Migrating Birds from Mongolia

Dr Martin Gilbert’s presentation at the Raman Research Institute the other day brought home the drama of understanding bird migration right to our doorstep. For birdwatchers in Bangalore, it would always be that this bird arrived now or departs then. Never had we collectively experienced a thrill of knowing that the particular individual bird seen or photographed came from a particular far off place. This is what exactly happened with us learning that the Bar-headed Geese that our photographers recorded were from far-away Mongolia. And the man who tagged those birds physically there was here with us, to share that experience.

For a very long time, our understanding of the endurance of birds during migration was largely through observations and a process of what is called ringing. A small ring bearing a number and address would be slipped on a birds foot. When this ring was recovered or the bird captured elsewhere, we would now about the movement and timing. The locations of the different sites and the dates of ringing and recovery would give and indication of the speed and distance of migration. In India, this work was largely done by the Bombay Natural History Society.

All this changed with newer technology. The process of putting a small transmitter, (technically called a platform terminal transmitter) whose signals would be received directly by orbiting satellites and relayed back to receiving stations, started throwing up information in real time. It was quite revealing.

For a long time, we thought that birds could fly just a few thousand kilometres non-stop. But we were awakened rather rudely in 2007 when we discovered that birds were capable of flying much greater distances without landing or feeding. A team from the USGS Alaska Science Centre, satellite tracked nine godwits in New Zealand and fifteen godwits in Australia to determine the routes and timing of their migration. These Bar-tailed Godwits are fast flying shore-birds which wade into shallows and feed on invertebrates there, and are just about the size of our crows. What we learnt from the study was truly astounding.

The birds migrated from New-Zealand towards Eastern China, thence towards Alaska, where they spent the summer. They then flew back to New Zealand via Hawaii and other Polynesian islands after their breeding, thus literally ringing half the Pacific Ocean with their migration route. The longest non-stop distance one of the females had covered was over eleven and a half thousand kilometres in just over eight days of continuous flying!

This kind of flying is what even aircraft today do not do. The energy requirement would be high, they would have to combat extreme sleep deprivation and dehydration. These birds are able to put on a lot of fat before migration, which they burn up by the time they reach their destination. This physiological adaptation is only a part of the story.

Discovering all the routes and feats would not have been possible had we just used traditional methods to study migration. Satellite tracking enables recording routes and timing over extremely great distances accurately and helps in determining stop overs too. Satellite tracking of Bar-headed Geese coming to Bharathpur near Agra, has shown that the ‘hop’ to China, just happens within in a day right over the Himalaya, at elevations exceeding twenty thousand feet!

A via media between ringing and satellite tracking, for large birds like Bar-headed Geese, would be the bold neck bands with very ‘visible’ numbers that Dr Gilbert used. Our local photographers have done a remarkable job in photographing such marked geese in our lake-tanks. By this information, the photographed birds were traced back to the place where they were marked in Mongolia in 2008 and 2009. Other birds bearing bands like Great Knots have also been photographed in India.

An important thing we have learnt in many of these studies is that birds also require areas called ‘staging grounds’ where they rest and put on weight before migration. This in a way ties them down to the land. They are thus ruled by the state of the habitat they are part of and become vulnerable to human activities which destroy their habitat. Sadly, two-thirds of the endangered bird species globally are threatened because of habitat loss, and not all of them are migratory.

The local scenario for example, too has been the same story. Birdwatchers in Bangalore used to count the number of water birds found in our lakes every January for a decade ending 1996. Nearly a lakh birds would be counted in about eighty to a hundred sites. Sadly much of these sites are gone and just about a third are perhaps remaining. The birds which wade into the shoreline, the shore-birds, are vastly reduced and hardly a couple of individuals figuratively, are to be seen in those sites today, while they used to occur in the hundreds and thousands earlier. The singular loss of a sloping shoreline in our lake-tanks would have mainly led to this decline locally.

Though water and shore birds normally steal the show when we think of migration, there are others which actually live in our midst. Blyth’s Reed-Warblers and Greenish Leaf-Warblers live on the shrubs and trees that we have here, and could be found right in your garden in Bangalore. These birds too have shown an amazing decline in numbers, with the rampant loss of greenery in Bangalore. Maybe, we all need to think how much land we waste without using optimally, and do something about it. A wanton loss in not even prudent at the least!

 

Krishna.mb, Wednesday, February 17, 2010.

Published in Deccan Herald.

Trekking on the wrong Trail!

Trekking is not countryside walking. The way it is practised here, it is a mad run from one place to another, often in wilderness areas for the thrill of it. Its practitioners barely find time to observe anything in nature, or better still, take time to enjoy the smell, sound and the tranquillity of it. Yes, with photography becoming popular, it could be, but is not quite there just yet. Last week's death of a youngster in the Ragihalli forest of the Bannerghatta range and the missing trekkers sometime back in Sakleshpura are pointers to a larger malaise that wilderness areas are suffering from, called Ecotourism.

The Government in Karnataka and elsewhere is promoting ecotourism in a big way. The Karnataka government has established its own chain of luxury hotels called Jungle Lodges and Resorts, which has been granted exclusive use of many tracts. In addition, local communities, private businessmen, NGOs, and even researchers, are in the fray. All out to conquer that last frontier called wilderness.

The government and the people, in the sole interest of maximising revenue, are literally stripping the wild animals and plants of their privacy and home. In the big chase for stakeholders' rights, with every human, thinking or otherwise, learned or ignorant, concerned or indifferent, becoming a stakeholder, we have turned all wild animals and plants into tenants in their own territory. All for an intangible thing called revenue. Revenue from every conceivable quarter! Be it material utilization meant for one's own use transformed to material trade to generate monetary gain, or a vehicular parade in the wilderness called eco-tourism, we are doing enormous damage to our ecosystems. An urgent need is to sit up and take note of. We have effectively transformed trustees into traders, and wildlife into tenants. The question is should we? In this a big roulette, it is the fauna and flora that are coming out as the losers.

Like every coin which has faces, and an edge to go with it, there are arguments and viewpoints, many looking in opposite directions. This article pleads for the ecosystem. The other viewpoint is there, everywhere!

Karnataka has 38,284 square kilometres of forest area, which comprises of about 19.96 per cent of its geographical area. It include dense, open and scrub forests. Karnataka is also blessed with 60% of the Western Ghats, which is a world heritage site and a global biological hotspot. Human settlements in and around many of wilderness areas is a common feature. In recent times, these areas are in some sense encircled by resorts and lodges which caters to a large urban crowds to enjoy nature. In addition, there a large number of adventure groups in urban areas which organise trekking in wilderness areas both during the day and night almost throughout the year. The forest department is not far behind in this race, there are official designated routes in many of our wilderness areas. Some of the popular trekking routes include the Kukke Subramanya to Pushpagiri route, Kakkabe to Tadiyandamol, Samse to Kudremukh peak, etc.

Trekking is believed to be an ecologically sound way of experiencing nature and is much advocated. However, it is far from truth. Trekking, the way it is practised in Karnataka has several impacts, most of which is ecologically damaging. The immediate effects are visible - broken liquor bottles, aluminium cans, plastic covers, gutka sachets, paper, etc on the waysides of trails and in our water bodies. These often are not because of the trekkers themselves, but by people who visit these areas made famous by trekkers. These are impacts are less damaging, can be controlled easily by way of ensuring that visitors don't throw these items. The damage can also be rectified by organising a collection drive to clean up the place. But prevention is always better than cure.

The long-term impacts on the habitats have unfortunately not got adequate attention from researchers and authorities. There is hardly any research study done to understand the damage occurring in any of our wilderness areas. The obvious impacts, which have been scientifically proved, elsewhere are discussed further.

Destruction of vegetation to clear thickets to make way for easy movement and trampling of seedlings is the largest form of destruction of the habitat. Usually trekkers carry a machete and a common practice is to clear away thorny vegetation and protruding branches, and also bushes protrude into the trail. The regeneration of plants and trees get affected enormously. Over time, one can notice in most of the trekking routes that the width of these trekking corridors widen progressively. And this is very significant ecologically. In many cases, these trekking routes have slowly got converted into metalled roads. This is also a start of a process called fragmentation of habitats.

The other profound impact is soil compaction. As people walk on trails, there is a progressive compaction of soil. Compaction of the soil and leaf litter can lead to the reduction of air spaces within the soil structure. This change in the soil structure prevents germination of seeds as a good flow of water and air is important for root penetration. Walking repeatedly on vegetation over time can also leads to its death. It can take decades to reverse this compaction process naturally.

Trampling also directly kills smaller organisms like ants, earthworms, millipedes, and bugs which are crucial to maintaining the integrity of the soil structure and quality. It could damage fruiting bodies of fungi (mushrooms and toadstools) which are so crucial for nutrient recycling in a forest. Exposure and drying of the soil can destroy ectomycorrhiza associated with specific plants, existing continuously for millions of years through evolutionary time. These fungi in heavy rainfall zones penetrate fallen leaves and litter, and transport minerals and nutrients directly to the plant/tree roots, before there is a chance of heavy rain washing it off. In drier zones, ectomycorrhiza help in mobilizing phosphorus which is an essential element for both plants and animals, and make it available to plants.

Trekking trails provides an access point for colonising species from outside the wilderness area. For example, the Fire Ant (Solenopsis) gets into these trails because of human presence. Others like this would include the Odour Ant (Tapinoma), and the Crazy Ant (Anaplolepis).

Food wastes draw animals to the trail while a noisy trekking group can disturb birds and animals. Most of the shy bird species such as warblers, babblers, spider hunters and all the mammals such as deer, Sambhar, Tiger, Leopard, Elephant, etc try to avoid the trekking area. Research studies prove that long term effects of noise pollution could lead to birds failing to nest in the area and avoiding the area fully. Forest fires due to cigarettes and campsites are another major threat to our dry deciduous and scrub forests.

While the Karnataka Forest Department is trying to install signboards cautioning the movement of large mammals and warning trekkers to keep away from illegally entering protected areas, more needs to be done. Most of the efforts appear to be geared towards the safety of the trekkers. Being the custodian, there is a greater need to exercise the legal provisions efficiently under the wildlife and forest conservation acts for violations and regulate it in all our wilderness areas. The forest department should with the help of researchers periodically assess damages to habitats and the ecosystem, and close down routes or lessen the foot traffic so that the habitats can recuperate. Trekking should be strongly discouraged when the soils are wet (during monsoon) as it could lead to soil erosion. However blocking access totally would encourage unauthorised entry, so it just needs to be regulated.

To preserve our ecosystems there is a larger need to orient trekking and other activities from being a mere endurance sport to an educative activity. We will need to relearn to appreciate and preserve nature's wonderful gifts. If this is to happen, we all have to play our role in this important task of conservation. It could be so informative to walk on a route where important and noticeable ecological features are flagged, both on a hand out map and on the trail, as watch points (thankfully not as watch towers!). We could then look forward to insightful education, rather than mere entertainment for the citizens of today, and of course, for the citizens of tomorrow.

 

– SUNIL KUMAR M & KRISHNA MB, 24th July 2012.

For the edited version of the article, published in the 24th July Spectrum supplement of Deccan Herald, click here.

Dr Joseph George

 

Dr Joseph George

1st October 1921 -  9th July 2012

Both photographs taken at his residence on 2nd June 2012

 

 

 

Dr Joseph George
1st October 1921 to 9th July 2012

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Dr Joseph George is no more. For all of us birdwatchers who came in contact with him, he inspired us with his knowledge and humility. And that humility was really striking. Although his English was excellent, he never used a capital ‘I’ in his writings. That was him, very characteristically him.

He encouraged us all to make our own observations, and made us understand that contributing to our knowledge of birds could be done by anyone, not just scientists. Though an organic chemist professionally, he wrote papers on birds, and encouraged us to publish too. Even the first ever publication of Dr Ramachandra Guha, the author, cricket fan and historian, written when Dr Guha was eleven, was because of Dr George! And it was, of course, on birds.

Dr George was meticulous in his observations and his work on bamboo nest boxes is a classic, merging his professional interests in wood science with his hobby interest in birds. The use of dyed feathers dispersed from a hillside so that swifts could pick it up for nest building, and the subsequent detection of those dyed feathers in the nests at the Forest Research Institute, was innovative. His counts of migrating Grey Drongos to determine timing of migration, and his mapping technique by using pre-dawn counts of stationary singing males to estimate territory densities were way ahead of his time. The latter possibly the earliest use of that technique anywhere in the world. And strangely, at a time when Indian ornithology did not even know the existence of an average, or of statistics.

He got his bachelor’s degree at St Joseph’s College, Trichinopoly, and went on to continue his studies at St John’s College, Agra, because he got a scholarship which he needed. His doctoral degree, if I recollect right, was by papers. It was chemistry through and through!

In his long innings at the Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun, he and one Mr Gurdial Singh, a former Deputy Headmaster of the Doon School who was later awarded a Padma Shri, were the people who literally ‘ran’ the group birdwatching effort there. At that time, and especially so when the late Mr PD Stracey (of the Stracey Memorial School on St Marks Road fame) was the Director of the FRI, it was unofficially mandatory for every IFS trainee to go birdwatching with the group.

He then moved on to become the Assistant Director of the Buildings Research Institute, Roorkee, which had the late Lt. General Sir Harold Williams as its Director, and also Dr Dinesh Mohan, who later went on to become its Director after Sir Williams. Both these people were birdwatchers too. Dr George used to tell me that all three would travel as far down as Delhi from Dehra Dun, watching birds, in Sir Williams’ car. That of course, was only possible on non working days/hours when they met as birdwatchers outside the framework of official hierarchy!

It was during this tenure here that Dr George prepared a tick-able checklist of the birds of Delhi, actually two editions, both not authored, one in the fifties and the other in the sixties. Sir Williams funded the printing of both these checklists, and they were printed (but paid for!) at the Printing Press of the Bengal Engineers (like the MEG here). Sir Williams had been the Director-General of the Bengal Engineers earlier, and was the last serving British Indian Army Officer to hand over charge after Independence, and continued to serve here on the request of the new Indian government. (That Dr George prepared the checklists I know for sure because I have the correspondence and the accounts in my collection somewhere).

He then moved over to Bangalore, as the Director of the Indian Plywood Industries’ Research (and now, Training) Institute at Peenya. From a birdwatchers’ point of view, he vastly improved the garden of the campus (I’ve even seen open clump bamboos there, and Redstarts). And of course he started group birdwatching in Bangalore in 1972, after he came here in 1970. This was with Mr Perumal, the wildlife photographer, and his friend, the late one Mr Upendra, of the Automobile Association of Southern India.

Dr George during all his stay in Bangalore, both at IPIRI and later as a Consultant, was actively involved in developing adhesives for particle boards, essentially wood substitutes. And to this end he worked hard and achieved one technological innovation after another, and derived more for nature conservation than what most of us only dream of. Though people had made paddy husk boards in the laboratory, Dr George achieved the first ever commercial viability in the mass manufacture of paddy husk boards by developing adhesives which could be used in low enough commercially viable quantities. Within the last year he was actively developing new ‘green’, petroleum product free adhesives for the baton-particle-stem board industry. He had many patents to his credit, and a few more coming. He was also involved in developing standards for the Indian Standards Institution.

He was also the editor of the Wood journal for many years. Ever since the day the Newsletter for Birdwatchers was being printed, Dr George did the painstaking proofreading of every issue, a thankless job for which he was unfortunately not given adequate credits or attribution.

As others have mentioned he had a way of making people learn about birds. He would never ‘pronounce’ identification like many of us do in front of beginners, but would painstakingly encourage them to observe and note characters. And he was humble. However small the other person was (and I am punning the word small), he would never insist on his word and argue, showing great control and restraint.

As much as he was humble, he was also particular about quality, and had told me on occasions that the quality we had achieved would never do. He had vast experience in technical editing, having had to do that as a part of his job, and for his superiors, in his long career. He made me sit with him when he edited the Annotated Checklist of the Birds of Bangalore, constantly asking for clarifications and our intended interpretation of what we had written every few lines. In the bargain, if I recollect right, I got three weeks of free lunch and good work every afternoon, full time! And a few years before that, when we did our first annual mid winter water-bird count report of 1989, Oh my! What a learning experience! It was indeed a revelation that we could write so badly, and so candidly and confidently too! When I wrote my first note on the identification of warblers, he taught me to make the difference between time and space, and asked me what is it that I intended to say: that the Blyth’s Reed Warbler calls ‘here and there’ or ‘now and then’, when I had in my writing messed up between the two. Later, it was he who insisted on me doing up that note on warbler identification which Dr Subramanya so kindly and excellently illustrated. This, I remember, came after a presentation to the group after a birdwatching outing.

Dr George was a great gardening enthusiast. He used to collect wild flower seeds and make little packets out of these (‘potna’ as you call it in Kannada), which he used to give to us youngsters and ask us to go plant or throw the seeds in vacant plots. And I used to collect Ipomoea coccinea and Ipomoea quamoclit seeds from him in all those early years. On the last day that I met him on June 2nd, he lamented how nobody in his apartment compound and block was interested in the garden, and the difficulty he had in going out and physically supervising the work. They, obviously did not come up to his expectations! He, of course, was over ninety but was still going everyday to his laboratory to work, which he never gave up on.

He has left a legacy for Bangalore that is at least a thousand times more birdwatchers than he started out with. And, that in short, is Dr Joseph George for you!

 

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This note was originally written for the birdwatching community of Bangalore subscribed to the BngBirds email discussion group on YahooGroups. Feedback of the readers is gratefully acknowledged.

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An old photograph taken on his birthday with birdwatchers who went to wish him
1st October 1994

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Press coverage / abridged version:

Way ahead of his time

 

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Lake pictures from Bangalore of 1989

SOME MAN-MADE LAKES OF BANGALORE, PHOTOGRAPHED DURING THE  
ANNUAL MID-WINTER WATERBIRD COUNT OF  JANUARY 1989

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KRISHNA MB AND SUBRAMANYA S; CITATION AND CREDITS EXPECTED

COPYRIGHT KRISHNA MB, 1989

 

YELCHENA HALLI ON KOLAR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

RAYASANDRA, JANUARY 1989

 

NELAMANGALA, JANUARY 1989

 

MUGBALA ON KOLAR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

MANTAPA ON BANNERGHATTA ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

MADHUREKERE IN NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

KODIPALYA-NAGARURU (VADDARAHALLI), JANUARY 1989

 

KODATUR, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

KANNAMANGALA, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

JIGANI, ANEKAL ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

HEBBAL, JANUARY 1989

 

DODDATUMKUR, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

DODDASANNE, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

See also: Some Lost Lakes of Bangalore

 

On the need for Pedestrian Spaces

The recent news that four hundred kilometres of roads in Bangalore are to be widened makes sad reading. Much of this widening would be at the cost of footpaths and their umbrageous trees in the older localities. And such beautiful trees cannot be wished for even with a magic wand, while a road or a building can happen overnight with a politician’s wave!

This widening affects some one hundred and forty roads for the time being. We have some thousand eight hundred or so kilometres of roads in Bangalore. What we are losing amounts to nearly a quarter of the road length that we have today. 

What is tragic is that we are losing the one single feature which characterises the walking space anywhere. That is the shade giving trees which go with it. Be it a park, a garden or a footpath, it is the trees that make the walk more pleasureable. Yes, we do require good surfaces too, especially for the aged, but trees literally provide the icing on the cake. And everywhere, tyrants are bringing down the trees, either through policy or bad planning. 

Take Lalbagh, where literally tens of thousands of people come everyday for their walk.  It is having its trees removed or killed blatantly. The recent killing of a healthy Eucalyptus citriodora in its prime, by the construction of a strangling concrete platform around it, only elicited some silly explanations when pressed for by the press. A concrete construction at the cost of a healthy genetic resource tree? It looks all the more silly if we realise that Eucalypts cross-hybridise very easlily. What you breed here will never be genetically like the first generation introduced tree, which it was.  But the sad fact is that we are laying barren what could have been the pride of any city: a garden!

Road widening is supposed to help traffic flows. But here, it is invariably at the cost of the already penalised pedestrian who literally has no walking space. If we look at the casualty figures for road accidents, one would find that more than half of all accident deaths in the country, is that of pedestrians. Any other group affected accounts for less than a seventh of this number. In Bombay, our most crowded city, pedestrians account for some eighty percent of all road casualty cases. Even on our inter-city roads and highways, pedestrians account for nearly half the number of fatal accidents.

Funnily, this makes me wonder if pedestrians are protected at all. Just imagine, if we had allowed all the footpath trees to remain, we would not have had the wayward vehicles and SUVs ploughing into people, running along footpaths and causing mass deaths that we keep hearing about in the news these days!

Recollect those old days where a school child could happily weave its way on the footpath, shielded from the whizzing traffic by the giant footpath trees that were the silent sentinels?  You too would have perhaps walked home with gay abandon, passing tree trunk after tree trunk, never realising that each of those massive trees could instantly stop a wayward vehicle in its tracks!

It is tragic that we would be never letting  the next generation enjoy that previlege of either walking along a footpath, walking under a tree, or have a native defence against wayward vehicles. It is also equally tragic that any intelligent protest falls on such deaf ears!

 

[2008-11-03] 

Urban Birds as Miners' Canaries

Don't be surprised at the kinds of birds found in our cities. The cumulative list for Bangalore alone is about 340 species, which is more than half the number of species found in Peninsular India. Likewise, most other Indian cities also play host to a good percentage of the zonal species. Delhi has well over 400 species, and many others likewise have a good representation of the regional avifauna.  In fact a free software called BirdSpot, written by a Bangalore birdwatcher, allows one to draw a freehand shape over a map of India and get a list of species found there. One has to just get the software downloaded from the internet, install it, and check the various towns and cities for the number of species found in and around those towns. The results would surely surprise you.  

One may begin to wonder why is it that cities have so many species. When we think of cities, we normally picture overcrowded and congested lanes with shops touching wall to wall, dusty, dirty, noisy streets and the only green visible in the paint used. But, what we tend to forget is that for every such overcrowded part, we have the beautiful boulevards, the mall and the high value shopping areas, the industrial suburbs and open spaces. At the other end of the 'green street' we have the avenues, the gardens, parks and the residential areas. We also have water flowing in the valleys, impounded as lakes here and there by an embankment. We of course also tend to have irrigated cultivation downriver of these lakes. We have in many cases the hummocky and hilly country, as in Bangalore. And then of course, we have the airspace over a city! 

The city is in fact a mosaic, a cosmopolitan mix of many habitats that birds make use of. When we talk of city birds, we are of course talking about all those which could be visiting or living in the habitats mentioned earlier.  There are some interesting facts though. There are no urban birds which are exclusive to an urban area. All are from neighbouring rural areas. A study done by Frances Bonier at Virginia Tech examined data from many cities of the world and assessed whether urban birds were more tolerant of different environmental conditions. She found that urban birds have a broader environmental tolerance than the rural congeners, and had a wider distribution. It is a fact that if a species' range is wider, the variation in the environmental conditions that it can live in is also greater. Hence, such species make it better in an urban environment. 

Not all birds found in a city are common. About a third can be considered as wandering or those which have lost their way. Birds are highly mobile and many individuals of different kinds keep moving out of their usual haunts and land up at new places. It is technically called dispersal. Some of these birds could even colonise a new area.  Many of the birds found in our cities are migratory. All our cities are visited in winter by migratory birds from the distant north. We have many birds from central and north Eurasia spending their time here from September to April. Some are from just across the Himalaya. Many of these are small, and some like the Greenish Leaf Warblers that come to our gardens are much smaller than a sparrow! Wetlands in and near cities receive thousands of migratory birds, though this is reducing with ill-planned development. Ducks like Garganey, Shoveller and Pintail come in thousands. Likewise, shorebirds like the Green, the Spotted and Common Sandpipers come in large numbers, as do their larger relatives like the Greenhsank. Then there are the stints, especially the Little Stint, having a breeding range well across near the Arctic Circle and beyond. And how big are these stints? Around the size of a sparrow! Whether it is the ducks, or the sandpipers, or the geese, or the plovers, all are fast flying birds. They just would not be able to clear the kind of distances that they do flying at the speed of our herons and egrets (which are residents here).  

Many birds in our environs are quite visible. Take the Small Green Barbet for example. A dumpy green fruit eating bird with a white and brown head and a green body, which makes a hole in a tree for a nest, like a woodpecker does. Ask anybody who has ever looked at the life around him in Bangalore, and he would perhaps even tell you that it calls with its mouth closed, like a frog does, with the throat inflating and deflating, acting as a resonating chamber. It is found only in Peninsular India, and nowhere else in the world. This species is not even found in central India, let alone the north.  Then there are others which are nearly global – the Barn Owl  and our ubiquitous Blue Rock Pigeon. Both have gone global along with human beings, and do extremely well wherever we have multi-storeyed buildings. They are essentially birds which roost and breed on ledges in cuttings and cliffs. For them, our multi-storeyed buildings are similar to the artificial cliffs with ledges to roost and breed on! So, you have a building and you get these birds. 

One would wonder what is happening to the common birds of yesterday: the crows, the sparrows, the pigeons, the doves, the mynas… We still have them in our cities, though they are not found in the same numbers that we used to find them in. Habitat loss, increased number of man-made chemicals in the environment to contend with, noise, have all kept the pressure on. 

There is one thing to remember though. Birds are the highest metabolising powerhouses in the living world. Per unit body weight, they burn up food at a much higher rate than any other animal. That is because, flight requires power. Power to not only take forward, but to fly. So any toxin in the environment affects them earlier than it does to us. If birds suffer, we would not be far behind. Remember the miner's canary that used to be carried down into the mine shaft, until Davy invented his safety lamp? Until we discover a warning device for every chemical that we dump into the environment,  and every habitat that we destroy, we would require birds to sound the alarm.

KRISHNA MB & SUNIL KUMAR M   

September 2008

[Miner' Canary in the Tehelka Magazine]

On Universities and education...

This was written around a decade ago...

“A right man for the job” has indeed become a cliché: often meant just as a saying and never implemented! Nowhere is it more true than in the case of our Universities. We do not seem to be having the right students nor the right staff anymore. And this reflects in the pathetic status which the universities or their staff enjoy in society. But we do need to wonder why, and reflect whether the universities alone are to blame, or is it a malady of much greater proportions.

Universities are great places: in fact, any place of learning distanced from the usual pressures would be. But they are also places where something more than the “bread” of literacy is expected, the “cake” and “icing” so to speak, marking the difference between basic and higher learning. They are meant to be places where mere classroom learning at the graduate and earlier level also makes way for research and new findings, thus contributing to society in more ways than one. In fact, we expect so much more from our universities, but one begins to question why are they not delivering their due. Are they still places of higher learning as they were supposed to be?

This problem can basically be traced to three levels. At the highest would be the government’s role and responsibility, and at the lowest would be the students, the society and people. And in the middle, and a very large middle at that, is the university itself. A large part of the problem could be the institutions’ own doing.

Universities, especially the science departments, are facing a steady decline in quality students joining them. Good students tend to go in for jobs or other courses after the degree itself. The research happening there leaves more to be desired, faculty evaluations often targeting quantity rather than quality. There are no defined procedures for evaluating the teaching done. The teaching – research dichotomy is often used for doing neither, some views going to the limit of saying that both cannot be done together. The courses and syllabi are outmoded, and combinations at the feeder degree level are so fixed that a student cannot have adequate choices with more maturity coming with age. In present set-up there is no exchange of faculty between universities, institutions, or departments, so that new thought and techniques are hardly brought in. The relevance of research done to society also needs a good re-evaluation.

In addition, there is much staff indiscipline and classes are not taken as stipulated. Guidance for research is indifferent, and research subjects are not optimised for or capitalise on available resources. The research could be repetitive, student after student. Motivation is low and the staff are not capable of getting the most out of students. In short, the universities too reek of the same indifference brought about by government-type permanent employment!

Society’s perception of degrees as a “basic passport” puts a lot of demand on the system. For most people, a degree is a gateway to a professional career, and traditional degrees have failed to satisfy this aspiration. This has brought about the suggestion that there should be a “reversal of roles” played by professional and traditional degree courses. Those who take up traditional degree courses and do not find jobs often land up studying for their higher degrees. Student indiscipline has also played its role, often politically backed, and affects students who have to survive by their merit severely.

In many countries, universities play a mainstream role in research developments. Setting up of full fledged research institutions which have distanced themselves from universities and education is also thought to have caused part of the problem. Most universities have a financial crunch, so that basic facilities like libraries, are hit severely. The cost of journals are increasing, and access to electronic document resources at universities may not be in keeping with the needs. Research is not possible without a good literature review and this is where resources are pathetic. Internet and access to email could have mollified this problem but access to priced literature at the university itself, either printed or electronic, has no substitute.

India is supposed to have over twenty-four million graduates. From about a score of universities post Independence, there are more than a couple of hundred of them today. The disparity between institutions is high, even in basic training that they offer. Eligibility criteria like UGC/CSIR National Evaluation Test (NET) have been sidelined by negotiating for “equivalent” selection tests conducted by the institutions themselves. The quality of intake thus suffers: faculty and research student selections have defied good eligibility criteria!

The shift in student fancy away from traditional degrees has pinched research institutions of good students. And numerous views and solutions have been expressed. That change in peoples’ aspiration is happening is obvious. The question remains whether universities will rise to the occasion. Guided change should be possible: what is happening now is that the system is succumbing to a overwhelming “market demand”. The day might not be too far off when we would have to look for talent outside, when it comes to non-engineering and non-medical lines. Just imagine that day when you switch on the TV and see a foreign documentary covering some non-traditional but not offbeat topic. You should not have to literally rake your head to recollect if there was somebody whom you know, who is even remotely connected with that subject! With current fashions, we are drifting towards just that!

//mbk 2003-08-09

[This was published as a lead article in Vijay Times of Bangalore, in a special 'centre spread' devoted to higher education]

 

Tips for new birdwatchers

In the field:

• Spotting birds is a chance.
• It is also a skill: the more you practice, the better you are.
• It is an art too! Some people are just better at it.
• Look for movement, it always reveals the birds.
• Be as quiet as possible, it helps when you are close to them.
• Learn to remain still. Never keep moving. This is your best tool to see birds.
• Carry a small book and pen to take down notes. It always helps write down.
• Do one thing at a time. Observe first. Taking pictures comes later. There is always a time for it.
• Do not get distracted by others. Keep your focus on the birds and the habitat.
• Remember, this is only an introduction. One needs to put in more effort on one's own to get proficience.
• Be aware of a bird's size, looks, colour and pattern. Getting a good description is crucial.
• Listen to the birds. What they sing and call is not only nice to hear but helps recognise them too.

Krishna MB, 2008-08-28.

 

 

Taking an Attendance of Birds

We generally spend more time in places where we have something to do rather than places where we are doing nothing. For example, we spend a lot of time at home, since that is the place where we stay. We tend to spend a lot of time at our workplaces since that is where we earn our bread. Similarly, students spend a lot of time at school or college since they go there to learn something which gives them a return in the long run.

If we look at things on a longer time scale, we are to be found at home for the greatest part of the year, which is nearly 100% of the days. We could be found at our work places for almost all the working days of the year (over 70% of the days), while we are likely to be found at school for nearly 60% of the days in a year. We could thus compute an “attendance” score for our favorite canteen or cafe, or our visits to movies, and the like. And the list could go on…

Resident birds too would spend more days of the year at places where they have something to do rather than at places where they have nothing to gain from. If they are sleeping (roosting) on your tree, it is likely they are coming there every night for the whole year. If they are coming to feed in your backyard, they might be coming there for most days of the year, with a few days missed to explore elsewhere.  If it is a bird which has lost its way and is trying to get back to its normal home habitat, it might be found on your tree or in your area for a couple of days at the most. It could then be expected to move on.

Simply put, this is like the attendance a teacher would take for the students in a class. Just like there are students who maintain a high attendance score and those who do not, there would be birds which frequent an area regularly and also those which are rather irregular to that place.  So, it would be interesting to know which bird spends the most number of days at your garden or backyard, or even around your home. In comparison how do other kinds of birds fare?  Are they found all round the year there? What about the school compound? What about the plot of land which you view from your favourite office window?

So how could one maintain an attendance of the birds? Just keep a look out and mark all the days on which you see a particular kind (species) of bird in the same specified area. This could also be based on what the statisticians would call a sample. To know what percentage of days a bird spends at your garden, it is not necessary to look for them every day. Supposing we are able to do it twice or thrice a every week, we would have some hundred or a hundred and fifty days or samples to check the proportion of days they are found at your place.

If we had such data for a long enough period, for a large enough number of places, we could even say what is happening to birds in our city. We could try to know if they are going up in numbers or are coming down, or if their population is relatively steady. In nature, due to a property associated with numbers of animals, more the frequency, more would be the actual numbers of animals counted. This is because animals would try to avoid packing themselves too much together! This is also because of what a statistician would call a skew in the distribution of numbers. Since we know both abundance and frequency are related, we are doing only one thing now: We are just keeping an attendance of birds!

Maintaining the data and keeping it organized is very important and for this, one could buy an attendance register book from any stationary shop.  Enter the names of the birds where you would generally write the names of the students and you are done. Fill in the dates, the month and you are ready to record the data. Please do not be biased for or against any kind of bird. Faithfully record all that you see: even if it means that you are seeing some of them every time you are making an observation! Not having any “favorites” or “dislikes” is very important for the analysis. But just remember to avoid gaps of more than a fortnight  as far as possible.

 

KRISHNA.MB, Monday, December 21, 2009

 

Are you being made to walk in the sun?

We often plant trees along roads which carry cars, while people walk in the hot sun from building to building. I would think this is quite funny and irrational. It is we, after all, who require the shade, not the dumb car which zooms along a road carrying passengers in air-conditioned glory!

We find this happening more and more in campuses too, where managers frequently talk about staff benefits, at least as a recruitment tool. The natural question is, do we have an alternative? We could have nice pathways well laid out, running from block to block, from building to building. We could line them with hedges and trees nicely en-framing the view of the grass and the garden. And then we could be walking in the cool shade all the while! 

It is those in colder climates like that of US and Europe who require the Sun, and the soft warmth that it brings with it there. We, in the dry hot tropics require shade. Companies which come here and open offices and branches with the temperate region's designs and ideas are obviously letting their egos make their choices, and not giving reason a chance.

Companies and people here could make a difference. They could at least, to begin with, accept the fact that global warming is an issue, and identify with those who are fighting it. They could begin by planting a few trees on their campuses and then let you all walk in the shade. After all, charity begins at home it is said. We could, in turn, afford to gain some goodwill and some carbon credits for a greater common good!

So the question is, can we make a difference? Can we bring about change? Scientists are warning us that we might have a North Pole without ice one of these years. Poor Santa has to use oars or his power boat. Reindeers would not even have a place to stand or draw his sledge. So what fables are we going to tell the children? Do we create a Swimming Santa? Do we tell all the people that they need to grow trees to keep their fables alive? Do take this message to them. Tell them we could be keeping their fables alive and also help keep the ice under their feet!

 

[2008-07-01]

The Dust in Our Midst

Dust has always been a part of our society. It is a component of  many idioms. In its physical form, it is talked about in the news every day in the weather report, as ‘particulate matter in the air’. On many days of the year, our Bengaluru scores the dubious distinction of having the highest amount of particulate matter in the air of any of the Indian Metros. It is something we hardly take note of.  

Many of us think that this information broadcasted everyday is just relevant to asthamatics or those with respiratory sensivities. Of course it has more relevance to them, but we also need to be informed of both sides of the strory. Often, we tend to just look at the negative side of things, and seem to feel that we need to be up against nature all the time, which is very wrong. We know that dust contributes to global dimming: the phenomenon by which slightly lesser amount of light reaches land and sea surface. We know that pollen and spores in the air can trigger allergies (remember Parthenium?). We know, dust settling on our books and tables is a nuisance and has to be dusted down. And every time a bus or a car travels fast on the road, it raises dust in its wake. Floors have to be swept and mopped. In short, we despise dust: dust in any form.

But look at the brighter side of things. Do we really require dust, yes we do! Just think what all “dust” does in the environment around us. Fine dust measuring just microns in diameter is required for water vapour to consense on. Fine carbon in the air, spores and pollen adsorb (not absorb) chemicals on their surface, including pollutants that we put into the air every day. All these get removed when the dust settles down. Plants get pollinated by pollen which travels around as dust. Mushrooms and fungi disperse through spores in the form of dust. And so do bacteria. But for these we would never have had old material decomposing. Recycling would have been badly hit, because nothing would have worked without inoculation. It would have been like making curds everytime. 

But how could we combat this dust which we do not want in around us?  Artificially, there are many ways of removing or reducing industrially produced dust. We need to reduce smoke, whether vehicular or otherwise. And we need to have more greenery around. Green leaves generate a charge on their surface which settles dust. This gets washed down in the next rain, and is a natural dust reducing mechanism. Action could be very indirect. For example, it is natural for grass to grow on soil adjoining roads. But our corporation staff have a bad policy of digging it all up and expose more soil. If we just allowed the grass to be,  it would have been the best choice we could have made. So the mantra is simple. Have more greenery around: as the city with the highest particulate matter in the air, what greenery we have is just not enough.

 

[2008. Published in Deccan Chronicle]

 

 

Urban Lakes as Outdoor Labs

Have you ever stood under a flock of a thousand migratory ducks or sandpipers flying low overhead, all flying in unison at some seventy kilometres per hour, turning and twisting as if they were all controlled by the same remote device? Or, have you ever stood under a flock of a hundred pelicans sailing over, each with a wingspan that is twice your height? Well you could do both even if you consider yourself “trapped” in a city like Bangalore! You are very unlikely to forget the experience for the rest of your life. More so if you are a child. And this is where we begin.

The recent occupation of the larger lakes of Bangalore by the endangered Spot-billed Pelican (which comes into the first schedule of our Wildlife Protection Act) has drawn much attention of the media and the birdwatching community. Surprising that these huge birds should turn up in a city you might think! But read on.

Urban centres are becoming increasingly important in becoming refuges for wild birds. With the loss of agriculture, the first casuality when cities grow, urban lakes tend to retain water right through the year. They also receive a fair amount of sewage or sullage contamination, which provides nutrients to the aquatic system that dramatically encourages productivity. There is more algae, more aquatic plants and more fish growing in these urban lakes than their non-urban counterparts. This encourages birds. Most of these birds are very visible and easily seen. And spectacular! Ouite a number are migratory, often from very far off places, like Siberia and Mongolia.

Just imagine, we could turn our lakes into field labs and display centres in keeping with the current environmental concern, and the college and school curriculum. Much of these lakes could then be used to showcase not only the problems, but the way these problems could be tackled too. And all this would not cost a thing!

We could be doing this right across India, for the simple reason that it is easier to appreciate cause-effect relationships in wetland systems than it is with say forest based ecology. Not that we have without stating it, used the natural system as a field museum and display centre. Take Delhi, they have the advantage of the Yamuna and the riverain system. But they also have Delhi zoo which attracts wild birds to its water bodies. Take Mysore. A good population of migratory birds, even for a city positioned so far south (North India gets more migratory birds). Calcutta, with its river delta network. And Hyderabad, with its large lakes. There are opportunities, we only need to recognise these at the right time.

Saving urban lakes has become imperative with pressures on urban land increasing every day. The extent of waterbodies in Bangalore has dropped from 4.8 percent of the land area less than a decade ago to some 2.8 percent today, which the work of Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc has clearly shown. Yes, alarming. But a hard reality. More so if we consider that forty percent of Bangalore’s birdlife is supported by such a small extent of wetlands and waterbodies! And it is the same with every other Indian City.

Most of India’s cities have an oppurtunity to showcase our wildlife in the same places where we plan, attempt or treat and recycle our waste water. The National Lakes Conservation Plan launced as a Central Government initiative, has even put birds as a criteria in its evaluation guidelines

If we used many of our waterbodies for multiple uses, rather than just keeping it for one purpose, then we could always have the ducks, the sandpipers, and the pelicans swishing over our heads. And you could be holding somebody else’s hand, and be showing them the birds tomorrow! 

 

 

Pelicans at Hebbal, on the artificial island, and swimming in the water.
Photographs by Ms Ranjini Kamath

 

[2008, Published in the Deccan Chronicle]

Some lost lakes of Bangalore

… AND SOME MORE WHICH ARE STILL SURVIVING!

 

SOME MAN-MADE LAKES OF BANGALORE,
PHOTOGRAPHED DURING THE ANNUAL MID-WINTER WATERBIRD COUNT OF JANUARY 1989.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KRISHNA MB AND SUBRAMANYA S. CITATION CREDITS EXPECTED.
ALL CONTENT AND IMAGES COPYRIGHT (C) KRISHNA MB, 1989

 

YELLA MALLAPPA CHETTY TANK ON KOLAR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

RACHENA HALLI FROM BUND, JANUARY 1989

 

HENNUR, NOT EXISTING NOW, JANUARY 1989

 

 

DODDABEGUR, HOSUR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

VARTUR NEAR WHITEFIELD, FROM BUND, JANUARY 1989

 

VARTUR NEAR WHITEFIELD, JANUARY 1989

 

SARJAPURA, JANUARY 1989

 

 

SADAHALLI, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

RAMPURA, KOLAR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

OBICHUDANAHALLI ON KANAKAPURA ROAD, JANUARY 1989
(THE HIGHEST EMBANKMENT IN THE BANGALORE AREA)

 

NAGAVARA FORESHORE, JANUARY 1989

 

NAGAVARA, JANUARY 1989

 

KODIGEHALLI, NORTH BANGALORE, JANUARY 1989

 

KALKERE, OFF KOLAR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

 

KAIKONDANAHALLI, SARJAPUR ROAD, JANUARY 1989

 

HARAGADDE, ANEKAL ROAD, WITH LESSER WHISTLING TEALS TAKING OFF,
JANUARY 1989

An old note on birdwatching

How not to be dinosaurs in a botanic garden

While on the usual Second Sunday group birdwatching outing to Lalbagh, I was asked by one of the participants for the oldest tree there. The collective opinion was that it was the lone surviving Mango tree dating back to the Hyder Ali – Tippu times. Just a couple of decades ago, there were four of them, and all but one died, leaving behind a blank open sunny space, in the very place that they once gave shade to. None were replaced immediately with a clone of the original, and to this day there is a blank, a symbolic vacancy in what should have been a treasured heritage.

For very many decades in the past, during the Commissioner and Princely days, Lalbagh was treated as a botanic garden, as a place of serious learning and collection of plants of both economic and novelty value. It has perhaps the oldest Sapota tree in Bangalore. It also has a couple of the only pines native to Southern India.

Those pines belong to a genus called Podocarpus , and were the only pines which survived the holocaust caused by one of the most violent volcanic eruptions this part of the world has ever seen. It was close to a couple of hundred million years ago and led largely to the extinction of the fauna and flora in India (the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary as the geologists call it). This event also led to the formation of the Deccan Traps. And in the higher reaches of the hills, these pines survived. With its deep green foliage (not needles!) these trees today lend a stately presence to the path that they grace.

But do we know about it? No! We literally see thousands of people at Lalbagh every day. Some jogging, some walking, most chatting. Hardly anybody is interested in what is around. They show no concern for the little plants that are meant to grow there. Not the grass, not the flower beds. There is no concern, no discipline. We have turned it in to a municipal-exercise park.

Maybe it is time for us to do a rethink and put a better value to the legacy that we have inherited. Seriously, maybe it is a time for us to take more pride in the heritage that we are part of. We just need to turn a botanic garden into a place it was meant to be, a place of learning!

 

[13-07-2008. Published in the Deccan Chronicle]

Composing Corporate Garden Landscapes

Download the booklet as a pdf file here

 

 

 


 


 


 

 

 

 

Press Coverage:

Gardens of Delight (Deccan Herald)

‘Responsible’ Greenery (The Hindu)

Corporates, they’re for the birds (DNA India)

Tying up… to save the real garden (Weekend Leader)