Encounters with a cobra

In the eight years that I've been walking in the Theosophical Society's grounds in Chennai I've come across snakes only 3 or 4 times. This doesn't surprise me much because wooded areas have far fewer snakes than most people imagine. Also, being well camouflaged and alert, most snakes detect an approaching human early and move away before we can spot them.

A few days ago, while walking on one of the quieter paths in the TS, I startled a cobra that was resting in the grass beside the trail, noticing it only when it rose up with its hood spread. As is typical of these shy snakes, the cobra wasn't facing me, but was showing me the back of its spread hood, with the lovely spectacle marks on it. This is a typical warning display that means, "watch out, I'm here". A bit startled myself, I stood stock still and watched the beautiful reptile. A few seconds later, putting its head down, but with its hood still spread, the snake started moving in my direction. A non snake person would have taken this as a show of aggression on the part of the cobra and fled, thinking that the snake was chasing him. However, it was clear to me that the snake was probably just trying to reach its bolt hole beneath the vegetation. I saw it slide into the grass and disappear. When I went closer to investigate, I could see a number of holes in the ground comprising a low termite mound. The cobra had obviously found a nice 'apartment' to call home.

A couple of days later, walking on the same path, I intentionally slowed down to see if I could spot the cobra before it spotted me. As I approached the termite mound, a grey mongoose leapt away, it's hair standing on end, quickly followed by another one. Their body language indicated an encounter with the snake. I quickly moved forward, fearing that they may have killed it, but there it was, standing a foot off the ground, with its majestic hood spread wide. It was obvious that the mongooses had been hassling it. The moment it spotted me the cobra put down its hood and, in one fluid motion, dived into a nearby hole. Had I even blinked, I would have missed this amazing vanishing act.

I couldn't help wondering whether I had saved the snake's life by appearing at that crucial moment. Mongooses are famous for their snake killing abilities and, while the cobra could have escaped from a single mongoose, a concerted attack by two of these intelligent and lighting fast mammals would be quite hard for the relatively slower snake to evade. But why hadn't it dived into the hole in the first place when the mongooses appeared? Perhaps being an adult, venomous and five feet long, it felt well able to defend itself against adversaries somewhat its own size. When it saw me looming over it, the fear of humans that seems to run deep in all animals, sent it diving into the hole without a moment's hesitation!

Photos by Belinda Wright

Amazing tiger-bear encounter

Nature has a way of cutting one down to size. Any time you think you've seen it all, there's a new revelation that shows you how little you actually know!

In February this year, tiger biologist Ullas Karanth, a few other friends and I witnessed an astonishing interaction between a sloth bear and a tiger in the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve in Karnataka. I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time in forests and that the incident wasn't 'astonishing' for either the tiger or the bear. It's just that one has to be incredibly lucky to actually see something like this unfolding. What's more, I even got some pictures! I've posted the story and a series of pictures on my revamped (finally!) website, so do have a look at www.shekardattatri.com

Tiger! Tiger!

Watchtower Vigil

There is something really special about seeing a wild tiger in broad daylight, that too in south India, where they tend to be very secretive. On 16th January, renowned tiger biologist Dr.Ullas Karanth, G.Ananthakrishnan from The Hindu and I decided to spend the afternoon in a watchtower in Karnataka’s Nagarahole National Park. It was 3.00 in the afternoon and, as we took our places, there was a small herd of chital at a salt lick nearby. After about half an hour of licking the soil, they started drifting away and a couple of gray langurs arrived with two small playful babies. It was entertaining to watch the young ones rolling around on the soft earth and pouncing on one another.

A few minutes past 4.00 there was an urgent whisper from Ullas, Tiger! Tiger! Looking in the direction he indicated we saw an adult male tiger ambling towards us on a game trail in the middle of a wide ‘view line’. On catching some scent on the ground, the tiger sniffed at it for a moment or two and made the facial gesture known as ‘flehmen’, which is basically a curling of the upper lip in response to a particular scent (such as traces of the urine of another tiger). The tiger then continued his walk towards the tower, on his massive, padded feet. The evening sun glinted off his orange coat as we watched in spellbound admiration. While I decided to just enjoy watching the tiger through my binoculars, I could hear Anant’s Nikon clicking away behind me. The tiger was getting closer by the second and I was quite sure that, with a 80-400 Nikkor lens on his digital SLR, Anant was getting great pictures.

It wasn’t until the tiger was about 50 m away that the langurs on a nearby tree spotted him. Suddenly, the air was rent with their harsh alarm calls. The tiger looked towards the tree once and then ambled forward. A few metres more, and he stopped and looked at our shapes in the watchtower. Perhaps he had caught a small movement from one of us, or perhaps he was naturally wary of the tower, having seen people in it before. He stood stock-still and stared at us for a few seconds and then, without haste or panic, he turned and disappeared into the vegetation by the side of the view line. A few minutes later, alarm calls of chital (spotted deer) indicated the way he was moving. The alarms were taken up by other chital, and through their sounds we could ‘follow’ the tiger's movements for another 10 minutes.

Altogether, the sighting lasted no more than 3 minutes, but it’s been playing in my mind ever since. It’s not an image you can easily forget, but then, why would you want to?!

Monsoon

I noticed that the wind had changed last Sunday, when I went for my walk at the Theosophical Society. Until three days before, the wind had been blowing from the south. On Sunday, when I got to the beach, it was blowing from the east, strong and steady. Walking towards the Adyar river mouth, I noticed a couple of flocks of what looked like Kentish plovers. They hadn’t been there before, and had probably just arrived from their summer homes far to the North, perhaps beyond India’s borders. Each flock was about 50 strong and they were superbly camouflaged against the sand. In fact I only first noticed them when they took off. I could get to within ten metres of them, but any closer, and they would take off, wheel around and settle on the sand a little distance away. Unfortunately, the beach is littered with paper and plastic bits, and each time one of these pieces flew towards the birds, they would take fright. It was sad that they couldn’t rest in peace even when there were no humans to disturb them. The next day the wind changed again, this time blowing from the north. It was clear that the northeast monsoon had set it. The plovers were gone. They had probably stopped over on their way further south, to Point Calimere or Sri Lanka. There were other migrants in the estuary though; a small flock of black winged stilts. Twenty years ago, flocks of two to three thousand stilts were a common sight here in winter. Today the flocks have dwindled to the low hundreds. The toxins in the estuary will perhaps do these in too, not very far in the future.