Tag: south India

“Hunting” tigers (#2 in 3 part series: use your ears)

Published November 11, 2023 by Pelidoug

“Hunting” tigers (#2 in 3 part series: use your ears)

Imagine an English-speaking tiger, asked to describe the deer in this post’s featured image.

”Delicious”, might be the tiger’s reply.

You are looking at #1 and #2 on the list of species most preyed on by India’s tigers – respectively, sambar and chital/spotted deer.

As you can see, all five deer are definitely not relaxed.

Drinking and having “a good look around” are not simultaneously-possible; the pictured chital are in “eyes down” mode.

The sambar calf is looking at its mother.

However, you can see that the ears of all five deer are open, alert.

If you wish to see tigers (or leopards) in the wild, your ears are your most useful organs.

Big cats’ hunting success is stealth-dependent; they are highly unlikely to make sounds that betray their presence.

Your very quiet self should be focused on hearing the alarm calls which “prey” animals make whenever they notice a predator.

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“Hunting” tigers (#1 in 3 part series: tiger country)

Published November 8, 2023 by Pelidoug

“Hunting” tigers (#1 in 3 part series: tiger country)

If you wish to see tigers “in the wild”, India is your best destination.

It contains circa 25% of the world’s remaining tiger habitat, but India is currently home to around 75% of “our” globe’s wild tigers.

There is no such thing as a reliable estimate of India’s wild tiger population, let alone the world’s.

The likely-best available figures come from the Global Tiger Forum.

On 10 September 2023, Global Tiger Forum published its latest global estimate: 5,574.

That is 74% higher than their 2010 figure. (click here for more detail)

It is impossible to know how much of the apparent increase reflects better monitoring rather than actual increase.

That said, there are grounds for believing that in some nations – India, especially – wild tiger numbers really are rising, after many years of steep decline towards seemingly-inevitable extinction.

This little series looks at Nagarhole Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, south India.

The featured image and the one immediately below show what the local tiger habitat looks like.

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Quirky moments (#19 in series: Indian pond heron)

Published September 6, 2023 by Pelidoug

Quirky moments (#19 in series: Indian pond heron)

Most human observers cannot accurately “read” a bird’s face.

So, the “quirkiness” of a particular bird species – or the “quirkiness” of a particular bird’s appearance/demeanour at a particular moment – is usually all about human perception/misperception.

Typically, it has little or no informed connection to the bird’s actual nature/intent/emotional state.

That said, to this human observer at least, the pictured individual looked marvellously quirky at 6.29 pm on 20 February 2023.

Both of us were on the shoreline of India’s longest lake, shortly before darkness fell.

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Quirky moments (#18 in series: up on the roof)

Published September 5, 2023 by Pelidoug

Quirky moments (#18 in series: up on the roof)

As you can see, the featured image shows a young primate, looking very relaxed, on a rooftop.

Obviously, the pictured individual was well aware of my (very close) presence.

At the time – 9.26 am on 28 February 2023 – the relevant two species had a couple of dozen mutually-visible members present, in a village near Coonoor in the Nilgiri Hills, south India.

Yours truly belongs to the world’s most abundant primate species.

My photo’s subject is a wild member of one of the rarest, most endangered primate species.

Its rapidly-vanishing natural rainforest habitat is confined to small, scattered locations in India’s Western Ghats.

Allegedly, that species’ members are elusive creatures (who) usually occupy the tallest, shadowy rainforest canopies, far from human sight.

However much I loved my experience of the “endearing moment” pictured above, it was in fact a moment that should never happen – a symptom of how very desperate has become the plight of Macaca silenus, the lion-tailed macacque.

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Quirky moments (#17 in series: unforgettable fellow diners)

Published September 4, 2023 by Pelidoug

Quirky moments (#17 in series: unforgettable fellow diners)

On the 5th day of March 2023 my beloved and I ate a delicious lunch, al fresco, just outside a tiger sanctuary in southern India.

On the 18th of March 2018 in southern Tasmania, the food, the winery’s Pinot Noir and our lunch’s quasi-natural setting were all lovely.

However, as so often proves true, in both the above cases it was one of our fellow diners who made our lunch unforgettable.

Neither of them had made a booking.

We were unable to converse.

We never discovered their names…

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Quirky moments (#11 in series: white-throated kingfisher, with musical bonus)

Published August 25, 2023 by Pelidoug

Quirky moments (#11 in series: white-throated kingfisher, with musical bonus)

Members of the kingfisher family are typically very confident; these predatory birds are not much preyed-upon.

Fish are not invariably their primary prey, and not all kingfishers live near rivers or lakes.

Pictured is the most ubiquitous of Asia’s kingfishers, Halcyon smyrnensis – the white-throated kingfisher.

By itself, this perky individual’s demeanour was almost enough to qualify it for inclusion in this series…

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Indian leopard, Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.

Published August 7, 2023 by Pelidoug

Indian leopard, Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.

Leopards are members of a single species – Panthera pardus – but the eight (or nine) “valid” living subspecies have different characteristics, and their current fortunes/prospects are widely divergent.

Generally, across Africa and Asia, leopard numbers are falling.

India, however, is an exception; after the leopard population had plummeted through “the Raj” period, it has (from a low base) markedly increased – perhaps, by 60 percent – over the last two decades.

This post features one very healthy, confident male.

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African leopard, Indian leopard (teaser)

Published August 4, 2023 by Pelidoug

African leopard, Indian leopard (teaser)

Pictured above is a leopard, stalking.

He had targeted a springbok, on the morning of 07 November 2022 in Etosha National Park, northern Namibia.

Almost exactly four months later, in very different habitat we enjoyed our first Indian sighting of a leopard.

The next two Pelican Yoga posts will feature each encounter, separately.

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Indian boar

Published August 3, 2023 by Pelidoug

Indian boar

All “true” wild boars – as distinct from domesticated pigs who have escaped and become “wild”/“feral” – hail from Eurasia or North Africa, the so-called “Old” World.

They are generally reckoned a single species, Sus scrofa.

Circa sixteen subspecies are recognised, and none are more striking than Sus scrofa cristatus, the Indian boar. (aka “Andamanese pig” or “Moupin pig”)

Its signature feature is a dorsal mane/crest that can be very spectacular, especially when it is a mature male’s, in erect mode.

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Three of the same (#13: spotted deer)

Published May 5, 2023 by Pelidoug

Three of the same (#13: spotted deer)

As you can see in the image above, when a predator is not obviously present, the level of vigilance/alarm/nonchalance exhibited by its prey can vary greatly, from one individual to another.

This is true even within a small, close-spaced, single-species group.

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