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Wildbuzz | Of frosty hues & skies not so blue
It was a cobra of intimidating girth and length --- an adult of experience as indicated by having survived so long to attain peak physical attributes while inhabiting fields, dodging farmers, horticulture labour and dogs, and defying weather
The temperatures reigning over the fallow fields and under the misted stars were in the low digits of centigrade. The advent of so-called daylight promised no relief with an icy mist drifting across the countryside fringing the Sukhna lake reserve forests. When the sun god finally staged a modest appearance at about 12.30 pm on Tuesday last, the chilled creatures had something to cheer about.
As I rambled across those fields, all of a sudden my eye picked a Spectacled cobra lying perfectly still and about three feet from where I stood. The serpent’s silvery-black skin was an imposing stamp on the khaki hues of weather-beaten scrub. It was a cobra of intimidating girth and length --- an adult of experience as indicated by having survived so long to attain peak physical attributes while inhabiting fields, dodging farmers, horticulture labour and dogs, and defying weather.
I had spotted the serpent in the nick of time because I was aware that large-bodied snakes such as cobras, pythons, rat snakes, Russell’s vipers etc do not strictly hibernate in deep winter but turn less active. The stock image we oft nurture of Winnie-the-Pooh bears slumbering through the winter does not sit well with the behaviour of our big serpents. Though cold-blooded, they frequently slither from holes to seek the north-west Indian sun for thermoregulation.
It is, thus, a fallacy to assume that a nature ramble on a sunny day in winter is free from snakebite hazard. Walking through the bush is tantamount to a perilous passage along a cliff, where one misstep could mean trodding upon an otherwise peaceable serpent. The eye must keep an acute focus on the steps through bush jungle, lest an unattentive mind that wanders in the skies and trees for glimpses of roving larks and warblers tramples upon “Ms Beach Beauty”!
In those few cold moments in the northern fields, I realised just why the cobra is a revered and respected serpent, known as the “nalla paambu” or the “good, tolerant snake” in Tamil Nadu’s Irula tribal cultures. Simply because the cobra is reluctant to bite humans and delivers warnings in the guise of hisses and flaring hoods.
The cobra before me was a creature possessed of impeccable manners and breeding. Not once did she lunge at me. She merely turned away from me, and raised her hood in a warning display that lasted less than a minute. Then she just sank into the bushes, which were not too high, and mother Earth swallowed her in a protective embrace. The “empty” bushes seemed to wryly whisper to me: “We ain’t seen anything. What are you doing here?”
I suspect this lady of poise and peace had actually been left quite irritated by my intrusion --- just as a lissome Swedish tourist on a Goan beach swallowing her pride and liberty beats a graceful retreat when eye-raped and eve-teased by notorious and boorish tourist youths from the NCR.
Another Sukhna winter vignette was captured by Lalit Bansal on Monday. It was of a grey heron occupying waters west of the regulator-end. The heron is an astute bird, it waits for crows and black kites to find the fish, and when the prey slips from their clutches and falls back into water, the heron is quick to pirate the competitor’s catch.
Bansal photographed the heron capitalising on a fish that had slipped from a crow’s claws at about 8 am when the lake was simmering as an icy-steam bath. Bansal applied artificial intelligence’s ChatGPT to conjure a poem that magically caught the Sukhna’s winter spirit, so familiar to cockcrow walkers:
A winter dawn, so crisp, so cold,
The sky is wrapped in hues of gold.
A heron glides on silent wings,
Graceful in the air, as the morning sings.
Below, the waters shimmer and gleam,
A fish moves softly through the stream.
The heron’s eye, sharp and keen,
Spies the prize through the silver sheen.
A sudden dive, swift and sure,
The splash resounds, a hunt secure.
Up it rises, triumphant, free,
The catch held tight for all to see.
vjswild2@gmail.com
