S THEODORE BASKARAN

A DAY WITH THE SHAMA ESSAYS ON NATURE

A Day with the Shama

A Day with the Shama Essays on Nature

S. Theodore Baskaran

A Day With The Shama ©2020 S.Theodore Baskaran First Edition : July 2020 By ZERO DEGREE PUBLISHING ISBN: 978-93-88860-80-2 ZDP Title : 30 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, psychic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Contents Introduction 11 Birds The Song Of The Shama

15

Cranes: Messengers From Heaven

19

Ballerina Of The Lake

23

Birding in the African Bush

26

A Colourful Sentry

29

The Grebes Of Dwaraka

32

Birds Of An Island

35

A Harbinger Of Monsoon

38

The Storks Of Koondhankulam

40

The Return Of The Pelican

44

Beneath The Canopy

47

A Morning with the Raptors

50

The Birds Are Back

53

Where Black Swans Congregate

56

The Dipper

59

Mammals And Reptiles The Blackbuck Of Vistarpura

69

The Defiant One

72

The Macaques Of Puduthottam

75

Go Unto The Ant…

79

To Kill An Elephant

84

Wanderers Of The High Seas

87

Habitats Courtallam: Land Of The Lost Orchid

95

Death Of An Estuary

100

New Year At Gopalsamibetta

104

Kurinji: Flower For The Gods

108

Biodiversity In The Backyard

112

Kolli Hills: Land Of Honey And Orchids

116

On the Banks Of The Amaravathi

120

Saving The Treasured Islands

125

One Early Morning In Tambaram

129

Banyans and Baobabs: The Trees of Chennai

133

Personalities The Noah’s Ark Method In Conservation

145

The Bite Of A Snake

149

Salvaging The Rain Forest

155

Western Ghats: Through The Viewfinder

159

Saving The Tiger

164

Wildlife Studies And Conservation

168

The Lost Orchid Of Agasthyamalai

172

The Book And The Man

175

The Man Who Painted The Lilies

180

Counting The Nilgiri Tahr

183

Bird Calls In Your Drawing Room

187

Issues The Seasons Of Life

197

School For Dogs

200

Who Speaks For The Jarawas?

203

Splitting A Habitat: Wildlife On The Road

207

Tourism vs. Wildlife

210

The Water Festival: Slipping From Memory

214

Language And Ecology: A Fading Heritage

217

Me, My Dog And The World Around

223

Saving India’s Wildlife: Two Perspectives

227

Photo credits

238



Index 239

Introduction

I

t was in the winter of 1969, I published by first article after watching a skein of Bar-headed geese land in a lake near Tiruchi. S V Krishnamurthy in The Hindu accepted the piece and encouraged me to write more. There were not many writings on nature at that time. M. Krishnan was publishing in the Statesman. The arrival of two books, The Wildlife of India (1964) by E P Gee and The Deer and the Tiger (1967) created an awareness about wildlife, Following the Stockholm conference in 1972, environmental concerns came to be articulated and nature writing gained an importance. The Government of India took a series of steps, including the passing of the historic Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. In the 1970s and 80s, the professional wildlife biologists came on the scene. Magazines, though very few, devoted to wildlife began appearing. The hunting accounts of the Raj, which was our only source of natural history knowledge, soon became obsolete as sources of knowledge on natural history. I wrote mainly on birds and birdwatching. However, soon my concern widened. I got interested in wildlife in general and you cannot write about animals without talking about their habitatrivers, forests, scrub, seaside and so on and what is happening to these areas. Being a civil servant I moved from place to place on transfer and this gave me opportunity to live in different parts of our country. One of the unforgettable experiences was spending a night in the village of Haflong in Assam, watching ‘the bird suicide phenomenon.’ My job provided opportunities to travel to other countries. I recall spending an hour hiding behind a bush at the Black Forest in Mauritius watching the rare Mauritian kestrel. I

was able to spend some time in the sanctuaries at Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru while on a U N assignment in Kenya. Broadly one can identify two types of nature writing. One is to write intuitively responding to nature and its myriad forms of expression, like Thoreau did in Walden, and the other is to look at wildlife from the point of view of a biologist, like Raman Sukumar has done. There are some rare writers who combine the two skills, like Peter Matthiessen. In his book The Birds of Heaven, Matthiessen puts down his philosophy of wildlife writing “One way to grasp the main perspectives of environment and biodiversity is to understand the origins and precious nature of a single living form, a single manifestation of the miracle of existence; if one has truly understood a crane–or a leaf or a cloud or a frog- one has understood everything.” I wrote about my experience and how I reacted to a bird or a mammal or an issue. This book contains articles I had published in the last twenty years, mostly in The Hindu. I thank Nirmla Lakshman of The Hindu for giving permission to publish them in this book. I am grateful to the photographers for letting me use their pictures. I am grateful to Ramjee and Gayathri for so caringly seeing this book through. ‘Amaravathi’ Bangalore

S.Theodore Baskaran

Birds

The Song Of The Shama

D

awn was just breaking over Karnala bird sanctuary. Sitting in that delightfully rudimentary roadside tea shop, I was nursing a thoughtful cup of tea and trying to recollect the direction given by my fellow birder to a good birding spot nearby. I crossed the road, walked a kilometre and came to a dry nullah at the foot of a small hill. As I started climbing up, threading my way through a bridle path, I noticed the first few rays of the sun hit the treetops. Two rackettailed drongos chased each other, as though settling a domestic quarrel. And then I heard the fluid long whistle, ending with a series of short yodelling notes. I peered in that direction and scanned the bushes with my binoculars; at first, I could see only a spot of red. As I trained my binoculars, the dainty figure of a Shama resolved itself, set off clearly by a green background, sitting on a low bough and singing. After whistling a few bars it arched its tail up, hopped down to give a few tentative pecks among the leaves on the ground and was on its perch again. The Shama, a black bird of bulbul size, is one of our most reputed singers, with an extensive repertoire and is truly a pride of our 15

On a misty morning nearly half a century ago, Baskaran watched in awe as a skein of Bar-headed geese landed in Devarayan lake near Tiruchi. Their honking calls through the surrounding fog rendered the moment with a certain magic. That morning sparked the beginning of Baskaran’s nature writing. The articles he wrote over the years, published mostly in The Hindu, examined wildlife, ecology and conservation, reflecting his enduring concerns with environmental issues. His writing based on personal observation has a sense of immediacy that draws readers to the lived experience of nature. The essays in this anthology range from an account of the stream-dwelling Brown dipper to a search for the lost orchid of Courtallam. As Peter Matthiessen said, “one way to grasp the main perspectives of biodiversity is to understand the precious nature of a single living form, a single manifestation of the miracle of existence; if one has truly understood a crane –or a leaf or a cloud or a frog- one has understood everything.” The articles anthologised in this volume represent a lifetime’s pursuit of such an understanding.

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