Pleasure trip to Vagamon

 

Today is 9 May 2021. The Coronavirus pandemic that started last year is still raging and we have not been able to travel at all. I have been looking at pictures taken in happier days. These come from a trip in May 2017.

Pleasure trip to Vagamon

Hero Pleasure is not the two-wheeler that you want when you want to explore the hills of the Western Ghats in the monsoon. But, my parents had it. So, from the couple of weeks we had in Kerala to visit my parents, Swati and I decided to explore the hills nearby a little bit. This was the month of May, and while most parts of India were still reeling in the summer sun, pre-monsoon showers had already hit Kerala. We never say no to monsoon travels. So one morning at 6 am, we took my father’s scooter, put on our raincoats, and hit the road. In about an hour, we started climbing up the winding hill roads after Erattupetta.

The Meenachil river and its tributaries as seen on the way to Vagamon from Kottayam.

Vagamon is a mini hill station (about 1000 m above sea level) in Idukki District of Kerala, towards the western edges of the Western Ghats. Over the last two decades, it has become a popular destination for local tourists, and film makers, attracted largely by the extensive grass covered hill tops. Due to this surge in irresponsible tourism, over the last several years, the region has also been at the centre of several land grabbing controversies: resorts, plantation people, developers, everybody wants a piece of the pie. 

The road from Erattupetta to Vagamon is rather scenic: winding hill road passing through plantations of arecanut, and rubber, giving way to cardamom as one goes up, and beautiful views of the low lands every now and then. Wherever there is a view of the valley below, there will be a bunch of tiny shops selling snacks and refreshments. While I hate the plastic waste that is carelessly thrown around these, a cup of hot tea from one of the small tea shops is always welcome during the cold wet ride up the hills. 

The beautiful red flash of a flowering gulmohar (Delonix regia) and the eyesore red of Vagamon Tourist Home. These sign boards destroy the natural scenery of Kerala.

 

Wherever there is a view to be had, small shops come up. With that comes construction. And then...

 

The hill road going up Vagamon, with plains of coastal Kerala visible in the far background.

Thus we rode up the hill, had tea and snacks in one of those small roadside shop, and hoped for less traffic on the road since it was a weekday. I had been to these hill tops many times since I was a kid. But the last time I had visited was way back in 2006, right after my masters degree, when I was walking around these hills in monsoon looking herpetofauna. I have vivid memories of those walks: the cold, the rain, the porotta and beef fry in a roadside shop, the lightning that struck an electricity pole just a few meters in front of me, producing a vertical column of fire and reminding me to never walk barren hilltops during a thunderstorm! Fortunately, there was no thunderstorm this morning, only a light drizzle which was quite enjoyable. It  also kept most people away.
 

I am not sure about the origin of the grasslands on hill tops: are they a result of deforestation in the past or some sort of climax vegetation?

Once we reached the plateau, the green hills stretched as far as we could see. Green hills covered in fresh grass from early rains, the folds between them covered in a deeper green of forest trees, each often having a small stream passing through it. Miniature shola forests perhaps! Many of these hills are popular tourist destinations: some even allow four-wheelers to go up the hill, trampling everything in the way. We parked the scooter in secluded places, and went up some of these hills. There were many birds flitting among the trees and in the grassland. But the mist and rain made them somewhat difficult to see. But that was not going stop Swatiji. You can take a birder out for herping, but you can't take birding out of her!

Making bird checklists even on rainy days.

Since the weather was so pleasant (for us), we decided go further as far as the little 110cc scooter could take us. So we drove down the southward road going to Peerumedu for a few kilometers, stopping wherever we liked or whenever the rain forced us to stop. The landscape along this route is a mixture of grassy hills, small townships, and tea plantations. 

 

Can you see the two little heads?

Still, we saw many birds, including a few painted bush quails. There were a few Malabar giant squirrels in forest patches. At one place while out looking for bushquails, we saw a barking deer! The less pleasant sightings included so many road-killed snakes: at least three species of shield-tailed snakes, a couple of striped coral snakes, vine snakes,cat snakes, and Beddome's keelbacks. Frogs were too smushed down to be identified.

A surprised barking deer/muntjack

As the day got older, the sky got darker, and we decided to turn back. As we rode back and down the hills, I had to stop at a few locations checkout some frogs. I had seen some leaping frogs (Indirana sp.) and heard some night frogs (Nyctibatrachus) calling from roadside locations during another trip a couple of weeks ago. First stop was a little water fall on the roadside, quite close to one of the popular view points. We could hear the musical notes of a small night frog coming from somewhere near the waterfall. By then it had started raining. Under an umbrella, and in our raincoats, we scanned the rocks for minutes, until we could pin point one of them. A small, dark frog, sitting flat against the vertical wet rock face under a curtain of falling water. As we got closer, we could see that it was not all dark, but finely spotted with yellow. His throat was periodically ballooning out sideways as he let out his musical 'peew, peew, peeeeew....'. And then, there were two, then three... and there were many more of them all across the rock face, sitting in secluded spots and calling for a female. These were Deven's Night Frogs (Nyctibatrachus deveni). Crouching under an umbrella, we managed to take some photos of these, while several vehicles slowed down to check what we were up to!

A little roadside waterfall. Deven's Night Frogs were calling from the vertical rock face, close to clumps of grass and moss. While the water was falling from more than 20-30 m above, this was probably not a perennial stream. So what happens to all the frogs in the dry season?

A brightly coloured crab also made its home among the wet rock and vegetation.

Deven's night frogs (Nyctibatrachus deveni) are small and blend well onto the wet rocks they inhabit.

The closer you get, the more you get to see the intricate patterns on the wrinkled body of this frog.

 

Sunset was fast approaching, and we had to head down the hill (though part of me wanted to continue exploring the hills at night). On the way down, we stopped at another spot, were I had seen a small depression in a rock earlier, filled with water and tadpoles of Brown Leaping Frogs (Indirana semipalmata). By now, the tadpoles had climbed out of the water and in typical Indirana style, they were hopping all over the wet rock face. A little further down, I located another frog calling: a male still calling for mates. He was sitting at the edge of large patch of moss on a rock. As we were photographing him, we noticed little shining orbs spread all around him. Hundreds of eggs on the rock face, perhaps laid by several female frogs. Was he guarding those eggs? I don't know. But he was still calling for more females, and sure enough, we found some frogs slowly moving towards him. Since we had to get back before it got too late, we did not wait around to see what happened. But before we hit the plains, we got one last critter: a few Anamalai Ramanella/balloon frogs (Uperodon anamalaiensis) calling from a small roadside pool. This species was supposedly lost to science for over a century, though they seem to be very common. I guess science really wasn't paying attention.

Bright little orbs spread on a rock. This species of Leaping Frog seems to have specialized to lay eggs on such wet rock faces. This was a place surrounded by rubber plantations and on the side of a road where thousands of vehicles pass every day.

 

Brown leaping frog (Indirana semipalmata), male with eggs.

Ending the day on a loud note. These Anamalai Ramanella (Uperodon anamalaiensis) have an extremely load call.

The ride back was quite pleasant. The rain had stopped, and the road was rather empty. By 9 pm, we were back at my mother's table, ready for dinner. Not a bad day. Hope to travel like that again soon.

"The night is dark and full of terrors."

That was what Melisandre said, and it is true, especially if you are a tiny little lizard living in a dark, dense, rain forest. The terrors of the night come in many forms - giant centipedes with strong jaws and potent venom, giant geckos weighing ten times your body weight and capable of crunching your skull with a single bite, heat-seeking pit vipers that climb slowly up a branch, cat snakes with sharp night vision and the ability to track you down from smell alone even in pitch dark, owlets waiting for the slightest movement to pounce on you from above.

A large (~ 25-30 cm long) centipede in Long Island making a meal of an unfortunate bent-toed gecko. These centipedes are voracious predators.  This species is known to cause severe bites and reaches a maximum length of 33 cm (that's 7 cm longer than the Guinness Record holding species from South America)

When giant centipedes such as the one shown above can make short work of you, you have to be alert even while sleeping. Bay Island forest lizards almost always sleep facing the main stem of the plant - may be they can spot approaching danger better in this position.

 When you are a small (7-8 g) agamid lizard in a rain forest, pretty much anything larger than you is danger. Bay Island forest lizards have excellent day light vision. Their typical hunting strategy is to sit on a tree trunk or twig all day long, watching the forest floor for any sign of movement of an insect. The moment they spot one, the lizard sprints at the insect and grabs it. I once saw a Bay Island forest lizard jump from a tree trunk to catch a little wasp that was sitting on a leaf of a neighbouring plant, which he did in mid jump. Their alertness and visual capabilities allow them to escape predators during the day. Once, in Long Island (a small Island close to Middle Andaman, not New York), I came across one of these little guys running from a green bronzeback (Dendrelaphis andamanensis). Both parties ran across the road, probably without noticing me, but as soon as the snake saw me, it abandoned the chase. We have no idea how good their vision is at night, but many terrestrial animals with excellent day light vision do not have good night vision, and this seems to be the case with Bay Island forest lizards too. As soon as night falls, these lizards climb up to their favourite nighttime perch, a delicate branch or leaf, and settle in.

A long, thin Andaman cat snake, capable of climbing up the thinnest branches. Cat snakes have large eyes giving them good night vision, but it is the forked tongue that smells down stationary prey. Slight vibrations from its movement may be the only clue about approaching danger for the lizards.

Andaman scops-owl, a potential nocturnal predator

 In our recently published study, we explored this behaviour in two sympatric species, the Bay Island forest lizard and the short-tailed forest lizard, in the Andaman Islands. These two species take sympatry to extremes: one can often see both species sitting side-by-side on the same tree trunk. When it was time to sleep, both species seemed to prefer similar looking perches: a horizontal leaf or delicate branch, making us wonder why! We also thought that since the two species are very similar, there might be some sort of niche partitioning, perhaps sleeping microhabitat. We found that the larger the lizard, the higher its sleeping perch tended to be. The larger of the two species, Bay Island forest lizard (Coryphophylax subcristatus), tended to sleep on higher and outward branches of plants. Other than that, surprisingly, the two species did not seem to differ in their choice of sleeping sites and there seemed to be little evidence for these two species competing for sleeping perches. Even more surprising was that most of the lizards (74% C. subcristatus and 90.98% C. brevicaudus) slept with their head pointed towards the main body of the plant, and almost always on a delicate, unstable, horizontal perches. This was in sharp contrast to their diurnal behaviour: most of the time, one would find these lizards perched vertically on a tree trunk. Could this selection of sleeping perch and position be because they are better able to detect a snake or a centipede approaching from the same plant? 

However, this opens up another question: do these exposed perches make them easy targets for nocturnal raptors? We do not have any clear answers for this question. One possibility is that owlets and owls, which use primarily visual and auditory clues, may have a harder time detecting sleeping lizards as long as the lizards do not move. This would mean that most predation at night comes from predators such as snakes, centipedes, shrews, etc that can detect a sleeping lizard based on smell alone. If this is indeed the case, sleeping on exposed, unstable, branches or leaves, away from other vegetation is a good choice.

This behaviour of sleeping on thin, isolated branches and leaves is not restricted to Bay Island forest lizards. Elsewhere, I have seen other diurnal agamids such as long-tailed agamas (Bronchocela sp.), Oriental garden lizards (Calotes versicolor), blue-throated lizards (Ptyctolaemus gularis) doing the same. In most cases, they sleep with their head oriented towards the plant and tail hanging out from the distal end of the branch or leaf. On the other side of the world, there are studies on Anolis lizards exhibiting near identical behaviour, perhaps a case of convergent evolution of behavioural strategies as a response to similar selection pressures.

Girl on top: a female Coryphophylax in the Nicobar Islands decided to sleep with her hind-quarters on a male's head.

So, have we answered all questions? Do we really know why they do the things they do? Nope, we haven't even scratched the surface yet.

Flaming red tail

 

A juvenile Dussumier's litter skink I photographed in 2009.

 

"Arana" (Malayalam for skink) was one of the very first reptiles I identified around my house. In most other parts of peninsular India,  a common skink would most probably  be a Brahminy skink (Eutropis carinata), a much larger and less colourful species. But for me as a kid, the vernacular name Arana always referred to a small skink with bright orange-red tail.

Scientifically called Sphenomorphus dussumieri (Dussumier's litter skink), they were common around my house, giving me ample opportunities to observe them. They are alert, but curious little creatures. They would often come to investigate if some one was doing something in the yard, like  watering the plants. My brother once even managed to feed them cooked rice!

The days have been somewhat hot and dry. I have been seeing one of these small skinks living among the flower pots in our tiny garden. Today morning, I decided to try to get some photos of that one. As I was photographing, I noticed that it was sucking the sap out of a broken branch of a small Elephant's ear plant (Colocasia sp.). It kept on sucking for about half a minute before getting out of the hot sun. I've seen them drinking water eagerly from leaves after I water the plants in the evening during summer months, but this is the first time that I saw one drinking the sap from a plant.

Dussumier's litter skink after drinking sap from the plant. I couldn't capture it in the act, as by the time I got the camera, it was done drinking.

Travel Diaries: Munnar, January 2016

Munnar is a place close to my heart, having spent a year there as a 10 year old. That was a long time ago, and things have changed much, both in my life and for the place. I have visited the area every few years, and each time witnessed the ‘development’ of human greed slowly defacing the landscape. Still, the place has a charm and that’s why we decided to meet our friend there and go birding.

 

Kerala laughing thrush at Eravikulam National Park. These birds were near the information center
and showed no fear of people.

 

When we visited the place last year, we stayed at a homestay in ‘2^nd mile’ (places in the hills are often named like this) called “Estate Residency”. We liked this place because it was relatively cheap (by hill station standards), was away from the town, and most importantly offered birding and herping opportunities within their own cardamom plantation as well as the stretch of road going towards Adimali.

Here are some photos from the trip.

Morning view from our just outside our homestay.

Silk Cotton tree in the light of the setting sun. This tree close to Karadippara was in full bloom.

Although it looks like the canopy of a rain forest, these are mostly cardamom plantations. Cardamom being a shade loving plant, requires a dense canopy and rainforest tree species are allowed to grow in these plantations.

In a cardamom plantation. This plantation is owned by the same person who runs the homestay
and this is a fairly good area for birding. We saw more than fifty species in the plantation itself.

A scimitar babbler  in cardamom plantation, trying to hide from us.

Waterfall near Njamakkaadu junction

Shola forests and grasslands of Eravikulam National Park.

Eravikulam National Park, at least within the tourism zone at Rajamala, is characterized by steep
rocky slopes, shola forests, and grasslands. At lower elevations outside the park boundaries, the
land is covered in tea, coffee, and Eucalyptus plantations as well as human settlements.

A Black Eagle soaring above the shola grasslands of Eravikulam National Park.

The star of Eravikulam National Park, a Nilgiri Tahr quenching thirst. This is one of the few
places on earth where this highly endangered mountain goats can be seen at close quarters.

Eravikulam National Park gets thousands of visitors every day during the holiday season.
Still, the park managers seem to have done a good job of reducing the disturbances by tourists.
There were watchers everywhere keeping a close eye on the activities of visitors, in particular
making sure that they walk only on the road.

A Malabar Giant Squirrel nibbling on a fruit.

Nilgiri Blue Flycatcher. This particular individual was one of the most camera happy birds that I have seen.

A baby Elliot's Forest Lizard. We saw a few of these guys in vegetation along the side of
roads passing through cardamom plantations in Munnar.

One more morning of mist before leaving Munnar.

Backyard hunter

Yesterday began as just another day. Woke up late, sat staring at social media for a couple of hours, had many cups of tea, watched the rain and then it was afternoon. Just when I thought that may be I should say hello to all the pending work, I hear the words, "pambu, pambu!" Jumped out of my chair and ran out, and there it was, a rather long and thick rat snake slowly crawling along the wall separating our compound from the neighbours. Big rat snake! No need to catch it, but I should get a photo, I thought. I moved back slowly without alarming the snake till I was inside the door, then ran in to my room to get my camera.

I have just two cheap lenses, an 18-55 mm and a 55-250 mm. I needed the 55-250 to get pictures without troubling the snake, and damn! The lens fitted to the camera was 18-55 mm and with a cheap extension tube that I used for photographing a little frog last night. Get it off fast, I thought, but the only the lens came off, leaving the extension tube still attached to the camera body! Try as I might, it wouldn't come off. I try with my hands, I try with a handkerchief, with my t-shirt...damn you stupid tubes! Finally the extension tube decided to leave the camera behind. I ran out after fitting the next lens fast, but the snake was nowhere to be seen. 

Just as I turned back, my father standing near the door points out the snake, which had climbed up the wall and was peeking out at me from the shade of garden plants. I could only manage a couple of shots of its head, before it decided that I was not worth its time, jumped to the other side and  vanished. How do they do that? They are like Ninjas!

Rat snake (Ptyas mucosa). The common name is slightly misleading as this species loves to eat
frogs, may be even more than rats.

A few minutes later, I was sitting inside looking at the photos I had taken, and I heard those words again, but in combination with the word "thavala". There it was again, this time chasing a bull frog across our yard. They went around the house, I ran back in to get the camera again. By the time I got back to them, two were becoming one, and not in a good way. The snake had the frog pinned to a corner, and was already swallowing the still squeaking prey. It was difficult to get a shot given the way its body was coiled up, but I managed one shot without creating much disturbance to the snake. It finished the meal in about three minutes, and very wisely decided to crawl in to a bandicoot hole in that corner. The last I saw of it was the beautiful yellow tail, criss-crossed with a network of black lines, slowly disappearing in to the hole.

The snake made a quick, yet bloody, work of the bull frog.

Fairly good day for me and the snake, worst day ever for that frog.