India's unsung? winged wonders

India boasts some really stunning birds.

Birders will often remember, with appropriate and unfading ecstasy, their first sight of an Asian Paradise Flycatcher. The phrases they use sound absolutely kitsch and totally exaggerated till you actually see one - "like a ribbon of pure-white muslin floating in the air" And some have likened the Asian Paradise to angels, and quite understandably.

Then there is the high drama and heart-stopping adrenalin rush of seeing a Lesser Pied Kingfisher on the hunt - the snowy-alpine bird hovering, and the vertical "missiling" into the water which cannot be stopped after the bird has passed a certain proximity to the water surface. For the bird, it is a matter of either coming up with a meal or going hungry, but for those who have watched it close-range, it is not a sight one can forget.

Scores more can be found - the brilliant blue-green of the Verditer Flycatcher - a colour that makes the bird so unique, the absolutely regal, deep, rich navy-blue and distinguished orange of the Tickell's Blue Flycatcher (known affectionately and fondly as just the "Tickell's Blue"), the immortally golden splash of black and yellow of the common Eurasian Golden Oriole, even the black-angelic wafting of the Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo, like a black dream floating through the air, the brilliant blue-green-red splashes of the Indian Pitta, deep inside a ravine....and so on, and so on......

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Birders usually go after the big catches - Hornbills, Flamebacks, Ospreys, Pittas, Shrikes, Kingfishers and so on.....I just wanted to write a few lines to a few birds that I do not see hogging the limelight among birders in India. These are birds that get very little play for whatever reason, but they are every bit as brilliant as the sought-after ones. I do not mean that birders do not talk about them at all, but I've seen very little action by way of photographs or passion among birders to obtain photographs and accomplish sightings.

One that comes readily to mind is the Marshall's Iora. This is a desert denizen, an arid-land cousin of the more readily seen Common Iora (which, in itself, is not getting much play among birders these days). Recently, I saw a survey of birds in the district of Barmer in Western Rajasthan - prime Marshall's Iora country. And believe it or not, there was no mention of any Ioras at all!!!!! I cannot believe that the surveyors either did not sight one or did not seek to sight one - ignorance, verb or noun? This is a delightful little bird, quite yellow, black and white like its more common cousin but also carrying the markings of a desert bird -more dull yellowish and not as showy. Thank God, even given how the bird is ignored, its status is still LEAST CONCERN.

(Source: Kolkata Birds)

There are just four species of Iora in the world today. Two of these are almost endemic to India - the Common Iora and the Marshall's Iora. The Common Iora of course does turn up in South-East Asia, but if the Marshall's Iora disappeared from the Thar Desert, it would be extinct. Well, I haven't heard of any birders itching to come back from a birding trip having found the Marshall's Iora.

Of the other two Ioras, the Green Iora, endemic to South-East Asia (not found in India) is near-threatened.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

At least the survey mentioned the Desert Wheatear, which is also a species that gets almost no play. There are two Wheatears in India - The Desert Wheatear and the less common Isabelline Wheatear. Others are also found, but far less common than these two. Wheatears are lovely, small passerines, insectivorous, related to the thrushes, chats and robins.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

I also did not see, in the survey, any mention of the Black Redstart, a delightful little orange and black bird with a silver streak at the eyes. I thought every village in North India had its own consignment of Black Redstarts but when I visited Dehra Dun last year I did not see any, and I never heard the bird being mentioned in any birders' lists either.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

What I did see at a stream near Dehra Dun was a lovely little gleaming jewel set in the flowing white water - a White-capped Water Redstart. This would be a Black Redstart with all the trimmings :):) In any case, the Black Redstart gets no play among birders.....

Another bird I have NEVER heard mentioned anywhere, is the Long-Tailed Broadbill. The broadbills are brilliantly coloured birds related to the parrots and parakeets, with, as their name suggests, broad gapes in their bills. Of course the more brilliant Silver-Breasted Broadbill is seen in the Himalayan foothills, but its cousin the Long-Tailed Broadbill is a soothing, absolutely breathtaking splash of grass-green and yellow, very soothing to the eye, and a bluish-green long tail (which is unusual among the broadbills). I saw a video of this absolutely soothing bird in the Internet Bird Collection. It made me wonder why I have NEVER heard any Indian birder mention this wonderfully-coloured bird - I've seen the parakeets and the barbets, but the Long-Tailed Broadbill beats them all.

(Source:Eaglenest Gallery 2008)

Then chalk up another entry for one of the most brilliantly coloured birds I have NEVER seen - only seen it on photographs - the Silver-Eared Mesia. I absolutely HAVE to share these two photos, courtesy Paul Huang:

(Source : Paul Huang)

I believe Paul Huang has made this bird immortal with these two photographs. Salim Ali calls it a "brightly coloured arboreal babbler", which just skims the surface of the immortal beauty of this little babbler. Alas, again, on my trip to Dehra Dun last year, no one even mentioned this bird, let alone set off on a quest to photograph it.

The Silver-Eared Mesia has a cousin, also brightly coloured but not as splashy - the Red-Billed Leiothrix. Again, this one also gets very little play.

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Then down South, to the Western Ghats - another brilliantly coloured bird that gets far too little play - I don't see the same enthusiasm as I see for the Hornbills - the Malabar Trogon. Perhaps, being a bird of the twilight, and also remote, the trogon is a little difficult to sight. But a sighting will reveal how absolutely stunning this bird is.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

Then there is the elusive Great Black Woodpecker (I love to call it that; that's what Salim Ali used to call it, but now they have this really obscure and didactic "White-Bellied Woodpecker" which is what people would name it who thought that its least interesting colour was its highlight). This is an interesting bird, found only in the Western Ghats in India. The tribals, they say, prey upon this magnificent bird for food, probably the only woodpecker that is eaten. Little wonder that, being a bird of the tall trees of the Nilgiri canopy, it "utterly forsakes" areas where logging begins. I have seen very, very few reliable pictures of this magnificent, majestic woodpecker. To me, it's the bird that put the word "woodpecker" in the species - almost twice as large and imposing as the flamebacks.

(Source : Rajiv Lather)

Other birds that get very little attention are the Chloropses, or the Leafbirds. Brilliant green all over with darkly coloured throats, there are two species in India - the Gold-Fronted and Jerdon's.

(Source: Bird Quest)

Then there is the absolutely dream-like Asian Fairy-Bluebird, an absolute vision in regal, gleaming navy-blue and black. None of these birds seem to be sought after as "catches" on birding trips, for some unfathomable reason.

(Source - Paul Huang)

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In the north-east, we have a bird that, if we manage to capture on film, will make birders so green with jealousy that will, hopefully, spark more interest than the ignorance/apathy of today. This is the absolutely rarest of the rare, simply called Beautiful Nuthatch. It's unclear whether the bird is threatened, or just happens to be so rare, but either way, it is surely one of the least seen birds in India today. I have read that it is endemic to the north-eastern Himalayas, which makes it even more prized. One or two absolutely hazy pictures exist out on the Internet - a Google search produces these fuzzy pictures. They lend a legendary, myth-like quality to this absolutely stunning bird - the brilliant pattern of azure-blue and black stripes. Wikipedia states that this is indeed the rarest of the nuthatches. Let's hope we see it in full blazing colour on a photograph or a video soon..........


(Source:Eaglenest Gallery 2008)

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Well, no offence to Indian birders....we've done a stellar job in keeping track of the absolutely stunning birdlife we have been blessed with. But I would certainly like to see more action on the species I've mentioned here.........

Here are some other wonders, from this wonderful site Eaglenest Gallery 2008), who, commendably, have undertaken a really grand tour of the Himalayas, and captured some really rare, brilliant birds:

The Fire-Tailed Myzornis


The Green Cochoa


Grandala


Leave you with a rare raptor that, thankfully, is high on the birders list (and definitely justified, for it is indeed a unique raptor), the absolutely exotic Black Baza.

(Source : Oriental Bird Images)

The cumulonimbus archives - an excerpt

In April 2008 some of us visited the awesome Iruppu falls near Wayanad.

Geologically it's just one giant gash in a mountain gorge, a great big jagged gash. The water just kind of tumbles down into the crevices of this gash.

About a few hundred metres to the top of the mountain where the descent of the water begins, there is a stage with standing water, enough to hold about thirty persons. Here a few tourists reveled in the mountain stream and let their voices intrude in the awesomeness.

The mute(?) verdant green and the jagged granite outcrops listened to their self-absorption in a place such as this (!!), and looked on them as they reveled. The water, as always, just kept falling over itself, hurtling delightfully down, twisting and turning its way down the sculpted ravine, oblivious, as it had been all through the years, to people, their presence and their intruding voices.

Every place knows. Looks on the people that come. Sees what it evokes in the onlookers. And every place has its own presence, something that it says. It never fails to say its piece.....and the ones that hear it, know. They will come again, not just to see, but more to hear.

Iruppu falls. An exquisitely lovely cascade of white water, tumbling down the gorge, reverberating in the echo pipes and the natural theater, framed in verdant green. It seemed like no one had EVER been there.....no footfalls, no one to hear its awesome voice in this forlorn, pristine valley. To speak in such a place ....would be to intrude and not listen, so out of turn.

I tried to imagine Iruppu Falls in the rain. On a murky day. Perhaps there had been endless, ageless murky morns on which the foot of a rainbow gently rested on the top of the fall. Anyone that's seen this sight would have seen it as in a dream, through the silver, dreamy tint of a raindrop on their eyelashes. Through strangely suffused sunlight, trying to break through silver-lined clouds to dispel the rainbow. I hardly believe anyone that saw this would ever forget. As it was, I never forgot what I saw - and it was almost a cloudless, still day.

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Later, driving pell-mell through the rain through Nagarahole on the way back to Mysore, a strange warp occurred. The water falling down was also white, or a strange, whitish-ashen grey, with something unimaginable behind its veil.

Criss-crossing the veil of grey were black, distorted dendritic skeletal tentacles opening out to a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud that had well and truly burst its seams. These tentacles happened to be the trees in Nagarahole, devoid of any leaves, trying to brave the gales and the sheets of water. It really was surreal, a scene not from nature but from one of Herge's original black-and-white creations. I felt I was running away from some villains that had sprung up from Herge's pen-strokes. Strange, I always remember flight with the villains in hot chase, from Herge's books.

There was no indication of the time of day in that dream-distilled downpour. The ashen grey cleared slowly, very slowly. The brown in the trees (with patches of green touched with grey) slowly emerged. Something that resembled nature, a forest in one of India's foremost national parks, finally materialised. The warp had gone.

But while we were in it, the warp told us any number of stories; all adventure-comic, all copy-book and all Herge. I was a child again.

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Every place, I believe, has strange stories to tell; and not all of them really have to do with what our eyes see; and certainly, many, many of them have nothing at all to do with the people in those places. I've learned to listen, not merely see; I've learned to tune out the people and tune in to the voice of the forms of rock, water, green and sky.

Thank you Avinash, Amit and Anil.