Hard to believe it’s been almost
a year since I’ve written! Past year was quite hectic but I should have
continued writing. Sorry folks, for the long gap. I will now be a regular,
hopefully! Starting with a bit of a news – I have now moved back to Ahmedabad,
and loving it! :)
The past year with The Gerry Martin Project was great with a lot of interesting field experiences. I will be
mentioning them in the coming articles. Hope you’d look forward to that!
Now back at home, I was remembering
the days when we had freshly moved in. This was, I think in 1996. There was
just one mud road from Jodhpur village (1 and a half kilometer away, via a
crematorium!) and one trail through the fields coming from Vejalpur railway
crossing (almost a kilometer away). These were the only access routes to our
house. You could see our house from the railway crossing and the houses at
Shyamal cross roads from our terrace. 360 degrees of lush green fields and a
lot of native trees. Snakes, monitors, scorpions were regular visitors in our
backyard. Toads, frogs, centipedes, geckos, and small birds used to live here.
Some very smart toads used to live in our bathroom, under the kitchen sink, in
flower pots, my shoes, and in my dog’s water bowl!
The 2 Salvadora persica (“Piludi” in Gujarati) in front of our house
accommodated so many house sparrows, doves and a lot of bush birds. A Shikra
trying to catch its favorite prey – a Calotes
versicolor (Common garden lizard) was not an uncommon sight. I used to sip
my morning chocolate milk looking at the male peafowls with their impressive
long tail feathers and females teaching their chicks to probe the earth for
insects.
2012 – Almost all is gone!
Gone where? And why?
Welcome to wildlife displacement!
Pushing them out of their habitats – in other words. Guess who’s the cause? Us,
ALL of us! I proudly mention how there were so many animals before all these
people moved in and ‘developed’ this part of the city. But hey, they did
exactly what we did! We encroached in 1996, others followed later.
We have stopped living a simple
life several decades ago. ‘Survival’ can no longer be used in to describe our
(city dwellers) life struggles. Our life now is comfort and luxury oriented. We
started moving in with all our ‘needs’. Electricity, roads, vehicles, concrete,
pollution, malls… everything! We can’t freakin’ live without everything.
My backyard was my favorite
herping hotspot. Want to see something rare? …just go out a kilometer in the
fields! You can’t even walk there safely now without getting run over by a
million cars, ..okay, a few hundred cars! But then, what will you go out
looking for? Buildings, rash traffic (typical Ahmedabad style), noise, what else? …dogs, feral dogs, a few hundred of them. Not exaggerating. I don’t hate dogs.
Folks who know me would know. But, I would hate the incident of feral dogs
attacking any wildlife. Be it ground nesting birds or large birds like peafowls,
small, or even large mammals cannot match a pack of feral dogs. During my
professional days as a wildlife rehabilitator we used to get around 200
peafowls every year. Guess what happened to most?? Yes… feral dog attacks.
Reports of feral dogs taking down large antelopes and deer are not unheard of. They
have outcompeted jackals, wolves, and many small predators in several places.
 |
| "Motu" - our adopted feral dog. She came in as a pup, now 8 years old. It's amazing how they always win their right to stay in your life. |
Cats, what about cats? Must
clarify, I’m talking about feral cats. Tremendously sustained populations have
wiped off loads of small wildlife. I’m not gonna stretch more on this. There is
tons of info on the internet. Please exploit google. Again, I do not hate cats.
We’ve created these feral cats and dogs. It is our responsibility to control
them and not allow them to ruin what exist naturally.
My backyard looked empty after
just 4 cats moved in some 10 years ago. Squirrels often turn in to pests simply
because they are so adaptive. I did not see a single squirrel for like two
years. TWO YEARS! That’s when me and Akanksha decided to get our much loved
animals back. We planted many more trees, put up a lot of nest boxes, water
bowls, feeding stations and cat proofed them. Re-introduction of squirrels was
a great success as there is a sustaining population now in the neighborhood. We
had practically hand-raised the parent stock when they came in as orphans to
us. Some of the birds are also doing well. Lots of them come to roost in the
hot afternoons. We’ve also managed to raise our gecko population. Our backyard
garden comes alive with at least 15 species of birds. I feel happy, and sad.
They come to us, but then ours is their only resort!
Left to right - Magpie robin nesting in our nest boxes and a pregnant squirrel eating at our feeding station.
I often wonder how these birds
will sustain future populations. One small green patch cannot support all of
them forever and nothing else is turning greener anymore. Will they meet the
same fate of frogs and toads? There used to be a biggish pond right in front of
our house where Bull frogs and Common toads used to congregate in hundreds
during breeding seasons. Evening rains only stopped to the calling of these
very loud and impressive males. Freshly metamorphosed, the tiny ones always
kept us on our toes (literally!) as they were all over. Amazing food source for
so many other predators. Half of the same pond got filled up in 2003 and residential
buildings came, rest got filled up in 2007. I’m yet to see a frog or a toad
since then.
 |
| Common Indian toads in amplexus. As a kid I got in to the habit of checking my shoes before wearing only because of a fat female toad at home. |
The amphibians were not the
only victims, there used to be a small scrub patch that was used by a family of
Indian brown mongoose. I’ve seen so many litters grow up. The scrub patch was
bought by BSNL, and a wall now envelops the new mobile-phone tower. Fortunately,
for some structural reason, they kept a lot of ground level windows on the
pond-side wall. The mongooses had their burrows in the compound but had free
access to the pond. Sadly, the pond itself was already covered-up with
buildings from all sides.
 |
| The pond used to be the open area that you can see plus the building area that you see at the back. The tar road in the front used to be a small mud path. The compound wall with windows on the right is where the mongoose colony was. |
Now, the last two mongooses
are barely surviving in the compound, raiding garbage thrown in the now
filled-up pond. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for all animals that used to
thrive here before people started encroaching mindlessly. Whom am I blaming... I
started it!
