Gaurs like humans, humans like Gaurs - At Valparai

In my recent visit to Valparai, I heard and witnessed many instances where animals and humans live together, with & without conflicts. In Valparai, every single person, even a child would have a leopard story to tell. Same way, everyone will have an elephant encounter story too. I have heard from them that in night, sloth bears come and explore the recycle bins in the bus stand, which used to be a busy place in the day time. There are SMS system, where messages are sent to all estate owners and workers about elephant movements, every morning, just like we get traffic alerts in cities.

It is a common scene to see Gaurs in the middle of tea plantations in Valparai. The local people do not disturb them, and leave them alone till they cross the other side of the plantations. 

But, the tourists don't leave them.

We saw a huge herd of Gaurs - with 2 males, 7-8 females, 2 calves in the middle of the tea plantation. 

 

Locals don't care and leave them alone

While we were watching the Gaur herd from a distance, a car came and stopped right next to the Gaurs. They were not walking stable, might be they are all drunk. They got down the car and walked straight to the herd. Seeing them, the Gaurs started moving away.

They wanted to take pictures of the Gaurs in their mobile phones. They started shouting on the Gaurs to come closer. But as the animals don't understand their language, and they were all in a threatening mode, the herd started panicking. To add to the chaos, 2 of them started throwing wooden pieces and stones over the animals.

 

Tourists walking towards the Gaurs for a photo session

We didn't have a choice, other than shouting at them to move away. I shouted to the maximum, as I was the only one who knows the local language, and made them get into the car. But 2 of them still were staring at the animals, waiting for them to come down. We immediately called the forest officials using one of a local naturalist, and reported the incident. Later we came to know that they had to pay some penalty for their bravery.

While coming back, we saw the herd grazing peacefully at the bottom of the hill. It was a pleasant scene to watch them from a far distance.

In the middle of the plantations, the Gaurs grazing peacefully

Lion tailed Macaques of Valparai

  

I visited Valparai recently. Valparai is a Taluk and hill station in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, India. It is located 3,500 feet above sea level on the Anaimalai Hills range of the Western Ghats. It is a beautiful place where you can find different species of birds and mammals. Some of the endemic and endangered fauna lives here among humans.

Lion tailed macaque is one of the highlights of Valparai visit. This is an endangered animal, and can be found only in the Western Ghats of South India. The lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus), or the wanderoo, is an Old World monkey.

From the 1st day noon till 2nd day noon, we didn't find a single lion tailed macaque, other than sign boards in the road saying "Lion tailed macaques crossing area". After lunch, we saw them in the roads, near PudhuthOttam estate. There were around 100 macaques. I had seen them only in images, and I thought it would be bigger. But surprisingly they were smaller than the grey langurs. Also they were not arrogant like the Bonnet Macaques we see in our cities. The males are beautiful and majestic, bigger than females.

They were all involved in various social behaviors like grooming one another, etc. Young ones were playing with mother's tail and juveniles were fighting with each other.

 

These macaques used to cross the hill, and the road near this estate happens to be on their way. They spend some time here and explore the area for finding any food opportunities.

Sadly, they get killed by the fast moving vehicles while they cross the roads. Fortunately, the "Nature Conservation Foundation" (http://ncf-india.org) have taken steps to avoid these magnificent creatures get killed. There are volunteers who spend considerable amount of time standing in the roads, with boards with captions - "Lion tailed macaques crossing, Go slow", and control the traffic according to the macaques' activities. When the macaques run or play in the road, these volunteers chase them away to the sides and watch carefully like mothers handle the kids in our homes.

When vehicles like lorry/bus approach them, they shout and show board, and make them slow down. At one instance, I saw one of the volunteer almost stood in the middle of the road in front of a lorry risking his life, to make the vehicle slow down.

 

Lion tailed macaques running towards vehicles for food options.

An NCF volunteer running towards the vehicle to avoid macaques getting hit.

A vehicle stopped for LTM.

The NCF have made bridges over the road, for the macaques to avoid accidents in the road. But they sometimes prefer the natural path. In below images, you can see the artificial bridge and a macaque avoids it.

 

Artificial bridge made for LTMs to cross the road.

But sometimes, they don't like artificial path.

All the locals respect these animals, but many of the tourists don't. They stop the vehicles near the animals, feed them, and make them come closer and take pictures with mobile phones, etc., which leads to many accidents. Littering is a major problem which everyone ignores or do not care. Littering causes serious trouble to the environment, and sometimes they end up fatal.

 

A LTM exploring a plastic cover

In the below picture, a lion tailed macaque feeding on a burfi packet thrown by a generous animal lover. I heard from a local that someone thrown a pickle bottle to a macaque and the macaque started feeding on it. Not sure what happened afterwards.

 

A LTM trying to eat a Burfi packet thrown by a tourist.

Everyone should realize the impact of littering and should take responsibility in not throwing their wastes at wherever they like. It will be good if they behave the way they behave in some foreign cities like Singapore, in cautiously not throwing wastes.

Hope someday humans realize its value.

Eurasian Coot - A brutal parent?

Last week I visited Kabini with my friend. While going to Kabini & returning back, we used to stop at the lake on the way near HD.Kote, which usually have plenty of bird life, like jacanas, coots, ducks, egrets, herons, storks and ibis. Also, sometimes, we could see marsh harriers and kites.

This time, while coming back from Kabini, we stopped for some time and were watching for the bird life. We noticed a coot with 2 chicks foraging near the banks in between the grass shoots. It looked like the adult coot was feeding the chicks. The chicks were following the adult wherever it goes. At one point, the adult coot did some body language by dipping the head under water, and left the chicks. May be it went in search of food. The chicks obediently stayed back obeying its parent. The adult came back and again fed the chicks.

After sometime, we observed that the adult coot started attacking one of the chicks, repeatedly. It was biting the chick's head, and chasing it away. It was strange to watch that. Though the adult was attacking the chick, the chick repeatedly was behind the adult.

May be this is some kind of child favoritism, we thought. Some more references I could see in Wikipedia are here:

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Coots can be very brutal to their own young under pressure such as the lack of food. They will bite young that are begging for food and repeatedly do this until it stops begging and starves to death. If the begging continues, they may bite so hard that the chick is killed.[6]

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Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Coot

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At least some coots have difficulty feeding a large family of hatchlings on the tiny shrimp and insects that they collect. So after about three days they start attacking their own chicks when they beg for food. After a short while, these attacks concentrate on the weaker chicks, who eventually give up begging and die. The coot may eventually raise only two or three out of nine hatchlings.

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Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coot

Greater Flamingo

Flamingo - A slender long necked, pink beautiful bird, with curved beak. That's the picture comes to our mind when we hear "Flamingo".

In my childhood, I used to see them in the wildlife documentaries tele-casted very rarely in Doordharshan, on Sundays. Apart from its beauty, their courtship display dance was fascinating. The bird was always admirable and I always had Flamingo in my wish list.

First time, I saw this bird in a zoo. There were Zebras, Giraffes, Rhinos, and so many other animals. I thought Flamingo is also a "foreign" animal. And, I thought the only way to see this magnificent bird is in a zoo.

It was a pleasant surprise to me that later I understood Flamingos are here in India too. I thought one day, I will see them in their natural habitat. 

Last winter, I planned to visit Little Rann of Kutch with my friend Shreeram, just to see the Flamingos. My expectation was, I might see Flamingos, may be 20-30 birds. But the scene in LRK I witnessed was a shock to me. I was seeing thousands and thousands of Greater & Lesser Flamingos all grazing together. Little Rann of Kutch is the biggest breeding ground for flamingos in India. India homes Greater Flamingos and Lesser Flamingos.

On the first day evening safari, when I saw the flamingos for the first time, I wanted to get a decent picture of the bird. Getting to a close range was really a challenge, because of the loose mud, as well as the flamingos ensured the distance between us and them be the same, whatever plans we did and how closer we go. We managed to make few photographs of the beautiful birds. We visited the breeding grounds on our last day’s morning safari as well. This time, after a few clicks, we just sat down near the water, with cameras off. We sat down near the breeding ground and spent around 2 hours just watching the flamingos. It was an out of the world experience – sitting in the vast dry lands of Rann, just watching the beautiful flamingos, and observing their activities. After 2 hours, we got up and walked towards the jeep. Surprisingly, two juvenile Greater Flamingos started walking with one of us to some distance. They were no more scared or shy and were very comfortable with us.

Apart from LRK, Flamingos are found in Pulicat Lake in Andhra Pradesh, Chilka in Odisha, and some Coastal regions of Tamil Nadu & Andhra Pradesh.

Some of the highlights or facts about Greater Flamingos:

- The Greater Flamingo is the most widespread species of the flamingo family.

- This is the largest species of flamingo

- Like all flamingos, this species lays a single chalky-white egg on a mud mound.

- Male and female birds build the nest together

- A single egg is incubated alternately by both parents for four weeks

- The chick is fed on regurgitated liquid called crop-milk till a month.

- The chick joins other young birds in a group called a creche, taking 10 weeks to fledge.

- Young birds are grayish brown in color and gradually become white and pink

- They attain their full adult plumage at three to four years of age.

- Flamingo young are born with a straight bill. The bill gradually curves downward as it matures.

- The flamingo uses its specially adapted bill to capture and filter its food.

- The pink coloration comes from the carotenoid pigments in the organisms that live in their feeding grounds

- The greater flamingo is a highly social species, nesting in large, dense colonies, often numbering as many as 20,000 pairs, or exceptionally up to 200,000 pairs.

- Other than using freshwater inlets for bathing and drinking, the greater flamingo rarely inhabits areas of freshwater.

  

The greater flamingo is particular about its choice of habitat. It needs shallow, very salty lagoons and lakes in which to fed and breed successfully. The flamingo dislikes disturbance, particularly at breeding times, and will often seek out larger expanses of water for solitude.

Greater Flamingo In winter, the northernmost colonies of greater flamingos in Asia will migrate south to the warmer coastal areas of India.

The flamingo is part of the world’s food chain and if it goes then many other animals would be affected. The shrimp and krill’s population will increase because they won’t be eaten as much which means in some lakes, lagoons and wetlands there will be hundreds. That means the plankton that they eat will die out in that water. This means that the waters purity would be affected (because plankton cleans it) which would affect all the other animals etc, etc. Also the predators survived by flamingos will be affected. The whole food chain will be disturbed and eventually it will lead to humans so we have to make sure no animal gets extinct.

References: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Flamingo

http://savetheflamingo.blogspot.in/

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/interesting-facts-about-flamingos.html