Meeting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the rainforest

The two faces of a forest stream are so unlike each other


Encounter 1: Flamboyance

The cab driver drops us at the end of a muddy road and says he'll wait till we return. The rains have let up a bit and a few drops that cling to leaves is the only precipitation. The path winds uphill first and then starts to descend. Can't stop, leeches are climbing up our legs from every direction. Can't run - you need to be sure of where you are treading. 


Soon the sound gives it away -- a stream rushing through the rainforest. A fallen tree on the way forces us to take another path, winding down, careful not to step on leaf litter. No one knows what lies beneath the dried and decomposing leaves.


Glimpses of white shine through the leaves. The sound is loud now -- a low, continuous roar. We find a a rock jutting above the stream and step on it, then exclaim in unison: "Wow!" 

Winding through the canopy the stream flows right before us. It dives under the rock on which we stand and swivels over to stabler terrain to the right of us. It is not just the rushing roar we can hear now. There is whistling, hissing, gushing, rustling... along with a dozen other sounds that I can't put to words. Also the rushing water works up a wind. Leeches still clamber up my shins, and I drag, roll and flick them into the water as I set up the tripod.

Not sure what but something (other than the leeches) makes you feel vulnerable standing next to such a forest stream. There is this urge to finish stuff fast and move on. Am I worried about a flash flood? Scenes run in my head in fast forward - Arwen on horseback, mumbling mystic words that unleash water on the wraiths trying to cross the placid river: water that races down on them in the shape of a dozen horses and wash them away. 


When Bijoy says "Let's go" I find myself eager to comply. Climbing uphill, though the route was steep, doesn't feel tough at all - what more inspiration is needed than seeing leeches inching their way up your legs when you keep them still for a moment?

Encounter 2: Tranquility 
We walk past the cottage reserved for Romulus Whittaker and, at the edge of the forest, there is an electric fence (which was not electrified). We climb it and take a few steps downwards into the foliage. And we realize that we have just been transported into another dimension. Pandora, maybe?
The diffused sunlight that enveloped the open grassland in front of the cottages is absent here, cut off by the canopy that makes us feel we are inside a tunnel. An occasional croak is heard, succeeded by soft mumbling whispers as the running water gossips with the rocks. 


Everything sports some shade of green. The water, the leaves and the canopy... 


The interns at ARRS said the place throngs with life at night, but unfortunately they never went on a night-walk that side during our stay, so we couldn't accompany them...

These were two natural streams, both flowing right through the same rainforest. Perhaps both would merge somewhere, or one may get consumed by the other. But when we met them, they sported entirely contradicting personae - as different as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.


Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan
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The Green Ogre Weekend Update July 10

If you've missed anything this week, the weekend edition of The Green Ogre should sort you out...


I've been away on a family vacation most of last week, soaking up the monsoon in south Goa. Rain-washed Goa is refreshing. The Western Ghats slope down in a verdant riot that skids to a stop beside the ocean, buffered only by deserted beaches of soaked, clingy sand. Butterflies, dragonflies and birds were everywhere. Despite a domestic ban on birding, I sneaked sly glances at stork-billed kingfishers, prinias, spotted munias, black drongos and even a crimson sunbird that dropped by the hotel garden to say hello as I was dunking my daughter in the pool. Gorgeous, I say. And now, having returned sufficiently vindalooed, balchaoed, rechaedoed and bibincaed, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that my fellow-Ogres have been hacking away. 

This week, we continued our Agumbe Diaries and presented more finds from our sojourn in that neck of the deep, dark woods. On Monday, Sahastra introduced us to the Bicoloured Frog, one of the most attractive creatures to hop on the forest floor. In fact, if you're not watchful, you might mistake it for the forest floor itself.
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Sex is always a subject for steamy discussion. Despite Sandy's depraved jokes about the amatory pursuits of frogs, I gleaned some wisdom from watching all sorts of creatures in love. Dragonflies interlocked in subtle arcs as they mated on twigs. Grasshoppers and bush crickets carried on unabashed, hopping away together only when we almost crushed them underfoot. Lesser Whistling Ducks wheeled in the air, piping joyously, while Rufous Woodpeckers introduced new mates to the treasure trove of ants' nests in the treetops. Love was so in the air, and so inspired were we by monsoon mating mania that that we shot like zoopornographically obsessed paparazzi.
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Having said too much already, and having pushed this blog to the brink of NSFW-ness, we thought it best to clam up on Wednesday. But then, Arun's busy frame of mud-puddling lime butterflies raised so many curious eyebrows and engendered a spate of new questions.

Dung Beetles aren't the most charismatic of insects. They are dark, round, fat and inconspicuous except when they whir absent-mindedly past your ears or crash dizzily into lamps at night. Worse, their crappy lives revolve around what other animals leave behind. But then again, rain affords you the luxury of time. Time enough to stop and stare at a cow pat for five hours, and we were amazed at how a Dung Beetle made short work of it. Andy essayed this ode to the lowly dung-muncher.
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Last Day's Luck is a phenomenon that has mystified most nature-walkers. After three days at Agumbe we had heard so much about snakes that we expected them to stalk us from every bush and tree stump. No such luck. And then, a few hours before we were to depart, a Green Vine Snake showed up and allowed us the luxury of a long, relaxed photo-session.
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Among things that crawl, snakes scare the mojo out of most people. And a leaping frog has been known to turn dull altos into shrieking sopranos. But leeches?! Those eyeless, elastic strips of skin that crawl the mulchy rainforest floor? Sandy is so terrified of leeches that he gave us a hard time on the trip, repeatedly checking under our feet and rushing off unannounced into the bathroom to strip himself down for vainglorious de-leeching attempts. He refused to cross a stream and enter the dark rainforest for fear of his wetting his shoes -- later, when we returned from the walk soaked in rain and bristling with living leeches, he looked relieved that Fate hadn't picked him for that brief adventure. Leechophobia drove Sandy to such a paroxysm of panic that he wrote a fantasy-laced opus on these bloodsucking monsters.
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That's your weekend edition of The Green Ogre. Enjoy! 

Encounter: Bicoloured Frog

It's tiny and blends in completely with the leaf litter but once you spot it, the Bicoloured Frog is unmistakable

The southwest monsoon has just set in and the entire forest is dripping wet. The dimly lit floor is an abstract mosaic of rust, maroon, brown, beige, green and black – leaves in all stages of decomposition, slowly turning into soggy mulch. An occasional vein of green moss on a tree buttress glows iridescent under a rare shaft of sunlight. Fungi sprout everywhere feasting on death and decay. Every tentative footstep encounters leeches – tiny cold-blooded filaments swaying in the stagnant and humid air, relentlessly in the hunt for the iota of warmth that our feet radiate, setting them off on a determined somersaulting advance. Rotting twigs and branches give way at the slightest footfall and the soft murmur of rain on the dense closed canopy is a permanent hum in a forest which is otherwise silent, at least until nightfall provides the cue to lovesick frogs and crickets.

We are on the lookout for the Hump-nosed Pit Viper but instead we sight the Bicoloured Frog. It, too, is wet and soaked, motionless until it notices us with its large, round, red eyes, which are well adapted to sight in the semi-darkness of the rainforest. 


True to its name, the predominant impression of the Bicoloured Frog (Clinotarsus curtipes), is the neat division of the colouration of the upper and the lower halves of its body. The upper half (which has been described as grey or brown) is cream-coloured, tinged with yellow resulting in a very light shade of brown that matches the surrounding leaf litter. The lower half of the body is glistening black with no banding on the limbs. Seen in dimmer light the glistening back gives the impression of deep beige. 


The nostrils are very close to the mouth and the tympanum, present on the black half of the body and hence not very easily seen, is as large as the eye. The size is approximately 7 cm and the snout is pointed. The backs of all the four or five frogs that we encountered bore randomly distributed black spots, providing excellent camouflage in the leaf litter. The spotting on the back may or may not be present on individual frogs though all the frogs that we encountered had them.

While we photographed the frog – almost lying on the ground for an eye-level view (an act of extreme gallantry considering the omnipresent, ever-flipping thirsty-for-blood leeches) the frog was moderately alarmed and tried to move away, on one occasion walking up using its limbs, but was not unduly shy, never taking more than one hop. Clinotarsus curtipes seemed to be fairly common but none happened to be in breeding colors yet.

The IUCN status is Near Threatened, primarily on account of habitat loss. Clinotarsus curtipes is a terrestrial leaf-litter frog but has webbed toes and enters the water only during the breeding season. It adapts well and is found in different forest types -- evergreen, semi-evergreen and deciduous. In the breeding season the frog acquires a ruddy disposition with the black receding out from the sides and the underside becoming very dark, almost black. The vocal sac is internal. As in a lot of frog species the female is larger than the male. J C Daniel notes that the dispersal of young frogs is very orderly and almost battalion-like. 

The spots, like the stripes of the tiger, can be distinctive and are used to identify individual frogs during density surveys. The spots are also a good aid to locate the frog since an uncannily well synchronised set of polka dots hopping on the forest floor give away an otherwise excellent camouflage.

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Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi 
Photograph of the breeding male by L Shyamal (Wikipedia Commons)