The Hindu Business Line : Spotting scope — a boon for nature lovers

Down in Honey Valley cordoned by green hills, the citizen of a city can walk muddy, brown, occasionally leech populated forest trails, to sense the land. Sometimes a lone rain drop gathers its family and friends to turn into a sharp shower and screen the sky, hills and earth.

In Kodagu (Coorg), where Honey Valley is located, the rain comes with a dollop of sunlight prompting Sangeetha Kadavur to say, “We here believe the crow is getting married to a fox”. That could end on an overnight divorce, one thought. One is reluctant to take shelter as my good friends Sangeetha and Madhukar Rao, go in search of birds on the tops of the tall canopies of silver oak and other trees.

One afternoon, Sangeetha (who was on her third visit), led us to Vadu Pass, which had a horse pond for watering horses before making the steep climbs, in ages gone by. Now the pond is a depression holding rainwater, will turn dry in summer and there are no horses around, only young trekkers.

Across the valley, squats Bold Gudda (Bald Hills) while we tried to visit a rainwater stream below. We kept off the steep drop to the stream (Sangeetha was disappointed) and were turning back when on a tree the two experts spotted the velvet-fronted nuthatch (Sitta frontalis); in about a minute a second nuthatch landed near the first and got about making mutual inquiries.

Spotting birds with a spotting scope offers more clarity than binoculars and the Swarovski spotting scope of Madhukar helped to have a close look. My computer engineer friend had picked up the spotting scope in London for about $1,500 and it surely is worth the much maligned dollar. Close to 15 minutes the two were on the partly bare tree with one spending most of the time clinging to a branch upside down. The purplish blue bird moves in “pairs or family parties in forest, creeping up and around branches of trees,” writes Salim Ali in the Book of Indian Birds.

“The bird is usually sighted in Sri Lanka and the better wooded portions of the Indian Union and Bangladesh; plains as well as hills up to about 2,500 metres elevation,” adds Salim Ali. But the bird which dominated the morning and evening airs in the couple of days we stayed in Kodagu was the hill myna with its vibrating shrieks. The frequent high-pitched notes mixed with a few low pitched ones, tear the Kodagu air.

“Today, is the day of the hill myna,” said Madhukar as we saw a few of them, with a couple on the outstretched branch of a tree shooting up from the valley giving the best view.

The hill myna (Gracula religiosa) is glossy jet black with yellow bill, legs and bright orange patches of naked skin and wattles, says Salim Ali and the ornithologist cannot be bettered. In India, they are seen in three distinct areas with the Western Ghats being one.

“Arboreal. Pairs or noisy flocks in well-wooded country feeding on the various wild figs in company with green pigeons, hornbills and other fruit-eating birds. Has habit of settling on bare tops of dead trees in forest clearings at sunset and uttering its loud, sharp, creaky shrieks. In flight the wings produce a metallic whirring noise, as in green pigeons. An accomplished mimic and talker, and much prized as a cage bird,” says Salim Ali.

We saw most of them on top of canopies even as looking up straight breaks the neck. Neralu, champaka, nandi, silver oak, fig trees, fish-tailed palms and jackfruit are some of the tree varieties found in Honey Valley giving shade to the coffee crop, allergic to strong sunlight. Pepper vines hold fast to fig trees and one could see the black pepper seeds.

Susheela Chengappa of Honey Valley Homestays said leopards and other mammals were seen some 25 years ago but now one may come across an occasional elephant, if one is lucky. “Between March and June, bird activity peaks and even small shrubs are used for building nests,” said the gracious Kodagu lady.

We were in Honey Valley during the week and were the lone group in the area. In the morning, one walked out of the room to offer a small prayer to the Manjamottu hill and the moist deciduous forests; relaxed on a plastic chair to watch from near a few white eyes and red-whiskered bulbuls; they usually assembled on a tree poking its branches into our balcony.

Going up Vadu Pass, one can look ahead at the Biliyatre betta (White journey hill --- something hard to understand and could probably be referring to the journey of the white clouds along the crest of the hill) and the 5,775-ft. tall Tadiyendamol (I am the tallest, in Kodagu) hill. Being less than sure, one declined a trek to the top of Tadiyendamol though one would have liked to see the Arabian Sea and north Kerala from the top.

Kerala and Karnataka fall on either side of Kodagu district and Suresh Chengappa, who owns 75 acres in Honey Valley has walked all the trails and “knows it as well as my property”. It was on the second or third afternoon, on a walk down to the entry point of Honey Valley, wading a cold stream that Madhukar spotted a crested serpent eagle on a branch some 40 ft away.

One got to look at the sharp, yellow eyes of the bird through the spotting scope and we were not sure if it was the same bird which had called loudly from up in the skies.

We used to spend the late evenings in the dining room with Madhukar working on a bird list and Sangeetha sketching the birds she had seen. Rain clouds kept the moon in wraps; sometimes one had a glimpse of a moon unwrapped.

One thought of Buddha’s perspective on Nature firmly faithed in violence. The bird killed the worm and got knocked down by a bigger predator like an eagle; man kills all of them and himself. “In this world, few people look with the eyes of compassion, and so we are cruel and merciless toward each other….” says the Buddha.

Yet as Thomas Krutch, the American writer wrote, if the lamb lay peacefully by a lion, Nature will have to shut shop. On the last morning walk to and from Vadu Pass one at last heard the joyous whistle of the Malabar Whistling Thrush.

One had first heard the notes of the bird in Nilgiris and now it was in Honey Valley; one has yet to glimpse the bird.

The up and down whistling notes – like that of an “Idle Schoolboy” as aptly said by Salim Ali — took one along on a jumpy giant wheel ride.

P. Devarajan

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