Kingfisher: The Flying Fisherman

Its a hot summer's day and you are sitting on your haunches in the cool shade of the overhanging trees on the river bank, finger on the shutter-release button of your digital camera.

Suddenly, there is a streak of colours - brilliant iridescent turquoise, amber and a little white and then, a faint splash as the Kingfisher dives through the mirror-like surface of the water from his perch overhead.

You go trigger-happy, shooting ‘click, click, click…’ and barely manage to get a couple of shots as the little bird, with fish in beak gleaming silver in the sunshine, breaks out from under the surface into the air taking a steep flight path into the branches above.

You excitedly check the little LCD screen and discover that although the bird did a shallow dive of less than ten inches below the surface, your camera did not capture him underwater due to reflections off the placid surface of the water. If only you had a Polaroid filter over your zoom lens!

But then, how did the kingfisher, perched at a greater distance than you, see his prey under the surface? With polarizing filters over his eyes! Not only that - membranes automatically cover its eyes when it dives underwater. Hey, shutterbug, how’s that for shutter-priority?!

Back on its perch, holding the fish by the tail, it whacks it to the branch to kill it first before swallowing it head first, so that there is no chance of the fish’s fins piercing his gullet while swallowing it and choking to death.

This highly territorial bird defends its fishing grounds from rivals as if its life depended on it - because it does! The kingfisher needs to eat almost two-thirds of its body weight in fish, every day.

The Kingfisher courts the female by displaying his flying skills and finally catching a fish and presenting it to his queen.

The pair then take turns in stabbing at the earth with their bills to make a 3 feet upward-slopping tunnel in the river bank. A nest chamber is made at the end of the tunnel where the female lays about 5-8 little white eggs and starts incubation but is subsequently taken over by the male.

After about 21 days, the naked and blind hatchlings break free. The tubular sheaths holding the adult feathers break open much later. Till then, the little birds look more like prickly hedgehogs.

Kingfishers have a life span of about 20 years. Every year during the breeding season, a pair of them has been coming to nest in a hole in the inner wall of my well, just above the water level. They announce their arrival with their typically shrill calls. They get all the fish they need from the well itself. I guess this is their preferred destination over the highly polluted Daman Ganga River just a stone’s throw away!

Copyright © 2006 Noël Gama

www.noelgama.com

Indian Elephant: The Gentle Giant

Also known as pachyderms, which means "thick skin" these largest of the land-dwelling animals of Asia are well… very sensitive creatures!

Indian or Asian elephants as they are also called, are distinguished from their African counterparts primarily by their smaller pointed ears, which are networked with blood vessels to regulate temperature - by flapping the ears!

Other differences are: a more rounded back; a flat and tall forehead; a fourth toenail on each of their hind feet; shorter tusks which are really modified upper incisor teeth, with those in females being rudimentary; a single finger-like projection at the tip of its long trunk; a grey to brown skin with a small amount of stiff hair; and a tail with a tuft of hair at the tip - for batting away insects!

Elephants forage for food all day, using their long trunks to reach into trees for tearing off leaves and using their tusks for stripping bark.

They drink a lot of water at least once a day by noisily sucking up the water with their trunks and then pouring it into their mouths. Since they don’t have sweat glands, they bathe often to keep themselves cool. No wonder they are such excellent swimmers, sometimes even walking underwater, using their trunks as snorkels!

Asian elephants are very sociable and live in basic family units of one adult cow and her offspring. Daughters remain with their mothers, but sons leave at puberty, often joining bull groups or remaining solitary. These family units live together in herds of up to 40, headed by an elderly female or matriarch who is responsible for the herd’s safety.

Being more easily tamed than their larger African counterparts, they have been used as beasts of burden for centuries. When ill-treated by their mahouts, they have been seen crying in pain and misery.

In danger of extinction in the wild, due to human encroachment upon their natural habitat and poaching for ivory, they have been classified as ‘Endangered’ by the 2000 IUCN Red List at an estimated population of only 28,000 to 42,000 in the wild.

With an excellent memory and capacity to solve practical problems, they are known to have helped not only their own kind but even rescued humans caught in natural disasters like floods especially.

According to a report in The Economist of November 2nd, 2006, when researchers put a jumbo-sized mirror before three Indian elephants, they tried to look behind the glass! Then, all three appeared to inspect their mouths, and took to moving their food so they could watch themselves eating. One of the elephants even used her reflection to repeatedly touch a mark on her head with her trunk.

That’s no mumbo-jumbo!

Copyright © 2006 Noël Gama