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Spotted deer – aka “axis deer” or “chital” – are India’s emblematic deer; Axis axis is also India’s most widespread, most commonly-encountered deer species.
The local common name’s resemblance to “cheetah” is no coincidence; both names refer to the animal’s spotted coat.
Cheetahs were hunted to extinction in India; if current attempts to reintroduce them prove successful, cheetahs will resume their former place in the chital’s long list of predators.
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With the possible exception of fellow humans, Grey Langurs (aka “Hanuman Langurs” or “Hanuman monkeys”) are the primates you will encounter most often when in or near to any wooded terrain in south India.
Primarily herbivorous, but not exclusively so, Grey Langurs are highly social, very agile – equally so on the ground, and high above it – and are almost always “up to something”.
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Circa 200 species of dragonfly and damselfly have been recorded in and around south India’s wetlands.
Some of them are permanently resident, but one dragonfly species is very probably the insect world’s greatest traveller.
Pantala flavescens – commonly/appropriately known as “the globe skimmer”, or “wandering glider” – undertakes nonstop, ocean-crossing flights to-from India and Africa.
Evidence is mounting that this species’ population (which exists on every continent, bar Antarctica) ought be considered as not merely “widespread”, but as a single, “global” population.
Discover its amazing, still-evolving story here.
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On any day in well-wooded parts of southern India you can reasonably expect to see kingfishers, more than once.
They do not only eat fish.
Accordingly, trees overlooking ponds, lakes and rivers are not their only favoured places.
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Today’s post is the first of several to feature a species that any wildlife-seeking visitor to south India’s Western Ghats can reasonably expect to see, easily – probably, often.
Bonnet macacques are endemic to this region.
Until last year these very sociable forest-dwellers enjoyed a “least concern” conservation status.
Their numbers are currently declining, and in 2022 the IUCN reclassified their status as “vulnerable”.
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Not all of India’s spectacular/audacious/dangerous mountain roads are Himalayan.
There are several “jaw-droppers” that grant relatively easy road access to “hill stations” in the Western Ghats.
The photo was taken from circa one third of the way up the road to Valparai, in Tamil Nadu.
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Coonoor (in Tamil Nadu’s northwest) is the second largest town in the Nilgiri Hills, which are part of India’s Western Ghats.
At 1,850 metres – more than 6,000 feet – this attractive town sits at a higher altitude than does any Australian settlement, ski villages included.
Coonoor was the one Western Ghats location where we stayed “in town”, I took the photo from the road in front of our hotel at 6.59 am on 02 March 2023.
Can you notice anything “dead wrong”, environmentally speaking?
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Just one week ago we were enjoying our final early morning safari in Karnataka’s Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, before a long drive to Bengalaru (formerly Bangalore) and our longer-again, two-flights journey home.
To an Australian visitor, what you can see above is an utterly amazing, very “exotic” sight.
To a local person who is very familiar with this national park, it is a perfectly ordinary circumstance.
Such an “amazing”/“commonplace” duality is a tag that applies to a great many things in India…and Australia too.
(try to imagine how “utterly unlikely” an emu, a galah, a kangaroo, or a blooming kangaroo paw must look to someone who has never before encountered any of them)
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You are looking at a member of the genus Trichosanthes, blooming in one of south India’s Sholas – high altitude forests which “punctuate” cooler, wetter parts of the Western Ghats.
Circa 2000 metres above sea level, this vine was discreetly thriving in a very small, very special national park.
Eventually, Kerala’s Pampadum Shola National Park will have its own multi-image post.
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Delightfully perky as is its “post-punk” crest, an adult male Indian flycatcher’s signature feature is the prodigious length of its “tail”/tail feathers.
Evidence suggests that here, size does matter: apparently, individuals with longer tail feathers enjoy greater breeding success.
Generally, extravagant tail feathers are a feature of promiscuous species, but the usually-monogamous Indian paradise flycatcher is a spectacular exception to this “rule”.
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