They come, pluck and depart disappointed ? They return merrily !

They come, pluck and depart disappointed ?  They return merrily !

It is spring time in Chandigarh and one could see Semal trees in and around the city beautiful in their fullest bloom with vibrant red flowers. The Semal flowers attract all kinds of birds such as parrots, drangos, barbets , starlings, hornbills to the birders' delight.

However, as mentioned in Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, even though the birds visit semal, they depart disappointed for its fruits are tasteless and flowers nauseating, reminding that only humility and sweetness bear virtue and goodness.

ਸਿੰਮਲ ਰੁਖੁ ਸਰਾਇਰਾ ਅਤਿ ਦੀਰਘ ਅਤਿ ਮੁਚੁ ॥
si(n)mal rukh saraaeiraa ath dheeragh ath much ||
The simmal tree is straight as an arrow; it is very tall, and very thick.

ਓਇ ਜਿ ਆਵਹਿ ਆਸ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਹਿ ਨਿਰਾਸੇ ਕਿਤੁ ॥
oue j aavehi aas kar jaahi niraasae kith ||
But those birds which visit it hopefully, depart disappointed.

ਫਲ ਫਿਕੇ ਫੁਲ ਬਕਬਕੇ ਕੰਮਿ ਨ ਆਵਹਿ ਪਤ ॥
fal fikae ful bakabakae ka(n)m n aavehi path ||
Its fruits are tasteless, its flowers are nauseating, and its leaves are useless.

ਮਿਠਤੁ ਨੀਵੀ ਨਾਨਕਾ ਗੁਣ ਚੰਗਿਆਈਆ ਤਤੁ ॥
mit(h)ath neevee naanakaa gun cha(n)giaaeeaa thath ||
Sweetness and humility, O Nanak, are the essence of virtue and goodness.

Semal is the local name for Bombax. It is abundantly found in Southern and Eastern Asia, right from Burma to Afghanistan, besides northern Australia sand western Africa.

The flowering season of Semal is followed by fruition. Its fruit is the size of a golf ball which is filled with cotton-like fibrous stuff that is used for filling pillows and cushion and for that precise reason it is also referred as Cotton Tree or the Red Silk Cotton Tree.

Semal is a fast growing tree that can reach height of 30 to 40 metres and does not require much of watering or fertlizers. It grows straight and tall , branched symmetrically with the trunk up to 3 metres. Its timber is soft and is used for manufacture of plywood, match boxes and sticks.

The bark, roots sand gum extracted from it is used in cosmetics and herbal medicines for curing diarrhea, dysentery, hemoptysis, pulmonary, tuberculosis, , influenza, styptic and wounds.

Decoding the nightjar !

March 10, 2019. A team from Chandigarh comprising Mr Arvind Syal, Mr Rakesh Suthar, Mr Navtej Singh and me arrive at Kaelsar in Yamunangar District of Haryana specifically to click pictures of crimson and purple sunbirds that flock there to sip nectar from purple colour wild flowers. There the team was joined by Dr Rajiv Kalsi Professor and Head Department of Zoology M.L.N. College Yamuna Nagar and   Dr Janak Chowdhary, a renowned ENT Specialist who loves to do micro photography of tiny insects and spiders.  The sun was up and hot . The time was about 09 30 hours. 

While we were focusing our cameras to get good pictures of sunbirds, our eyes   fell on a  bird sitting motionless in the thick  dry foliage Its colour perfectly matched the dry brown leaves that were scattered all over. While the camouflage was perfect, our instincts knew it was after all a  nightjar, the master of  camouflage.  We could not believe our eyes as we turned our camera to take some photographs. The thick branches of the trees  around hampered the light and we hurriedly scrambled to alter the camera settings without much success as we knew it was now or never. A couple of  clicks and the sound emitted by the crumbling of dry leaves under out boots  alerted the bird as it took a low flight into the thick forest area . All we could hear was its piercing  sound and then there was pin drop silence. For all of us from Chandigarh, it was for the first time, we had seen a  nightjar  though Dr Kalsi and Dr Chowdhary  had often seen it many times though not during day time. It is more of a . nocturnal bird. We gave dejected looks at each other as if   we had  missed our golden  opportunity to click the bird that was a delight  and challenge to any bird photographer?  It was so near and yet so far. 

Nightjars are the mystery birds about which little is widely  known except that they sit virtually motionless during daylight hours merging completely with their surroundings . However, they get active when dusk sets in  to feed on insects till dawn, mostly taking their prey in flight, mostly by keeping their mouths open in flight.  To spot them during daylight hours require a great amount of luck. The mystery if remain unresolved leads to myths and superstitions. 

The sound returned and so  our hopes. The bird returned to its original place of hiding.  All of us silently reminded ourselves to remain where we were and wait for the bird to emerge in the open. As our luck would have it, the nightjar flew and perched itself on a branch in the open at the eye level, barely few feet from us, sitting still. The light was perfect. The photo session began and most of us had turned our cameras to continuous mode as all of us wanted to take as many photographs as possible. Later, Dr Janak Chowdhary rightly said, "It was a life time experience to shoot Nightjar at day time , it was sheer luck indeed." The bird flew away and we prudently decided not to chase it any further. It had already obliged us and we need not disturb it any more. Even though it was getting hot, a cup of coffee each from Dr Rajiv Kalsi was very refreshing. Our day was made.

Back to the pavilion with our trophies in the shape of RAW images stored in our cameras, it was time to identify the nightjar specifically. Even though it had a large tail, I thought it was Indian nightjar. Quite a few concurred with me until Dr Gurpratap Singh, a renowned expert on birds opined that his candidate was Large-tailed Nighjar. He said that majority opinion is not always correct. According to him, " the cryptic plumage of  Nighjars renders them unsuitable for straight forward identification."  According to him, nuchal collor, throat-band, tail pattern, width and length of the tail, characteristic markings etc are to be keenly observed for true identification. It is certainly a mystery bird that requires minutest detailing. Biding is not easy thing to do. Every day there are challenges and new learning, a new experience.  Certainly unraveling the mysteries of the feathered creatures is very exciting.  In the  Indian sub-continent , besides the  Indian night jar and the large-tailed nighjars, we have Great eared nightjar, jungle nightjar, grey nightjar, european nightjar, egyptian nightjar, syke's nightjar, jerdon nighjar, andaman nightjar and the savana nightjar. 

Mr Vikramjit Singh a prolific writer on wildlife in his column in Time of India dated April 24, 2017   mentioned that Shivalik range is a haven for nightjars. he wrote, "Ideal spots to photograph and hear their charming calls are the check dams along the Shivaliks such as Perch, MIrzapr and Siswan dams. He was of the view that various nightjars look alike, it is best to identify them from their distinguished calls. 

Well!   Keep your eyes wide open and keep your ears well oiled. There may be  a nighjar  around to be  seen, understood and deciphered. Decoding the nightjar ! 

Why do Cormorants spread their wings?

Have you ever wondered why Cormorants spread their wings wide with a crucifixion-like posture , according of course a delight to watch with enough photography opportunities?

Well ! The most obvious reason of course is to dry their feathers after a swim or dive to catch their prey. However, there are some more explanations, with differing views and observations from experts. Number of theories have been propounded.

These include casting a shadow on the water to have a better vision to spot their next target, have a better balance on land, absorb heat to digest their food by exposing their bellies to the glow of the sun, to signal to other cormorants the availability of food or merely to rejoice their success in catching their target.

However, Dr Robin Sellers, a professional engineer and amateur ornithologist, having observed this posture of birds for years have negated most of these theories concluding that this posture is all about adapting to the wind to dry their feathers.

According to his findings published in published his findings in the journal Ardea, when the wind was up to, or more than, a strong breeze on the Beaufort scale (4 or more), cormorants spent, on average, 2.5 minutes standing like crucifixes. With hardly a flutter in the air (0 to 1 on the scale) they stood with their wings out for nearly five minutes and generally extended them further. The birds also faced the wind - more than half of them orienting within one compass point of its direction when conditions were virtually still, but more than 80 per cent when a good breeze got up. According to him, Cormorants tend to hold their wings out for longer in lower temperatures and when they had been under water for longer. Light rain reduced their fervour and heavy rain put a stop to any spreading at all.

If wing-spreading signalled feeding success, the birds would not do it when diving proved unsuccessful. And the theory of casting a shadow on the water only helps birds that adopt a stand-and-wait strategy - like herons - rather than those that dive as much as 10 metres down in murky water.

Dr Sellers calculated that between 30 and 90 grams of water have to be expelled from a cormorant's plumage after an average dive. It would need up to 222 kilojoules of body heat to evaporate it, an amount that could be sacrificed providing enough fish were caught to make up for the loss.

On the other hand, Dr David Gremillet of Neumunster Zoo in Germany says that wing- spreading may, after all, be a digestive aid. He found that cormorants that feed on cold fish held their wings out, often for 20 minutes and when fed on pre-warmed to cormorant body temperature hardly bothered to make a wing movement. His conclusion is that cormorants expose their bellies to absorb the sun's heat, a warm glow that aids the digestion.

Dr Chris Mead of the British Trust for Ornithology acknowledges that wing-drying and digestion aids may jointly explain the cormorant's striking stance. He says the heating up their food is the most important reason. Why else would cormorants be all black if it wasn't to absorb heat through their plumage?

Whatever may be the reason for their postures, Cormorant diving in the water, catching the fish and spreading their wings wide open with their black glistening bodies are a delight to watch.

The pictures are those of Little Cormorant were clicked in Thapli, Haryana, India during September, 2018