|
Line Transect Survey for Estimating Large Mammal Density, Nagarahole National Park - April 16-23, 2005 This is the second transect survey I am participating. Transect surveys get you real close to wildlife and one gets a chance to walk and experience the deepest of the national parks, the densest of our moist deciduous forests, and see what we cannot see as a tourist. It is to be in heaven to walk those dew-drenched, mist covered jungles in the early morning as the jungle folk awake to the new day and the noctural beasts retire for a hot day ahead. It is heaven to be there, to experience all that nature, in its wild best, has to offer. If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here. Frequently one bumps into a solitary tusker or a lone bull gaur, grazing silently amidst the lantana and tall grass. It is unbelievable how they can move through the bushes so silently, despite their size and weight. They don't always charge at seeing two men walking towards them, but they do occasionally, and in those situations one just runs back or climbs a tree to safety. There was a beautiful young leopard, golden yellow coloured with black rosettes, one day on the transect. Another day you find the nest of fulvettas. You flush a small bird, only to find that it is a oriental scops owl. Then you flush a pair of nightjars, so well camouflaged that you don't see them until they fly from under your feet. A tusker blocking your line one evening, detours to avoid herds of elephants, wild dogs at kill one morning. One man had a hissing Russel's Viper near his leg, another had to climb a tree to avoid a charging tusker, many saw a tigress with her two small cubs and on another occasion a tigress with her two grown up cubs was seen resting at a waterhole. The jungle is full of surprises, and every corner there is something hidden. It is a place where a thousand secrets are hidden, and you are let known a few of them, one by one. Chital fawns that run amok, beautiful chital does, rutting males, 6-7 feet tall Sambars that will put any long or high jumper to shame, solitary tuskers whose lonely lives and roamings inside the jungle is a great secret, gentle herds of giants, lone bull gaurs and sometimes huge herds of gaurs, wild dogs, albino chital, leopards and tigers, foraging Muntjacs, Stripe Necked Mongoose. Nagarahole is truly an Indian jungle that we can all be proud of. Some birds I remember seeing include
Put together, the mammal sightings include Tiger, Leopard, Dhole, Sloth Bear, Stripe Necked Mongoose, Chital, Sambar, Gaur, Elephant, Pig, Jungle Cat, Muntjac, Four Horned Antelope, Giant Squirrel, Common Langur, Bonnet Macaque. Reptiles- Russels Viper, Common Cobra and Monitor Lizard. And as always, a thousand others went unseen. Very gladly I can spend a lifetime here, in these jungles and amidst the wildlife that I love, admire and cherish.
But there is a different world calling- a life amidst a million humans and smoke spewing machines, that I am bound to.
From which I only dream of breaking free. I left Nagarahole on 23rd for Bangalore, but only with a promise to
the angel of the jungle that I will be back, surely, into her laps again, someday.
But I surely tell you, if you do not experience that world, where the ground is still wet with dew, where your steps are cushioned by the greenest of grass, that nature's garden livened by the songs of a multitude of birds through the day, where the Hawk Cuckoo pours out its song from the topmost of branches, where you will see tigers, leopards, deer and elephant living in peace and harmony, YOU WILL MISS SOMETHING OF LIFE. Here, the law of the jungle prevails. The law that is much older and infinitely better than all man made laws, the law that lets every living being live its life to the fullest. |
