In search of harriers in the grasslands of Tirunelveli

In search of harriers in the grasslands of Tirunelveli

                                                                  -Thalavai Pandi S

Montagu's Harrier (Male), PC-Thalavai pandi

Many people not familiar with grasslands consider them as wastelands. Grasslands attract lots of unique bird species and one of them is Harriers. Harriers are migratory birds of prey(raptor) which comes from Central Asia to India in winter. There are sixteen species of harriers in the world of which six species regularly visit India. Harrier preys on small rodents, birds, lizards, and grasshoppers.

Montagu's Harrier (Female)

Our team  Ganesh (TG sir), Saravanan, Tamilazhagan (Chian) planned a trip to watch harriers for four days and started our journey by the afternoon of 1st day after finishing lunch at ChettyKadai. After lunch, we packed some snacks and fruits to control our hunger during the fieldwork. Then we started to move from the Kallidai to Tharuvai near Tirunelveli which is one of our field sites. We waited there for more than an hour to check for foraging harriers. Other than harriers there were many birds; Indian Roller, Blue-tailed bee-eater, Black Drongo were sitting on the fence and at the same time nearly thousands of larks mostly Greater Short-toed Lark flew from the grass and landed on the sand patch in the middle of the mud road. They were having a sand bath to remove small insects like ticks on from its body.

Greater short-toed lark

lark flying

There were also good number of butterflies like Tawny Coster, Danaid Eggfly, Blue Pansy, Yellow Pansy, Small Grass Yellow, Mottled Emigrant, Indian Skipper, etc and this is the best season for all the insect to start their life cycle so there was good number of caterpillars of butterflies and moths and the larks were eagerly flying catching the caterpillars and others insects. As we were observing these birds and insects, suddenly our eyes caught a male Montagu’s Harrier fly in the distance.

Then we started to move from this place to reach the destination point but before that near the bypass bridge, we had tea and Bajji. Finally, we reached our destination point near Moolaikarai Patti We settled ourselves to watch the roost harriers but instead we saw lots of Brahminy kites because of a new pig farm nearby. The farm provides the broiler chicken waste as food to the pigs, the Brahminy kites fly regularly in this place feeding on the chicken waste and harassing the harriers. There is a lot of encroachment and disturbance to this beautiful grassland. Few harriers that came to roost but unfortunately, the Brahminy kites keep disturbing them. We saw a moth from Noctuidae family breeding. Then while on our way to dinner saw the Saw-scaled Viper on the path of our vehicle went and a Yellow wattled lapwing took off from the path.

Saw-scaled viper

Brahmini Kite (Dead)

We finished our dinner and came to our room other than Saravanan all three of us went to sleep on the terrace of the building because of chill TG sir and chyan came down to sleep by 2 am. The next day we started with bird count. My transect point ended at a tank where I saw a few waterbirds like Painted Stork, Spoonbill, Spot-billed duck, Comb duck, and some egrets. Once the bird transect was finished we started to search for regurgitated pellets of harriers, unfortunately, I did not get any pellets but TG sir and Saravanan collected few pellets. We also saw one dead Brahmini kite which was tied with strong thread to a small strong plant. I don't know the reason why it was tied like this. May be to catch a fox?

We finished our breakfast at the Suprabatham hotel and moved to search for harriers. We went to a place close to a real estate area called Allwin City which had good grasslands. We were soon welcomed by a female Montagu's Harrier it was seen foraging and soon caught a grasshopper. I went closer to this Harrier and found one regurgitated pellet with the eggs and scales of lizard it could be Fan-throated Lizard because this is the breeding season of this lizard and I saw few of the gravid lizards. Then we moved from this place to a distance grass patch where we saw a male Montague's Harrier fly from the grass and sat on the pole and gave good pose for me who was handling a big telephoto lens for the first time. It sat for a long time preening its feathers. Later after I had taken several shots of the harrier we saw nearly 30 Chestnut-bellied sandgrouse and again one of the sandgrouse gave a very good pose. We crossed several wetlands but one near Singikulam had a good number of wetland birds. On the third day I counted Harriers at Koonthankulam there was a lot of disturbance by the dogs. I counted a total of eight harriers roosted in this place.

Chestnut-bellied sandgrouse

Bar-headed goose

The next day we saw Bar-headed Goose on the grassland and as we started our bird transect at Shivanthipatti reed grasslands. In this place, most of the land was fenced and we could not do our bird transect properly but I saw a female Pallid Harrier. Apart from birds I also saw many butterflies on the castor plant which was feeding on nectar. Caterpillar of Joker butterfly was noticed on Tragia sp plant while small Grass Yellow was laying eggs on its host plant. We finished transect, had breakfast and moved to see the harriers at Paruthipadu grassland. This is a place fully occupied by the Eucalyptus plantations. Very few patches of grassland remain. In the beginning, a Booted Eagle was seen flying above us and then we saw  25-30 Indian Courser. And one of the farmer was preparing his land for paddy using a plough which is a rare sight now. We returned to the room and on the way saw Honey Buzzard .

Indian courser

Lemon pansy

Joker (Caterpillar)

In the evening we decided to go again to koonthankulam to see the harriers. As I told already there were lots of disturbance due to dogs and also chicken farms, the dogs were barking towards us all the time and it also disturbed the Harrier roosting place.