Nature's Spokesman

by M Krishnan

  —The Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary

  WOMBAT

  The fat Australian wombat

  does not indulge in combat,

  or work, or argument, or any quest.

  It feeds on what it feeds on,

  it finds a mate and breeds on,

  and then recuperates in sleep and rest.

  Nature Protected

  56

  The Bishnoi and Blackbuck

  The blackbuck is exclusively Indian. It is the type specimen of the antelopes and the handsomest of them all. It is also the swiftest long-distance runner among animals and can keep going for ten km, at sixty km per hour. And it is well known to our classical art and poetry, and there are separate names in our regional languages to distinguish the graceful, hornless, sandbrown doe from the arrestingly black-and-white buck, with spiralling horns as long as the animal is tall.

  There are other superlative claims too that can be made for the blackbuck. During the eighteenth, nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, it was the most numerously shot of our much shot wild beasts, and also baited and snared, or otherwise killed, by meat hunters all over India. Further, it was the animal to hunt which cheetahs were used in a royal sport, practised only in our country for centuries till the cheetah became extinct here. Later, when the plains country (the natural home of blackbuck) was intensively and extensively occupied by our exploding humanity, it was one of the animals most seriously affected by deprivation of territory. The open, level scrub it had roamed from ancient times was colonized, cut up and cultivated by men everywhere, and everywhere the blackbuck was hunted down as a crop-raider. Whether or not it really did much damage to cultivation, its flesh was much relished. Today, blackbuck are locally extinct in many locations where they were known in great herds for centuries, or else reduced to a few straggling parties. Even in sanctuaries like Kanha, Point Calimere and the tiny Guindy National Park around Raj Bhavan in Madras, the buck lead fugitive lives and are poor in size and horn.

  How delightful it is against this factual background to find that there are still agrarian communities and settlements in our country where the blackbuck is not only not hunted in spite of the trifling damage it does to the crops, but also actively protected! And here one finds it in fairly large herds, and it attains as splendid a bodily size and horn development as it ever did.

  Tal Chhapar in Rajasthan, about midway between Ratangarh and Sujangarh, is perhaps the most notable for its blackbuck of all such Bishnoi villages. The Bishnois are a predominantly agricultural Hindu community who follow their own ancient twenty-point programme. Two of the important tenets of their faith are that they feel bound to prevent killing of all wild animals (including birds) and to prevent greenwood from being cut. They practise kindness towards all living things as their creed, and provide water to wild creatures around their settlements in arid tracts.

  It is only around Bishnoi settlements that one suddenly finds blackbuck, chinkara, peafowl, partridges and other shy, fugitive wild animals being quite confiding and unafraid of men—proof positive of the potency of a strict policy of non-interference towards the local wildlife (except of course when occasion arises to protect it from human predators). And at Tal Chhapar, a fairly populous settlement, it is the blackbuck that dominates the area.

  There were mixed herds too, containing adult does by the dozen and many young from the previous breeding season, but in March when I was there it was the all-adult male buck parties that were specially notable. At other Bishnoi villages too, I saw such buck parties (for instance, at Makam, Ramdeora and Doli, and beyond Jodhpur) but the largest of such parties was at Tal Chhapar, consisting of some sixty to seventy bucks, all running together.

  Soon after Independence we have had the Indian Board for Wildlife, and the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 and regional Wildlife Advisory Boards and wildlife wardens formed and appointed under the Act. They certainly represent a constructive and real step towards implementing the growing governmental awareness of responsibility towards the nation’s wildlife. We have knowledgeable societies and associations willing and able to offer advice and information on various aspects of wildlife conservation. And we have a vast and varied multitude of wildlife experts, Indian and exotic, so keen on helping in the good cause that it is difficult to escape them, and their cliques and coteries and theories. But if you want to know how conservation can be really effected successfully in the field without all this fuss and bother, by illiterate rustics through dedicated and sincere effort and faith in the policy of leaving well alone, go to Tal Chhapar.

  1980

  57

  Vedanthangal

  Vedanthangal is in the Chinglepet district, a little village not shown on the smaller survey maps, some fifty-five miles from Madras and six by road from the nearest place to which bus or train can take you. And perhaps the oldest bird sanctuary in India lies here.

  There is a small seasonal lake here (or a large tank—call it what you like), seventy-four acres in extent excluding outlying lowland. In summer, and till the rains arrive in August or September, the lake bed is dry—a shallow mud basin with little grass or other small growth on it, but with about 500 Barringtonias growing in massed clumps near its middle and singly along the inner edge of its palmyra-topped bund. The trees (all Barringtonia acutangula, except for a handful of thin acacias) are mature and stout-boled, with spreading, evergreen crowns, but they are not tall—not much over twenty feet in height, some not even that high. When the rain-fed lake is full, it is about ten feet deep in the middle and the trunks and lower boughs are submerged, with only the leafy, much-branched crowns showing above the thick green water, in darker green mounds. And thousands of birds come here, to nest in these crowns.

  From time immemorial they have nested here, and been effectively protected by the villagers. The motive of these good people in protecting the birds is not wholly altruistic, but I do not believe it is wholly selfish either. The droppings of the mixed assemblage of parent birds, and the rising generations, enrich the lake water, endowing it with manurial potency. It is this water that is used for the neighbouring paddy fields.

  Both the Indian and Madras wildlife boards have accorded recognition to Vedanthangal, but it was a sanctuary for centuries before the boards were there, and officially recognized long ago. The records of such official cognizance are interesting.

  Late in the eighteenth century Mr L. Place, collector of Chinglepet (1796–98) appears to have given an original ‘cowle’ to the local inhabitants, who asked for official recognition of their age-old ‘prescriptive right’ to protect the birds against all-comers. This document stated that no birds might be shot or snared in the Vedanthangal tank area.

  On 7 January 1858, George G. Tod, chief assistant magistrate of the district, renewed the sanction at the request of the villagers, who had lost the original given them by Mr Place. Mr Tod’s ‘cowle’ is in rather quaint Tamil and runs as follows:

  ‘Whereas it has been represented that in the Kadappai trees of the lake of your village of Vedanthangal a variety of birds nest and live freely and that the Hon. Placesaheb had long ago given you a cowle prohibiting the shooting or capture of these birds, which document has been lost, and whereas you have now asked us to give you another in replacement, this has been issued to you.

  Should any persons, Europeans or hunters or such people, come to the lake and attempt to shoot or capture the birds in contravention of the above-mentioned order, show this to them and prevent them from doing so.’

  More than three-quarters of a century later this order of ‘Todsaheb’, carefully preserved by the villagers, was produced before another ‘Todsaheb’ for renewal—only, this second saheb chose to spell his name with a double ‘d’. On 10 February 1936, Mr A.H.A. Todd, collector of Chinglepet, issued an order which says:

  ‘Vedanthangal tank is a birds’ sanctuary and has been kept as such by the villagers for over a century. Notice in English and in Tami
l in bold characters should be painted on wooden boards and set up at each end of the tank bund. The form of notice to be put up is enclosed. The expenses should be met from office contingencies.’

  I saw no wooden boards carrying prominent notice when I first visited Vedanthangal in June 1954, nor during four subsequent visits made late last year and early this year. But I saw the lake area dry and birdless, and later water-filled and teeming with nesting birds, and was able to collect sufficient observation material for this note.

  Asked to guess how many trees grow in the middle of the lake, people would be hopelessly out in their estimates. Most would put the figure around fifty, the more reckless might even go up to 100. No one who did not know the actual number would think some 300 trees stood there, so closely are they massed and so confluently do their tops run into one another, when seen from the bund. A clump that from the bund looks as if it were made up of two or three trees actually represents twenty. I have taken no census of the trees, but on a rough reckoning I made out there were 300 in the middle.

  The trees, as I have said, are old. During summer the seedlings that sprout in the shade of their parents are grazed or trampled down by cattle, but I think they would need transplanting to the periphery, some distance away, to develop into vigorous new clumps, even if they are otherwise protected. So much for the history and topography of the sanctuary. Before going on to the really interesting feature of Vedanthangal, its nesting birds, we may briefly consider the probable origin of its name.

  ‘Vedan’ in Tamil means ‘hunter’ or ‘fowler’ and ‘thangal’ is an old Tamil word that has two relevant meanings in this context, viz., ‘tank’ and ‘the act of protecting or guarding’. Those who construe the place name to mean ‘fowler’s tank’ must surely realize that they have hit on a singularly inapposite rendering. Vedanthangal having been a bird sanctuary for so long, it seems reasonable to presume it was named so because its birds were protected against fowlers.

  Now for the bird life. I list the species I noticed nesting here during the latest breeding season, still ‘on’ as I write. But first I must point out that I may have missed a few species that go about the business of securing posterity unostentatiously, that my observation was limited to the few clumps I could watch through binoculars and the fewer clumps I could get near to, and that sustained observation over a long period (not half a dozen random visits) is necessary for any appraisal of the species, numbers, and priorities in a large, mixed heronry, and the nesting habits of the birds.

  I found no migratory birds here, excepting a few teal I saw on the afternoon of 12 February flying over the lake. That afternoon I also saw a pair of pelicans here, but these are not migratory birds, and are common near Madras where there are broad sheets of water, for example at Pulicat Lake, to the north of Madras (Vedanthangal is more or less to the south). However, I heard persistent reports from local inhabitants of the occasional visits of large, swan-like birds that rode easily on the water—not pelicans, surely. What I heard strongly suggested Barheaded Geese to me, and if they have visited Vedanthangal during certain seasons, that would mark the southernmost point of their migration.

  Hundreds of Openbilled Storks were nesting in the Barringtonias, but no other storks—I was rather surprised at the absence of the Painted Stork. All the egrets were here, the Large Egret, the Smaller Egret (which G.M. Henry so rightly terms Median Egret), the Little Egret, and a few Cattle Egrets on the periphery—I don’t know if the last nest in the lake, but perhaps they do. An interesting point I noticed was that though the first three were breeding actively, and there were nestlings and even eggs in their nests, some of the Large and Smaller Egrets were not in breeding condition.

  Night Herons, Pond Herons (‘paddy-birds’) and a few great, gaunt Grey Herons were prominently in residence, as also White Ibises. Spoonbills sporting full nuchal crests, the tokens of their breeding condition, were nesting in large numbers. Apparently they breed here right from November to March—my mid—February photographs show week-old young in the nest and also three-quarter-grown spoonbills, one of them obligingly displaying the cause of its name.

  Little Cormorants and Darters (‘snake-birds’) complete my list of breeding birds, somewhat incompletely! I thought I saw a few shag, but could not get near enough and am not sure I saw dabchick near the shore, and was told that some sort of moorhen or waterhen also resides here. Common grey-necked crows and Brahminy Kites were very much in evidence over the lake; common kites, neophrons, and an occasional bird of prey were also to be seen. In any large nesting colony, a few eggs and nestlings fall into the water while their parents dispute territory, nests may be left unguarded momentarily, and opportunities for scavenging, thieving and fishing are not lacking.

  I can give no estimate of numbers. The Little Cormorants, Smaller Egrets, spoonbills, openbills and night herons were the most plentiful. Thousands of birds nest here, and their young survive the bustle and crowding of the breeding enterprise to continue the species, thanks to the protection they enjoy.

  Soon after the first rains, sometime in October, the birds start arriving in small flocks, and rainfall being normal, they keep coming till January! The nesting species do not descend on the lake full strength, in sky-obscuring flights, but arrive in small successive flocks. Many of these start breeding at once, colonizing some tree of their choice before the next flight reaches Vedanthangal, so that once breeding has commenced, young at various stages of development may be found at any inspection. The position, however, is not quite so simple for while some species (and possibly flocks) arrive ready to breed, others are not in breeding condition on arrival, and may take their time nesting.

  Breeding goes on for almost five months, from November to March, and many of the birds raise more than one clutch. They nest here, as they do elsewhere, in mixed companies. However, there is a tendency for birds of a feather to keep together in locating their nests, one part of a treetop being largely utilized by one species, another part by some other species. White Ibises sometimes run their nests together, as observers have already pointed out, and at Vedanthangal I saw large, machan-like platforms consisting of the communal nests of this ibis—there were no eggs but the young on them served to identify the machan-builders surely.

  Openbills, the smallest and almost the most awkward-looking of our storks (the palm for such looks must surely go to the largest, the adjutant!), and spoonbills tend to occupy special trees of their own; the openbills build their nests pretty close, on a sort of flat system. Incidentally, they are capable of the most dexterous turn of wing; not only do they soar, stork-fashion, but they also dip and shoot off in the air at acute angles, at dizzy speed. Young openbills have no gap between their mandibles (it is this gap in the adult beak that gives the bird its name); they have comparatively short, gapless, wedge-shaped beaks.

  Paddy fields around and sheets of water not too far away provide the parent birds with feeding grounds, a most important factor in the communal breeding of waterbirds, for the quickgrowing young have insatiable appetites. This, the shade provided by the Barringtonia foliage (even the young of most diurnal birds cannot stand the sun) and, more than all, the protection they enjoy are what make the birds arrive here in such numbers, soon after the rains. The great Madurantakam Lake is only a few furlongs away, there are minor sheets of water close by, and I observed egrets and ibises feeding in paddy fields eight miles from Vedanthangal, a negligible distance to a bird.

  However, the potentialities of Vedanthangal Lake itself as a feeding ground appear to have been overlooked by observers. On the village side the water is shallow and merges into cultivation—flocks of egrets and spoonbills, and paddy-birds, may be seen feeding here all day. Cormorants and darters fish in the lake, though from time to time the former sally out to feeding grounds and return to their nests in large, thick, quick-winged flocks. I saw openbills prodding the shallows at Vedanthangal, not far from their nests, and from the manner in which they threw up their necks and gulp
ed, every now and then, the occupation seemed rewarding. Undoubtedly the regular feeding grounds of the nesting species lie outside the lake, but the water below their nests, rich in algae and aquatic insects and other small fry, is not a larder despised.

  Vedanthangal is one of the most picturesque and interesting breeding grounds of waterbirds in our country. A naturalist can spend a lifetime here, profitably observing the local avian life, but even to the layman the lake during the nesting season is fascinating, the compact field of observation, the teeming colonies in the water, the constant passage of birds to and fro, and the rural setting combining to capture and hold his eye. It is perhaps just as well that the sanctuary is off the beaten track, but it deserves to be much wider known than it is now. Used to a village within a furlong, the birds can take no fright, or other harm, from being observed. Unfortunately, though they are safe on their nesting ground, they are ruthlessly shot all around, when they set out to find food for themselves and their young. The Madras government, interested in the sanctuary, will no doubt devise means to prevent such cruel slaughter. Vedanthangal can do much to stimulate a now apathetic public interest in our bird life, and I hope that more and more people will get to know of its charms and that it will soon develop into a centre of national and international interest.

  1956

  58

  The Charm of Chilka

  In the first week of January last year, I spent a whole day in a fishing-boat on a saltwater lake some sixty km from Madras. Boats here depend on directional winds—one has to set out early in the morning to get the wind right to sail out into the lake, and in the evening the wind turns right round and brings one back. Nowhere is the brownish green mire-bottomed lake deep and in places flat sandpits rise just above the thick, dark water. One is transported at once into a different world, a world of total flatness where an egret wading in the shallows stands taller than the distant, hazy palmyras on the horizon, a world with no verticals. And throughout the day I was thinking of Chilka Lake, ten times as large but otherwise so strikingly similar—I was hundreds of miles away from where I was.