Wildbuzz: Where angels don’t fear to tread

Angels of the free air made best use of a historic moment. As VIPs, scientists and mediapersons waited patiently for eight critically-endangered vultures to take freedom’s flight from their aviary and sample a fresh goat carcass placed outside the open door near Pinjore on Thursday, a bevy of butterflies descended on the glistening meat. They were accompanied by black, crawling insects. Neither the vultures in the aviary or the wild ones circling overhead came down to the mutton due to the heavy human presence, so Common Mormon butterflies had a field day picking salts and minerals from mutton, some of which will be passed to females to facilitate reproduction.

Butterflies indulge in mud-puddling – the generic term for salt/mineral collection – at what may seem to the human eye as the oddest of locales. Some butterflies pick nutrients from dead, rotting snakes. Others alight on sweaty socks of scientists engaged in field work and no doubt find a larder of exited salts to forage upon. Elephant dung is a favoured spot.

Besides nuptial chores relating to sodium and salts collection, butterflies nurture a weakness for sweet, sugary liquids and fermenting fruits. This writer has experienced an Anomalous Nawab butterfly merrily sip beer from a glass in the outdoors due to its sugar content. But what takes the cake is “rum pudding”. Pioneering vulture scientist and keen naturalist Dr Vibhu Prakash recounts that one of the best baits for virtually all the butterflies prevalent in the area is to place rotten bananas fermented with rum for 24 hours in the open! Yummy!

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

Gliding squirrels constitute an obscure group of mammals dwelling in the towering canopy and stealing out of tree hollows at night. Most photographs of these endearing creatures, which can achieve Batman-like nocturnal glides of 180 to 200 m between tree tops by opening their skin flaps, are of them still on branches and framed in a flashlight beam. An exceptional photograph of an Indian Giant Gliding squirrel captured in aerial locomotion that bestows them their common names was not by a wildlife scientist but by a software quality control techie from Surat, Gujarat, Keyur Chaudhari, who took departure from popular day safaris and ventured into forests draped in the velvet of the night.

The challenge of securing such a photograph was underscored by squirrel scientist and field researcher, assistant professor Murali Krishna Chatakonda, who told this writer: “To get a picture of a squirrel actually gliding, one has to be in a forest with an open canopy. It takes just a few seconds for the squirrel to glide from one tree to another. So, in that limited window, a photographer with quality equipment and patience will have to spend the night for a good picture. Squirrels glide from one tree to another for feeding, when males clash for territory, breeding season, to avoid predators, energy saving etc.”

Chaudhari’s picture of a squirrel at the Ratanmahal sanctuary, Gujarat, transiting between Mahua tree tops 50 feet apart drew praise from Chatakonda, who described it as an “amazing capture”. The picture resulted from a familial collaboration between Chaudhari and his father, Arvindbhai, who assisted by beaming a flashlight on squirrels gliding.

The glide is a crowning moment of the mysterious night but lost in the din of humanity’s snores and narcissistic dreams. Thanks to an intrepid photographer, it now winks like a star and sparkles like a rare diamond in the expansive museum of natural history, curated online as a treasure trove of digitised wildlife images enjoying an ease of public access.

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