The last few weeks have been very exciting as we have been traveling to almost all the extreme corners of the country, photographing and filming snakes. From Pit vipers in northeast India to Sind Kraits and Saw-scaled vipers in Rajasthan and to more snakes in the Western Ghats.

Saw-scaled viper sidewinding in the desert

This photograph is one of my favorites from the whole trip and something that I’ve been wanting to photograph for a while now. It was a lot tougher than I thought. I wanted to capture the snake with a wide lens, to shoot the landscape behind it, but then again, this snake is one of the most deadliest snakes in the country and I didn’t want to risk getting bitten. I also had to get a sand dune which overlooked other sand dunes. To make matters worse, I had only one chance per dune to take this shot as once the snake went over it, it would leave its marks behind. I also had to try this early in the morning as the dunes get very hot as the day progresses. After many tries, finally managed this one. I bumped up the contrast a tiny bit in the post to give the dunes more distinct structure.

Sorry about the awful silence on the blog. I’m out in the field this whole month and had to work in really tough conditions in Assam, Rajasthan and Kerala.

Meanwhile, this months issue of Outlook Traveller carried the article on my Narcondam Island expedition that I did earlier this year.

You can download the pdf of the article here. I really like how Outlook/Geo does the layout of the images with text and captions.

India has more than a billion people and we have very little land area to support such a large population. This, therefore, does not leave much room for free land or wildnerness areas and every part of the country is used for production or extraction. Most fertile lands are used for agriculture which is the lifeline of the country. Everything else is used for something or the other. Where there are rocks, we quarry granite; where there are minerals in the soil, it is dug and blasted; and where there is neither of these, we modify the remnant natural landscapes to make them more ‘productive’. Here is a bird’s eye view of our Deccan plateau. This is a broader horizon and a larger picture of the state of our land, which we seldom see from eye-level. Land scrapes »

Land scrapes – a photo essay

If you have been wondering why there has not been any updates on the blog lately, its because of back to back trip from Agumbe and now in Borneo. It has been a mind-blowing trip so far, to experience the oldest rainforests on earth.

Just to give you a perspective, I’ve photographed more fungi in the last two days than birds and mammals.

Danum Valley, Borneo

Currently in Imbak Canyon Conservation Area where the BBC series ‘Expedition Borneo’ was filmed. Heading to Maliau Basin tomorrow. More once I get back.

Read previously: Expedition Narcondam : Part 1

The night came in early and soon we were sailing in almost total darkness, but under the canopy of a million stars–the milky way above us. We had started early that morning on a small, private, sail boat and still were not in sight of our destination. As I settled down on the deck for the night, I could not help but think about Charles Darwin and his Voyage of the Beagle. Close to 200 years ago, Darwin with his crew went around the world in HMS Beagle and in his trip to the Galapagos islands, he was baffled by the diversity of species on each of the islands and sparked the theory of evolution in his head.

I realised I was going to an island like that. The nearest landmass to the Narcondam island is the main Andaman island which is some 114 km to the west. To the east is Myanmar. On an evolutionary time scale, these islands have been isolated for so long that no mammals have managed to reach these islands on their own. Of the birds that could fly, some have made it to the island and made their home here. But once landed, the birds have been quite content with the island and have stayed isolated from the rest of the world for thousands and millions of years. In this time, the species on the island have evolved into species slightly different from those on the mainland. This is where the theory of evolution kicks in. Over time, species adapt and change to local conditions and in millions of years, become a different species. The process of natural colonisation is probably still on.

One of our primary aim was to see the Narcondam Hornbill. This hornbill, which looks very similar to the Wreathed Hornbill, found in northeast India and southeast Asia, is found only on this island and no where else in the world. Many millions of years ago, either this island was connected to the mainland Asia via a land bridge or was close enough for these hornbills, being powerful fliers, to reach this island. But after that, they have remained isolated for so long that they have changed over time. Today they are much smaller than the Wreathed Hornbills and are visibly a distinct species.

But wait a second. If a big bird like the hornbill could have evolved differently on this isolated island, what about all other creatures like reptiles, amphibians, and plants. We had the right people on board to help find just that and I could barely sleep with the excitement that I would wake up to the sight of this island.

I woke up the next morning and realised that the winds had been against us and we were still many hours from reaching the island. Sometime around 10:00 h, we saw an inverted V on the horizon. The distinct shape of a volcanic island. An extinct volcano in fact. It took us 3 more hours to actually get close to the island.

The Narcondam island from a distance

As we approached the island from the south, we knew from reading the reports of previous expeditions that there were only two small stretches of beach to land. Rest was too steep and even if we could anchor, it would be very tough for us to get onto the island and go inside the forests. After we were close enough, we sailed towards to northeast corner of the island to find the landing spot.

Narcondam Island

We saw a Indian flag on the shore and some people came there to wave at us. Since this island is out in the ocean, the Indian Government setup a police outpost a few decades ago and a few people stay here on rotation, changed and supplied every month by the Coast Guard of the Indian Navy. This is how India stakes her claim on the island.

After dropping the anchor, we took a small inflatable boat “gemini” and went over to the island. We landed and realised there were 20 people stationed there to protect the island.

View of our boat “Emerald Blue” from the island

The island’s geography itself was quite fascinating. The island is a volcanic island. The volcano is now extinct. So the whole island is very loose, with rocks and ashy soil. When climbing up, one can never trust the ground for support as it just crumbles under your weight and the loose, rolling rocks will hit the person behind you. We were instructed to climb only by holding on to trees and other plants.

Volcanic rock on the coast

Over the next four days, we explored the island from dawn till dusk and at the end of the day got back to the boat to sleep. Though we were doing a lot of things as a team, each one was after something specific. T R Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa were trying to assess the population of the hornbills, the state of forest regeneration, and were keeping a record of other mammals on the island. Rom Whitaker and Janaki Lenin were out looking for reptiles and amphibians on the island. Ajay Saxena from the forest department was exploring the island to understand the management issues of this unique island. Tasneem Khan and Umeed Mistry were diving around the island, looking for interesting corals and marine creatures. I was trying to photograph as much diversity of the island as possible.

The island now has a lot of rats that have probably colonised the place along with humans or brought in by the ships accidentally. We were also on the look out for goats which had been introduced earlier as a source of protein for the camp, but had run feral. The forest department following a very strong recommendation by Dr. Ravi Sankaran had removed a whole load of them. We were of the view that a few had escaped capture. We were worried about the impact they might be having on the plant regeneration but were happy not to find any evidence of goats. However, we do know that at least a few are still around as they have been seen by the police guards.

The highlight birds were the Narcondam Hornbills and the Pied Imperial Pigeons. It was the nesting time for the hornbills, so we found them both at nests as well as feeding at large fig trees.

Narcondam Hornbill (Aceros narcondami)

One of the fascinating things that happened was the encounter with ground birds. On one of the days, I was quite pooped climbing up with all my gear and decided to rest by a stream. I was almost having a power nap when I felt something poking my feet. I got up and realised it was a bird very similar to the Slaty-legged Crake which took fancy for a Velcro hanging loose from my sandals. It was surprised to see me but not scared and stood less than 2 feet from me. I was shocked. Normally these kind of birds are shy like hell and one has to try really hard to sneak up on them and here was one right in front of me. It didn’t mind me at all and kept walking around foraging. I tried to shoot, but the light was low and most of the time it was in the minimum focussing distance of my lens. I walked with it for a good half hour and meanwhile rest of the guys joined me and had a look. It didn’t look like any of the crake species that we find in India. So either its a new species to science or some other crake which is found in southeast Asia. It very closely matched the Slaty-legged Crake.

On another day, we came across a Chinese Pond Heron which would not fly away too. It stood right next to us, and let us shoot it with our 12 mm lenses. Whats with these birds you might ask ? One possible explanation could be that the island does not have or ever had any mammalian predators. So these birds grew up generations after generations without fearing anything and over time lost fear of large things moving around with two or four legs. This is a classic island ecosystem behavior. In fact, in some places like New Zealand, many birds have given up flight totally as they didn’t see a reason to fly. Instead of eating a little and take flight, they would sit down for a big meal and take a stroll afterwards. This theory does not hold fully as there are water monitor lizards on the island and they could and would prey on these birds.

We also found atleast two species of bats on the island. Since it was peak summer, we were not so fortunate with snakes and frogs. We however saw many different types of skinks and geckoes. Rom believes many of them could be new species again.

Bent-toed Gecko : Found in Narcondam (but this photograph is from ANET, Wandoor)

Every evening, we would jump into the water with our snorkels as the heat and humidity was too much to take. There were amazing corals around the island and according to our marine experts, the island had some of the best corals in Andaman islands.

Overall, it was a trip of a lifetime for me. Not only did I get to see the island of my dreams, but also was there with the right company and the whole process of sailing there was just perfect. I can safely say that this is one of the few island, not just in India, but in the world which is still intact to a large extent and I hope things will only change for the better on this island, if at all.

When I started bird watching many years ago, one of the curious birds that I read about was the Narcondam hornbill. Why the name?

Well it turns out, this hornbill is endemic to this small little 6.8 sq km extinct volcanic island named Narcondam island between Andaman islands and Burma. Can you imagine? The whole species of a big bird like the hornbill (some people even call it a honorary mammal) is found in this tiny little island. Since then, the goal was set. Visiting this island and exploring this went into my bucket list. It took more than 5 years for that dream to come true.

It took more than a year of planning, applying for permits and constituting the team for this trip. Finally it was a small team of scientists, photographers and forest dept official. The plan was to spend few days on the island and assess the situation of the island, the endangered hornbills and also look at some of the other wildlife that this island holds along with all the coral and marine stuff around the island.

So here is the first of series of posts about this expedition.

Day 1 (12th April 2010)

All of us reached Port blair two days before to pack, plan and setup things for the expedition. We chartered a sail boat/yacht from thailand to go on this expedition. We left port blair very early and set sail. Since the winds were not favorable, we could not use the sail and had to use the engine which meant we could only do a speed of 6 knots. After few hours, we were out in the open ocean with endless horizons on all sides. Past lunch, we suddenly saw this pod of spinner dolphins playing in the ocean. We slowed down and the the whole pod came towards to boat to play with us.

See this video to know why they are called spinner dolphins and its quite clear that they were just having fun. I shot this footage with a Nikon D90.

After the initial jumps, they swam in front of the bow of the boat for many kilometers. Dolphins love to ride on the waves that bow of boats create.

A pod of spinner dolphins swimming with the boat

Bow-sailing: A very favorite activity of dolphins (thats my foot in the frame)

One of the dolphin breathing with its blow-hole

Only these two remained in front of us after a while

And the last one that left us and went away

We also came across a pod of Pilot whales. No great photographs as we saw them only late in the evening just after sunset. We reached the island only the next day afternoon. More about the island in the next post.

Update : Since many of you asked, here is the wallpaper version of the last image

digiKam v3.0 splash screen

My first non-code foss contribution. You do not need to be a programmer to contribute to free and open source software.

One of the exciting things about wildlife is the unpredictability. When you least expect it, you are rewarded by an amazing wildlife sighting.

Yesterday, along with two of my friends, I had been to BR hills. We left in the morning, reached BR hills by lunch time, finished some work and went to K-gudi (the tourism zone of BR hills) and decided to go on the evening safari. Two weeks ago, a mother tiger with 4 cubs were sighted near a water hole and we decided to drive straight to the place and wait there.

As soon as we landed up, a barking deer which was drinking water, walked into the understory and then started giving out alarm calls. Since half the time they give out false alarms, we waited hoping something would turn up. Then someone screamed “Tiger Tiger”. A cub came out of the bushes and slowly walked to the edge of the water. One more came behind it, followed by two more tiger cubs. We could not believe it. Four tiger cubs in front of you in a south Indian jungle. They came to the water, drank a lot, played in the slush for a bit and, one by one, just as they had appeared, disappeared into the bushes.

They were out for a good 10 min, but the mother never came out. We waited for an hour more, but there was no sign of the mother and it was time for us to leave. Personally I am so happy to see tiger in south India after more than a year and that too in my favorite place, BR hills.

BR hills has been one of those quite little gems hidden away because of which there is less tourism pressure and less corruption. It surely is one big bank for tiger populations and I hope it stays that way. A lot of people have been wanting this place to be declared a Tiger Reserve (at this moment its a Wildlife Sanctuary) but that will only ruin the place as a lot of money will be spent to ‘develop’ the reserve.

Here is a lovely term coined by Deepa Mohan

Photo-constipation:

It is what many ’serious photographers’ suffer from as they have to edit the images. Its usually when after one trip, it takes three months, sometimes, for just a few images to emerge out!

I, for one, have been suffering from it the last few month. What about you ?

Benjamin Lee has a very interesting Job. He works for the Singapore National Parks Board. He is responsible for maintaining the tree cover in town and also the National parks and watersheds. I was introduced to Ben as he was the best person to show me Colugo in the wild in Singapore.

He called me last evening and said he has a very special surprise for me. A Colugo had entered one of the buildings next to the park and we had to go pick it up and release it back in the national park. It was dropped off at the zoo and we picked it up and drove to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

Colugo, also known as the flying lemur is one of the weirdest creature on earth. Its has a very weird skin, a strange membrane around the animal and is the most capable gliding mammal on earth (after bats of course). I first saw it in a David Attenborough documentary and been wanting to see it even since. The amazing thing about this mammal is that it can never stand on the ground like the bats, and can only glide for locomotion.

Colugo Cynocephalus volans

We reached the National park at 6:30pm and was just about the right time to release the Colugo. Since it was in a box, I didnt see it too well. We took it to a large tree and released it. Just as we opened the box, it leaped on Ben, and then jumped onto the bark of the tree and ran up. After going up, it disappeared. It took us a fraction of a second to realise that it has gone airborne. It was one of the most wonderful sights on earth to see as it glided to a large ficus tree a good hundred meters away.

We got back to the office and then started searching for the resident Colugos. Today it was not there on the tree which it’s usually found. After a bit of searching, I suddenly heard a ‘thud’ on a tree next to me and then realised it was Colugo which landed on a tree very close to me. I whipped my camera out and shot the photograph below. I made sure I did not use a flash and shot this only with a torch light.

Philippine Colugo Cynocephalus volans (Nikon D700 with 70-200mm | 1/25 sec at f/2.8 @ ISO 2000)

This disappeared into the canopy and soon after, we bumped into the team from the National Parks who were doing their monthly night survey of the park. They invited me to join and I was more than happy to go along. I was just not prepared for the humidity, but the next 4 hours of walk through the forests was amazing. We saw the Long-tailed nightjar, Common Palm civet, Red-cheeked Flying Squirrel, Malayan Giant frog and dozen of amazing rainforest trees in bloom.

Colugo carrying a young one

Along the trek, we also spotted 3 more Colugos and this one was carrying its young one along with it. We all got back late night, had a data sharing meeting and called it a day. It was excellent to survey a new forests and was quite happy to have identified most of the species myself.

I strongly hope, other big cities learn from Singapore (and New York) on how to manage urban forests. Even if they don’t care about the tree cover, at least realise that unlimited clean water supply can only come from the watersheds that these forests provide.