizon but often it attains a physical dimension -- like infinite solar energy, pumping up infinite moisture-soaked clouds and, eventually, the infinite deluge.

Often this happens during the Diwali holidays. 

Not surprisingly, the question on the returning monsoon is my favorite weapon to stump a studious class X smart-ass.

Luckily, the second flush of the Indian Cork Tree (Millingtonia hortensis) coincides with the monsoon here. Sometimes, the rains pause to take a breath. One such pause was on the morning after Diwali when I took these pictures.

Five days later...

Three hundred kilometres away in Bangalore, the city's tireless chronicler, Peter Colaco, wrote of the Cork Tree:

It was late in the year, most of the flowering trees had no blossoms. Clinging to the sides of the bowl were tall, stately trees with hanging sprays of white-scented flowers. The botanical name is Millingtonia hortensis and people call it the Cork Tree. But its Kannada name most accurately describes it: 'akasha mallige', sky jasmine.

~ From Peter Colaco's Bangalore - A Century of Tales From City and Cantonment, Via Media Books, Bangalore 

Text and photographs: Sahastrarashmi

An intimate encounter with the lovely Red Cassia

The brilliant brick reds, salmon-pink and yellow of Cassias light up avenues even as summer wears out its welcome. Sahastrarashmi presents an intimate encounter with the flowering tree as never experienced before

Studio portrait of Red Cassia - the yellow (possibly hybrid) variation

Studio portrait of Red Cassia - the brick-red flowers are interspersed with pink, but from a distance overshadow other shades

The seemingly endless tropical summer tends to linger a bit longer on the eastern coast down south where I live. It’s an extended goodbye, a season that begins to grudgingly allow the relief of a few cool days in an otherwise hot and sultry clasp that stretches on for six interminable months and threatens to last forever. Life runs along in slow motion and all movement requires the extra effort needed to cut through the thick blanket of heat, and is hence discouraged. Few are brave enough to put up a show and among those who do – Cassias win hands-down.

Red Cassia canopy at peak bloom - extreme top canopy

The Java Cassias (Cassia javanica) are the first to erupt in a rapturous frenzy of pink and white, followed by the pendulous clusters of bright-yellow laburnums (Cassia fistula) and as they begin to give in to the onslaught of the unsparing summer, the Red Cassias (Cassia roxburghii) explode. They see the summer out.

The terracotta-red bunch -- this colour defines the Red Cassia

You can be so struck by their resilience that you risk ignoring their astonishing beauty. The mid-sized, mimosa-leaved trees with long drooping branches and shiny green leaves betray hints of a few buds in mid-May. By mid-June the big brick-red clusters are conspicuous and by the end of the month most trees are in full bloom.

A pink cluster from a flowering Red Cassia

The overall aspect of the flower clusters is brick-red and, on closer view, you cannot but notice the fine green veins on the papery petals. The clusters are in reality quite variegated and one of the most stunning features of the flowers are the hues you can find in a single bunch. There is soft-pink, deep-pink, pink with a hint of yellow, brick-red with shades of yellow, terracotta-red, bright yellow and faded white. The clusters can vary in the mix and pink clusters can be seen along with terracotta-red ones. You soon realize that the terracotta red (described as the primary colour by both Pradip Krishen and earlier by Blatter and Millard) is mainly what the eye sees from a distance, a property of the red wavelength, while the profusion of shades is visible only up-close.

While the clusters appear terracotta red from a distance, the flowers sport a profusion of hues

Three clusters - Pink and Yellow, Brick Red, and Pink. The last two are from the same tree.

Flower clusters from a possible hybrid - the clusters are yellow and pink and not terracotta-red - late July

An intriguing property of Cassias is that they hybridize easily and this may be the reason for even more variation. Just next to the handsome specimen with terracotta-red clusters is a variant where yellow flowers predominate with some white and pink – there are barely hints of darker shades (sSee pic of the three bunches above). This can make identification difficult but keep in mind that the other common Cassia, the Java Cassias, are almost always in shades of pink (no yellow or brick red) and the flowers are not only in clusters (towards the end of the flowering season) but cover the branches along the length (see below). The less common Burmese Pink Cassia is also deep-pink in color and the Cassia marginata (common in Mysore) has red flowers but lacks the large bunches as in Cassia roxburghii.

Java Cassia flowers cover the branches along its length.

Cassia marginata flowers (from Lalbagh, Bangalore). Notice the three longer red stamens with maroon anthers. This Cassia is quite common in Mysore

A flowering branch - mid-June

The flower is five-petaled, diminutive with salmon-pink sepals. Each flower has ten light yellow stamens, each with bright red anthers. There are three long stamens, curved inwards but unlike those of Java Cassia are not swollen in the middle. The rest of the stamens are smaller.

Red Cassia stamens have no swelling. The calyx is salmon pink.

Cassia javanica flower. Notice the yellow stamens with the swelling on the three longer ones.

Blatter and Millard trace the tree as a native of Ceylon and mention that it was introduced in India in 1802 (Royal Botanic Gardens in Calcutta now called the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden). Pradip Krishen suggests that the tree may also be native to South India.

Flowers from a roadside tree

Red Cassia in Pondicherry - late July

A view at mid-height -- the flowers are interspersed in foliage. The upper canopy tends to have less foliage while at the peak of flowering.

As I write, the Laburnums are a mere shadow of their once exuberant blooms. Slow brown death is creeping into Java Cassias. The flaming red crowns of most Gulmohars have returned to a verdant green, and the yellow shower of Copper Pods is spent. But the Red Cassias are holding on at their peak. In their limitless palette of colours and fiery blooms, the intense tropical summer finally seems to have met its match.

The petals, up close

Smitten with flowering trees? Don't forget to read our richly illustrated posts on the Copper Pod, the Gulmohar and the explosive beauty of the Cannonball Tree.


Text and Photographs by Sahastrarashmi
Thanks to my friend Shanmugam R for his partnership in photo sessions and explorations in the world of Cassias, from Pondicherry all the way to Mysore via Bangalore.

Would you trust a snake on a tree?

The snake tried every trick to climb the coconut tree. Failing, it slithered down and risked death. How could I stop it from being killed, I wondered. But the snake had plans of its own...

Remember how Kaa of Walt Disney's Jungle Book hissed seductively from a tree: "Trusssst in meee, jussst in meee"? And remember how some time ago I wrote of a little cobra that I had seen to safety, away from the pipsqueak securitas that wanted to bludgeon it? 


Ethnocide, I say. That's what it is -- to kill a snake for what it is. That tender little serpent, then still porcelain-skinned and round-eyed as a baby, put up glorious defiance before it was dismissed for safe release. It took every iota of patience, restraint and wit to ensure that no one died that day, at least in my presence. After that day I decided not to inform the security of the presence of snakes unless it was absolutely necessary. Worse than afford anyone (primarily, the snake) the trauma of an encounter, I thought I'd keep watch until it slithered away without maligning its reputation.


One recent morning I was fumbling about in a literary air-pocket when our maid, breathless as a budgerigar in a wind tunnel, informed me of the presence of a snake. Remembering full well what had transpired the last time, I looked out of our second-floor balcony and saw a sizeable snake, nearly six feet long, entwined round the trunk of a coconut tree. Half of its body was wrapped around the trunk as it reached out in short, desperate lunges for a pinch-hold on the woody bracts above its head. 


Perhaps my maid, who was by now rather faint, expected me to run downstairs and inform the security guards. Instead, I thanked her and reached for my camera. And there, from the vantage of the balcony, I watched the snake, keeping watch over it for I was anxious that it would be discovered. After a few unsuccessful attempts to scale the crown of the tree, the snake returned to the ground and hid in a stack of steel pipes. I breathed again and sat back to watch the action. 

Around the snake-in-hiding, life went on. People came and went. First, a car full of middle-aged gents pulled up and parked a few feet from the pipes. They stepped out arguing amicably but loudly over a real estate technicality. The snake ducked as soon as the car appeared but when the gents lingered, talking, it gathered courage and poked its head out curiously. Every time the conversation volume peaked, the snake snuck its head back under the pipes. Snakes cannot hear airborne sounds but it was probably sensitive to the sudden movements of the men as they talked. After they left the head reared up again. 


Presently the gardener arrived, humming to himself, and got down to weed the strip of lawn under the coconut tree. The snake, with its head raised behind his back, must have been less than 10 feet from him. I, on the other hand, nearly died of nervousness. 

My wife had taken my daughter downstairs (while coaxing lunch into her unwilling little mouth) and I couldn't inform her about the slithery presence near her since she wasn't carrying her phone. I packed off the maid and went downstairs and told them as gently as I could without raising an alarm that we had company, just a few feet away from our feet. My wife took it very well under the circumstances and so did my daughter, who was curious to catch a glimpse of the snake. After satisfying their curiosity we went back upstairs and watched over the snake. It remained there among the pipes until nightfall and I saw its head rear up every now and then. Under the cover of darkness, I suppose it slid away to safety. 


Were I romantically inclined, I'd like to have imagined that this was the same snake I had rescued earlier, now all grown up. But then again, it wasn't. I trust most snakes to do us no harm. Trust is everything. If only we could rely on trust alone.

Note that I didn't name the snake. What do you think it is?

Text and photos by Beej

Love/ hate/ fear snakes? Read our other snake posts just to calm down!

Encounter: The Coppersmith Barbet

More often heard than seen, the diminutive Coppersmith is a thousand times smaller than its enormous voice

Once a while we may be treated to the sight of a coppersmith perched this low

I was on my first ever trip to Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary near Mysore, when I had a flat tire halfway through. As I pushed my two-wheeler along with my friend for kilometers looking for a pile of tires or a board screaming "puncher" (or variants of it) advertising a puncture mechanic in these parts of the world, I saw a strikingly colorful bird on an electric line. It was predominantly dark green, with striking red tufts above the beak and under the chin. It sat there, tilting its head left and right, and then took off. And I came home, thumbed through my Salim Ali (this was before I graduated to Grimmett and Inskipp) and found the name -- Coppersmith Barbet (Megalaima haemacephala).
 

A not-so-ripe fig makes a Coppersmith look elsewhere...

I had to wait a while before I came to realize the philosophy behind the intriguing name. I came to hear (and see) it calling high up from a treetop with its neck craned -- whatever little it could manage with that short neck - and letting out a full-throated but short ringing tuk... tuk.... Apparently, this call earned the bird its name as it sounded, to the imaginative listener, like a coppersmith flattening out a sheet of his metal with a mallet.

Once his mind is set on it, no fig is too large!

Sexes are alike and juveniles are cute variants of the adults sans the red above the beak and below the eyes.

A juvenile, lacking the red crest and throat patch

The coppersmith is mostly a frugivore and a voracious fig eater -- if you see a fig tree with a large number of ripe fruits, take a closer look: the coppersmith barbet is invariably in there.

Who said three's too many?

The Coppersmith Barbet has survived in semi-urban areas and cities that offer fruiting trees for food, and cavities on tree trunks for nesting. If you still find the bird uninteresting you also might change your opinion when I tell you that it is the official bird of the city of Mumbai. That is a fitting honor for a resilient bird that is clinging on despite rampant urbanization.

Text and photographs by Sandeep Somasekharan

Remembering Simon and Garfunkel in Ramanagaram

The wind blew down from the hillock and hissed in my ear: "I am a rock"

A stray spell of sun lit up Ramanagaram's famous rocks

It wasn't a winter's day, as Paul Simon would have had it. But it had rained all night and the morning presented a stipple of sleepy raindrops on our windshield as Arun, Anitha and I arrived in Ramanagaram. It was meant to be just a walk among the rocky hillocks, a stretch of tired limbs away from the restraining roads and crammed pavements of the city. But for me it turned out to be a much-needed meditation.


On rocks. And Paul Simon and Arthur Garfunkel.


The Ramanagara rocks are believed to be some of the oldest granite massifs in the region. Captivating as they are, they have caught the eye of artists and filmmakers. Parts of David Lean's A Passage to India were filmed here (as well as in Savanadurga, which is not far as the vultures fly). More famously, some of the most dramatic sequences in Ramesh Sippy's epic Sholay were shot here.

A pool of rainwater had invited a chorusing party of frogs

More recently some bright sparks, inspired perhaps by Mount Rushmore, wanted to carve faces into these hills. It took some irate resistance from concerned citizens to get them to drop the idea. I blanched to imagine the faces of our politicians (would Yeddy be among them?!) defiling the sanctity of this disturbed but still enchanting landscape. Insidiously, a private property has sprung up near Ramadevarabetta, the largest hillock that is crowned by a temple dedicated to Lord Rama.


As we climbed the steps leading up to the temple, we encountered nature's crafty masque of potential domestic violence at its most gruesome, in which the roles (to my wife's immense satisfaction) were reversed.

The tiny orange male can be seen on top of the female, whispering his famous last words of courtship

At the centre of enormous invisible orbs, evil-looking female giant wood spiders lay in wait for wind-blown prey. Around them, their tiny beaus attempted to seek an opportune moment for an intimate interview, in which they had to move quickly to fertilise her or risk being inducted into her digestive system. Often, male spiders satisfy more than their mates' lust. The ravenous female is known to devour the male even as she is mating with him. Burp, it would seem, is an equally dangerous four-letter word in arachnid vocabulary.


While the spiders wove their orbs, the cloudy sky began to weave music in my head. While the songs of Sholay were no doubt playing at the back of my companions' minds, my mind's ear drifted to Simon and Garfunkel.


Scoured by wind and water, the rock facades betrayed only slightly the grainy lament of untold endurance. As I gazed upon the cliff that had been portrayed as the villain Gabbar Singh's den, I thought how aloof and forbidding these rocks looked, their bare, naked shanks thrusting skyward out of woolly socks of vegetation at their feet. And yet, they were witness to hopeful love. Vultures of three species nested in their crannies and ledges. Swifts tittered as they circled the outcrops. A pair of Shaheen Falcons courted at the rock's bald summit.


At the peak of their popularity, Paul Simon and Arthur Garfunkel issued the song "I am a rock", which was originally from Paul Simon's Songbook, released in 1965. It is a rare track, not easily found except in thoughtfully arranged compilations. After the duo fell out, their personalities and tender sentiments lived on in their music. 


Poets and songwriters (Simon was both) are often known to treat their own work with scorn, and such was the fate that "I am a rock" suffered when Simon publicly disdained the song. In an interview he said: "It is discomforting, almost painful, to look back over something someone else created and realize that someone else was you."


The last verse goes thus:

I have my books 
And my poetry to protect me; 
I am shielded in my armor, 
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. 
I touch no one and no one touches me. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 


And a rock feels no pain; 
And an island never cries.


In our everyday battle to win nature back from those who thoughtlessly defile her, these rocks, which have resisted molestation for millennia, shall certainly guide our way. We need to brace ourselves for the future with equal parts tenderness and imperviousness.


And if the song has already started playing in your head, listen on...

Text and photographs by Beej

Encounter - What's black and white, and hovers?

Ogres Sandy and Arun recollect their encounters with the common but lovable Pied Kingfisher

Black, white and eats fish

Sandy: The first time I saw the Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) was in Thekkady, Kerala, in my fledgeling days of bird-watching. As a kid I had read that kingfishers were of many kinds and this one was called "pulli meen kothi" - literally, the "spotted fish-pecker" (in Malayalam). The book carried an illustration of a bird with a large head and a larger bill -- it wasn't very far off the mark when I first noticed this bird perched on an embankment. Then it did something that amazed me. With a sharp call it rose from its perch, flew a few feet into the lake, and hovered. It didn't move left or right, forward or backward - it just hung stationary in the air, wings beating furiously. Then came the typical kingfisher dive, cutting into the water, and a moment later the bird emerged with a tiny fish struggling in its mean-looking beak.

Seconds before the dive, the pied kingfisher straightens its wings

Arun: I used to watch Pied Kingfishers in the fields near my house in Kerala. It was a pleasure to observe them early in the morning as they hovered in the mist, their black-and-white bodies flickering in and out of sight. They are generally hard to miss as they are always on the move and active unlike other kingfishers, which rely mostly on the patient 'wait and watch' strategy. The Pied King, as I nicknamed these true kings of the kingfisher world, are the only kingfishers I have seen that are capable of true, sustained hovering. The others can fly and dive and at most manage to hover for just a couple of seconds.  I last observed these birds at Madiwala Lake in Bangalore. A pair was continuously fishing along the entire length of the bank. I'm not sure why they preferred to fish in this way. Maybe the vegetation along the lake shore darkened the water with their reflections and shadows and helped eliminate the sky's reflection to aid better views beneath the water surface.

A Pied Kingfisher hunting in Madiwala Lake, Bangalore

A resident bird of the Indian subcontinent, the Pied Kingfisher lives on fish and crustaceans unlike its cousin the White-throated Kingfisher, which prefers easier prey like amphibians, reptiles and insects. It is always found near water bodies and nests in burrows on the embankments. The call is a shrill 'kri kri kri.' 

Male and female birds can be easily distinguished by their breast bands. The male has double unbroken bands across its chest while the female has a single broken band.

A male, easily identified by the double-banded "necklace" on its breast

In the female, the single breast band is broken

Unlike other kingfishers, which prefer the convenience of open perches near water bodies to dive down after prey, the Pied Kingfisher's modus operandi is somewhat similar to the Common Kestrel and the Black-shouldered Kite (whom we have met previously in our Raptor Friday series). It hovers in the air above water bodies, looking for prey, head down. Upon locating the prey, makes a vicious plunge and emerges with the kill. This fishing strategy could be one of the reasons why this kingfisher has a black-and-white coloration. As the bird hovers over a water body, its white underside blends in with the background of the sky, effectively camouflaging it as it is fishing and improving the chance of a successful hunt. Other kingfishers stalk by waiting and watching for signs of prey movement, so they have darker colouration which would blend in with the surrounding foliage.

A hovering male shows off its largely white underside

Hovering moments...

Sandy: My latest encounter with this bird was at Polachira, a wetland near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Summer had set in, and the water body was turning shallow, leading to fish shoals being concentrated in the deeper patches. On a misty, breezy morning a pair of Pied kingfishers was flying about, hovering, diving and coming up with catches nearly each time. I spent almost an hour photographing them against a rising sun.

The dive...

Text: Arun Menon and Sandeep Somasekharan
Photographs: Sandeep Somasekharan. Additional photos by Arun Menon
All rights reserved

Seasonwatch - co-write a citizen science success story

If you are the type that stops to smell the flowers, or wonders what happened to that little brown bird that bustled about in the hedge until just a few weeks ago, or smiles at the bare avenue trees flaunting a flush of pink blossoms, you're a candidate for Seasonwatch. 


A new initiative of the Citizen Science Programme at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (a part of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research) in Bangalore, Seasonwatch comes from the same stable as that other successful citizen science programme, Migrantwatch. Once you register on the website for free, you can download a list of tree species to monitor in your locality (use the supplied photos to identify them correctly). 


Register your chosen trees (up to two) using the specified form, give them a nickname, and document the changes as specified. Of course, it is important that you choose healthy, full-grown, relatively inviolate trees -- trees with cemented bases, or those that are frequently pruned are not suitable candidates. Transmit your data to the research team periodically. 


What a great way to make your morning walk more meaningful, and still be part of an important research initiative. Here's wishing Seasonwatch our very best!

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.

A Diwali away from the madding crowd

For this Chital stag at Bannerghatta, Diwali was a faraway rumble

Diwali, the festival of lights that signifies the victory of good over evil, makes us Ogres nervous. Noise, smoke, runny eyes, shortness of breath and sadness at the colossal waste darken our moods. And because we don't want to get in the way of the revelry, we get away.


A night out at Bannerghatta, 25 km from Bangalore, isn't the wildest of escapades but it's a welcome break from the city on the noisiest and smokiest night of the year. The Jungle Lodges nature camp here is great for kids, as my two-and-something year-old found out.

A little light rain kept the termites busy - the glistening earth at the peak of this fresh mound tells of a hard night's work

As for me, any stretch of wilderness offers a chance to reacquaint with old friends. Including some whose names I don't remember any more. Can you help?

On our morning walk we met the Bamboo Treebrown (Lethe europa)

Dry season form of the Common Bushbrown (Mycalesis perseus)) 

This thumb-sized beetle was of a golden-fawn colour

This little amphibian tried to make itself scarce

This moth caterpillar, suspended by an invisible strand of silk, appeared to float like a sprite

Mormons mated in the Butterfly Park

And this little work of art was seen flirting with my (dusty) car window

*Thanks to Ulhas for butterfly ids