Encounter: Otter in the water!

At first they looked like coconuts bobbing in the water. The next second we were gaping with wide-eyed delight at a family of Smooth-coated Otters!

Champion Swimmer's Rule #1: Keep your nose above the water

My first brush with the Smooth-coated Otter (Lutrogale perspicillata) was back in 2008 when I saw one surface near a small rock islet in Ranganathittu bird sanctuary near Mysore. Seeing our boat it dived underwater immediately and we never saw it again.

Curious otters look at their visitors

Three years later I ran into them again in an irrigation channel near Mysore. On a random Saturday stroll along the agricultural lands around the outskirts of the city we heard a strange barking call from a brimming irrigation channel. A casual glance turned up nothing but a second later we saw a head rising from the water - it could have easily been mistaken for a shrivelled and dried coconut floating on water.

From a distance they looked like floating coconut husks

The otter then let itself be washed away downstream by the currents and we thought we had seen the last of it. But a few minutes later we saw the otter again with the rest of its group. There were about seven individuals and they were climbing up on to the agricultural land above using the roots of trees that were jutting out on the embankment.

Check out the webbed feet! 

We followed the otters for about an hour, walking carefully to ensure that we didn't disturb them. They would enter the water and swim downstream and upstream, moving their flexible bodies like sine-waves when moving upstream, and to move downstream they just let themselves be carried by the currents, keeping their noses above the water.

Swimming in sine waves

On land they moved in fast bounds, stopping to crane their necks once in a while to ascertain that there was no lurking danger. A farmer's bicycle aroused ample interest, but lack of reciprocation of any kind disappointed them and they took to the water again.

Anybody home?

About half a kilometre downstream, near habitation, the otters stopped, probably on hearing noises from workers in the fields. They started swimming upriver and we continued on our way, humbled and happy to have been taken into confidence by this charming family of semi-aquatic carnivores, and having been privy to their merry ways.

Back to the water

Smooth-coated Otters are the largest of the three species of otters found in India (of 13 species distributed worldwide) - the other two are the Small-clawed Otter and the Eurasian Otter. Increasing loss of the otter's habitat, which includes waterways and riparian habitats, has pushed list-makers at IUCN to place the Smooth-coated Otters in the Vulnerable category.

Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan

All rights reserved

Raptor Friday - The Lesser Fish-Eagle

Formerly thought to be a resident of the Himalayan foothills, the Lesser Fish-Eagle has pleasantly surprised us by nesting along rivers in southern India

Formerly thought to occur only in the Himalayan foothills, the Lesser Fish-Eagle has now been confirmed as a resident breeder along the Cauvery River in Karnataka as well as river islets in Kerala, both in southern India

The Lesser Fish-Eagle (Ichthyophaga humilis) was believed to be a resident of the Himalayan foothills until recently when there has been a flurry of sightings along the Cauvery river in Karnataka. Other recent reports also confirm that the bird is a resident in southern Kerala (see notes below).


Let me tell you before I begin that 'lesser' is a relative term, to be taken literally only when comparing this raptor to the Grey-headed Fish-Eagle (Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus). In no way should this bird be mistaken for a diminutive creature as it is more than two feet tall when perched, with an impressive wingspan.

All of my three sightings have been in the Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary near Mysore. The bird would perch on a branch overlooking the river, appearing pensive. On all three occasions, when our boat drew close the bird took off, never to be seen again that day. To watch it fish remains a dream unfulfilled.

The extent of white in the Lesser Fish-Eagle's plumage are a distinguishing mark to identify it against the closely related Grey-headed Fish-Eagle

As its name suggests the Lesser Fish-Eagle feeds on fish and is hence found mostly along riversides. The head is grey, the chest brown and the wings are a deep brown. The belly and thighs are white and the tail is dark. In the field, the primary distinguishing feature to tell it apart from the Grey-headed Fish-Eagle is to observe the area where the white parts of the bird end. In the Lesser Fish-Eagle, the white area ends abruptly at the beginning of the tail. In the Grey-headed Fish-Eagle, it extends all the way to the tip of the tail where it terminates in a thick, dark band. 


Both the Lesser Fish-Eagle and the Grey-headed Fish-Eagle are listed as vulnerable (VU) in the IUCN Red List.


Notes:
1. The latest issue of the journal Indian Birds (Vol. 7, No. 1), April 25, 2011 carries a comprehensive report on the breeding of the Lesser Fish-Eagle in Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka, India. The report is authored by Dinesh Ramarao, Dipu Karuthedathu, Mohanram K, Prakash H L, Raju A K, Sreekumar H, Srikanth Kumar and Vinay Das


2. A separate report in the same issue of the journal, by C Sashikumar, C K Vishnudas, S Raju, P A Vinayan and S Kannan, informs us that the Lesser Fish-Eagle is a breeding resident in Kerala including reservoir islets in the Parambikulam and Periyar forest areas.


Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan
All rights reserved

Pichavaram - the great mangrove forest of Tamil Nadu

Few people know (or care) that this favourite locale of filmmakers is a spectacular mangrove ecosystem throbbing with life

The mangrove forests of Pichavaram comprise an intriguing ecosystem

Tickets in hand, negotiations with the boatman closed, we should have been on the boat, headed for our first visit to a mangrove ecosystem. But all we could do was to gaze longingly at the dense green clumps across a vast expanse of the lagoon. The boat that was to carry us there was moored to the shore covered in blue tarpaulin. A sudden squall was depositing even more rain on the already soaked and overflowing coastline of southern Tamil Nadu and we were right in the centre of it all – at the northern edge of the Cauvery delta. 

A sudden squall threatened to drown out our much-awaited trip

Pichavaram, one of only two mangrove ecosystems located in Tamil Nadu, is approximately 75 km south of Pondicherry and 15 km from the temple town of Chidambaram. We had reached Pichavaram in the afternoon after a very enriching visit to the great living Chola temple. To be fair, the day had been fairly dry but now that we had planned to be on open water for the next four hours, it had started pouring.

Our entry into the mangroves began with the boatman negotiating one of the tamer channels

The Cauvery delta is formed when the river breaks up into multiple distributaries after Srirangam island. The northernmost distributary Coleroon (or Killidam) meets the sea near Pichavaram (the other river that drains this area is Vellar and the wetland is referred to as Vellar-Pichavaram-Coleroon wetland). The other mangrove patch is at Muthupet, which happens to be at the southernmost point of the Cauvery delta; the distance between the two is 180 km. Muthupet has a large lagoon where six distributaries discharge their waters. These mangroves are characterized by a long dry season (February to September) and high salinity.

Inside the mangroves

The shower stopped as suddenly as it had begun. We were off in a jiffy, the boatman rowing slowly and steadily across to the mangroves. Clouds streamed in from the ocean, promising more rain, but we pretended not to care. Pichavaram has almost 4,000 rivulets of varying length and width with mangroves on either side. As we entered the first, not more than six feet across, we saw the mangroves up close. They seem to grow out of water (there is not a patch of ground visible anywhere) almost like a floating forest.

The canopy weaves a tangled web, and not always a friendly one

The boatman was accomplished at clearing our way

As the boat negotiated the first turn, to our utter amazement and delight we entered a long and narrow rivulet completely wrapped in mangroves. It was like entering a green tunnel – the boatman had to row by moving the low, tangled mangrove branches out of the way. The banks of the rivulet were covered with mangrove roots reaching into the water – hundreds for every clump. The sky was swallowed up completely by the arches of these low trees and all we could see was the narrow rivulet and a vast impenetrable forest growing out of turbid water. The world had dissolved into an expanse of brown and red stilt roots (and all the shades in between) and the luxuriant green foliage of the mangroves, upon which streaks of sunlight created an impressionist canvas of rust, brown, olive, jade, lime-green and emerald.

A maze of stilt roots

In the eerie silence, as we negotiated one tunnel after another, crabs lit up the scene. They were everywhere – climbing up from the water’s edge, clinging to the trunks, hanging on to the canopy and perched in silence on overarching branches. A myriad species of crabs inhabit the forest and it was unfortunate that we knew so little about them. Soon enough we entered one of the wider channels. It was almost 100 feet across, like highways connecting the islands of mangroves. Forest towered on either side, dense and glistening in the evening sun.

The low boughs were the province of a myriad species of crabs

The east coast wetlands starting from the Sundarbans right down to Pichavaram (and Muthupet) receive a major infusion of fresh water from the rivers either throughout the year (the snow-fed Ganga and Brahmaputra) or during the northeast monsoon (Krishna, Godavari and Cauvery). Salinity levels vary through the season in proportion to the fresh water discharge but the trend is towards an increase in salinity as we move down the coast. So, while the Sundarbans have the least salinity (and the shortest dry season), the mangrove wetlands of the Cauvery delta have the maximum salinity levels and the longest dry season. Salinity (or the absence of freshwater intake) has an observed impact on biomass and species diversity. The Sunderbans and Mahanadi mangroves have 26 recorded mangrove species (out of the 33 found in India, 51 in South Asia and 68 worldwide), and high biomass due to tall low-salinity tolerant trees. But the mangrove species diversity drops to 17 for Godavari, 12 for Krishna and finally 11 for Cauvery. 

The sea-water dominated mangroves of Gujarat (with almost no fresh water infusion) have a species diversity of just eight. Further, the dominant species in all the high salinity mangroves -- those of the rivers Cauvery and Krishna and in Gujarat -- is Avicennia marina, an extremely saline water-tolerant species.

It has been observed that except in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where the mangroves along tidal creeks, lagoons and bays are extremely diverse, those of the east coast are gradually being dominated by high salt-tolerant species like Avicennia marina due to changes in quantity and periodicity of fresh water. It has been found that the vegetation of Pichavaram and Muthupet wetlands used to be more diverse in the beginning of the 20th century but since the freshwater inflow was severely curtailed by the numerous dams and canals upstream on the Cauvery, Avicennia marina became dominant.

Mangroves receive an infusion of river water during the monsoon

We spent almost three hours in this verdant forest. It was a strangely hypnotic world. The dense forest growing out of the water, trees on stilts, and meditating crabs perched where we expected birds, puzzled our senses. But it was a real world, a shrinking and vulnerable patch of forest, and probably the last remnant of the much vaster mangrove forests that occupied the Cauvery Delta.

A strangely hypnotic world

Note:

Mangrove wetlands in India are in most cases the gift of east-flowing rivers. Other than the geological fact that India has no major west-flowing rivers, the east coast is gentler and wider and thus aids major rivers in creating large deltas and an accompanying network of tidal creeks and canals, and brackish lagoons where the mangroves thrive.

The major mangroves patches in India are Sunderbans (Ganga-Brahmaputra), Mahanadi (Mahanadi, Brahmini and Baitarani – the famous Bhitarkanika wetland), Godavari (the Gautami-Godavari system creates the Coringa wetland), Krishna (three islands located between Gollamattapaya and Nadimeru distributaries, and the Krishna river) and Cauvery (Pichavaram and Muthupet). The river dominated (tide-dominated in the case of the Sunderbans) mangroves of the east coast comprise approx 57 percent of India’s mangroves.

The west coast mangroves, all of which are in Gujarat (Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambat), comprise about 23 percent and those of Andaman and Nicobar Islands make up the remaining 20 percent. There are no statistically significant mangroves outside these five states (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal and Gujarat) and Andaman and Nicobar islands, though small patches exist along the coasts of Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa.

We saw very few birds inside the forests but for the Striated Heron or the Mangrove Heron

The Gujarat mangroves are of a very different type. They are “sea mangroves” since they receive almost no freshwater from inland rivers during the year. These are classified as “drowned-valley type mangroves”.

Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi
Additional photographs by Bijoy Venugopal


References: 


V Selvam, Environmental Classification of Mangrove Wetlands of India [PDF]

To Urigam after 4 long months...

A scene by the Cauvery

Finally, after four months of inactivity, I got an opportunity to head once again to Urigam, along with some KANS* members (by now even I was one). This is the very same place I had been to for a ground survey a few months ago. Except it had a stark contrast in colour: it was now covered in green. A couple of weeks prior to our visit, it had rained well, triggering an almost complete transformation of the vegetation. Trees that were bone-dry months ago had sprouted new green leaves. Grass and shrubs shot up from the ground. The entire forest looked refreshed and recharged.

We were welcomed by a Green Bee-Eater (Merops orientalis) as we approached Uganiyam. He sat bang in the middle of the jeep track and I could not resist clicking his portrait.

Welcomed by a Green Bee-eater

We reached around noon, ate our packed lunches which we had bought from one of the small eateries at a village nearby, and set off to do what we came to do - roam around! Most of us decided to take the route from Uganiyam to Dabbagulli (approximately 7 km).

Apart from the Grey Hornbills, which were all over the place, the first bird we saw as we started walking was the Sirkeer Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus leschenaultii) -- a lifer for me. Along the way, we split into three groups and took separate tracks away from the main jeep trail which led to Dabbagulli. Khusro, Valli and I walked till we reached a dry stream bed and then walked along the dry stream to reach the Cauvery river.

Here we sat down and relaxed for a while near the bank as it was getting really hot and we were quite tired after walking for around 4 km. I sat watching a flock of Small Green Bee-Eaters conduct their aerial sorties close to the water's surface, when all of a sudden Khusro exclaimed, "Deer! Spotted deer! Across the river!"

We froze, not moving a muscle, as we knew that even the slightest movement would scare them away. All this while I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of them. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't spot them. Finally, by the time I caught sight of them, the deer spotted us, froze for a second and then took off. But not before I managed a shot of their escape. Happy with our spotting, we began walking back towards Uganiyam.

The deer take to their heels

We reached Uganiyam around 5 pm and sat by the Cauvery. By this time Laxmi, George, Satish and the doc had joined us. We sat on the rocks whiling away time talking about various things but mostly just relaxing and taking in the breath-taking beauty of the forest around us. After a while, all of a sudden, Satish shouted from behind me: "Elephants!" I whipped around to see a herd of about 10-11 animals across the river. They had come down for a drink and a couple of individuals had entered the water. There were two calves in the herd. They were only about 100 meters away from us so I dashed closer to get a better shot using every possible boulder and shrub as cover. As I was doing this, a villager in a WHITE shirt appeared out of nowhere, right in front of the line of sight of the herd. As soon as they saw him, the herd started moving away into the forest. All I could do was curse him for the rest of the day, and the next! After our excitement of seeing the herd so close had waned a bit, we were in for another treat. A Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) perched on a tree on the opposite bank. Thanks to Khusro's spotting scope we all had a good look at it.

Elephants by the river bank

It was getting dark. Doc, Valli and I decided to go in search of Aparna and Anand in Doc's Tata Safari (they had not returned yet). We found them along the way and they hopped in with us. On our way back, I was in for another lifer - Nightjars. Though they were all over the place, we could not identify the species. Some of them did not move from the ground until the vehicle was almost on top of them. One even flew onto the bonnet and sat on the windshield for a second. At one point I asked Doc to stop the vehicle as I wanted to get a better look at one of the nightjars on the jeep track. While we were observing the bird intently, a movement next to the bird caught my eye. There, in the grass, crossing the track, was a baby Indian Rock Python (Python molurus). We held our breath in excitement, watching the snake cross and disappear into the shrubs. Excited with our sightings and thanking the lord for our good luck, we continued back to Uganiyam. We reached to find a very common but disturbing scene. A herdsman along with a herd of cattle about 50-60 in number had settled near the Uganiyam Anti-Poaching Camp for the night. Even though grazing inside the Reserve Forest is allowed, keeping the cattle overnight is not. But we were just mute spectators as there was nothing much we could do. The forest officials know of this and refuse to do anything about it. The next morning I woke before six, picked up my camera and went down to the Cauvery for a little photo-shoot. My 'model' was looking gorgeous as ever, draped in green...


Sometime later a small herd of Chital (Axis axis) with a couple of stags appeared near the opposite bank. Bonnet Macaques (Macaca radiata) accompanied the deer. It is said that they forage together in the forest and rely on each other to detect predators.





After a couple of hours, I went for a walk along the path (which I have named the 'Bear Highway') where I had found Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus) tracks during the ground survey. Although I did not find as many tracks as last time, I did spot a couple of them. After walking down the 'Bear Highway' I reached the stream which joins the Cauvery, sat beside it for a while and headed back to camp. On the way back heard a loud whistling call which told me to look up instinctively - it was a Crested Serpent Eagle (Spilornis cheela) flying high in the sky! With this last sighting ended my short but very rewarding trip to Urigam after a long time.

A cicada bid us goodbye

*KANS - Kenneth Anderson Nature Society Text and photographs: Arun Menon