Why should it happen only when it is time to leave?

This is the question that came to our mind spontaneously. The situation that we were seeing in Bandhavgarh National Park then was potentially volatile. It had all the right ingredients to develop into a story. But the time was 10.30 in the morning in summers. By 10.45 you have to be back at the gate. Considering that ten minutes would be required to travel back to the gate, we had only five minutes left with us in which to watch the action unfold. If it unfolded. But things in nature do not keep to human time and desires.

What also came to mind was another summer day a few years back at the Kanha National Park. Sudden flight of a peacock which was till then busy displaying its beauty to a peahen presaged some action. Very soon, a tiger broke cover. The time then was about 10 in the morning. The sun was up by then and the heat was telling a harsh story to the nape of our necks. The tiger crossed the road and went into the tall grass cover on the side of the road and walked just alongside the track.

 
“It is like a cooler for him,” Ram Kumar said. “The grass is still partly green and some moisture even now survives as a hangover of the morning dew. Notice that there is a gentle breeze. As the wind comes through the moist grass, it gets cooler. That is why he is walking there.”

The grass gets taller a bit ahead. Here, it is slightly smaller and we could snap His Majesty.

But it was not just the cooler on the mind of the tiger. It kept walking and our jeep kept coasting alongside on the track.

“It is going towards the Manhar Nala,” Ram Kumar said again. What Ram Kumar was referring to was a small wet patch that almost never dries off. So, in the summers lots of animals come here to drink.

The tiger kept walking and the deer herd that was at some distance from it, smelled it and dispersed posthaste. The tiger kept looking at the disappearing deer and kept walking. Eventually it arrived at a place where the grass ended. Hugging the grass flowed a small stream, just a trickle in fact. The tiger drank from it and then it sat down in the grass, completely concealed from any place till you really went near it. We could still see it because we knew it was there. But another jeep that came from the opposite direction just went by without even getting a hint that a tiger was present just beside the road.

 

Stage set for Ambush.

The tiger kept sitting and we knew what it was doing. It was waiting there for an unfortunate, unwary and thirsty animal to come by and then to ambush it. We had our cameras ready and we waited. But soon it was time to leave and we missed on a scene that would have been the envy of even a Discovery or a National Geographic. The tiger did make a kill there later. We know that because when we went investigating to the same place in the evening, there were clear marks of a struggle on the other side of the stream and vultures were circling over a spot not too distant from this place. There were pugmarks of a deer just adjacent to the struggle marks and so we think that a thirsty deer went into the stomach of the tiger that day. And we missed seeing the whole thing happening because the story started getting scripted just before it was time to get to the gates.

And now again, when the time was 10.30, we had come face to face with a situation that looked like developing into a story.

About 200 meters in front of us, in the vast meadow that had opened up after we had crossed a hill, were clustered about 50 or so vultures. There was little movement in the cluster. Upon looking closely it could be seen that the cluster was actually divisible into two groups. There was a tight pack of about 30 vultures around something that was completely invisible. Then there were about 15 vultures in a scattered group to the left of this tight cluster. But there was constant movement – vultures from the small group went into the tighter cluster and vice versa. There obviously was a dead animal at the centre of the tight cluster.

              
The tight cluster of vultures
 
                 The scattered group of vultures to the left of the tight cluster

But we did not understand what was happening. If there indeed was an animal at the centre, why did we not see much movement? Vultures fight like all other predators over food. No quarter is given to fellow vultures and the relations do not count for anything. There is a lot of harsh screeching and hissing as the birds try to elbow themselves into a position from which they can corner a larger chunk of food. But the absence of much movement meant there was hardly any fight. On the other hand, if there were no animal there, what was that large group of vultures doing there on the ground at a time when the sun had already started getting angry? The most likely probability therefore was that most of the flesh had been picked clean already and the vultures were just sitting there around the skeleton of the unfortunate victim. 

 

The cluster was not completely without movement either. Some vultures flew away, circled the meadow and went back to either the tighter or the smaller cluster. This was almost a continual phenomenon. We stood there observing this while I tried to take pictures of the flying birds. It is quite a difficult task since you have to anticipate the future position of the bird and then click. The digital cameras have made it an easier pursuit today since with the film cameras, the cost of the film itself dissuaded an amateur photographer from daring to try this. 

Constant movement was there within the cluster - vultures flying off and coming back

Something extraordinary happened at this point of time. Toward the right of the tight cluster there was something that we had taken to be a bit of a raised ground. It appeared to be of the same ashy color as the dry grass. Well, this raised bit of ground moved and started going nearer the tight cluster. It was then that we could see it better – it was a monkey! It was not a large one and so our surmise is that it was either a female or a monkey that had barely walked into adulthood.

Vulture caught in mid-flight

The wings are white on the top

On the underside, the wings are brownish with a black trailing edge
   

The smallish monkey to the right of the vulture cluster. 

It kept on moving towards this cluster. A vulture came out of the cluster and flew low and went straight for the monkey trying to terrorize it. The monkey ducked and avoided the outstretched talons of the predator. But it stood its ground.

A vulture threatens the monkey

It sat there for sometime and kept on looking intently toward the cluster. It then got up and moved again toward the vultures. Another vulture attempted to terrorize it and the monkey ducked again. A few vultures were staring directly at the monkey. But the monkey seemed oblivious of this perilous attention.

Even though the vultures were about 200 meters off, I could see that these were the long billed vultures and not the white-backed vultures. The difference between the two is negligible as far as the size is concerned. But when they fly, the white-backed one has a whitish underside with a trailing black edge. The long billed vultures have a brownish underside with a black trailing edge. Both make their homes on cliffs where you can see large white patches which are chiefly due to their droppings. Both feed chiefly on carrion. However, the long billed ones are known to attack smaller animals on some occasions. 

The monkey had come fairly close to the cluster when the driver started the jeep without even asking us. He had been grumbling for the past few minutes about getting late. We could understand his concern because if you get to the gate late, nothing happens to the tourists but the jeep gets banished for a few days. That is a terrible loss of business. But since we wanted to see what would happen next, we had not paid heed to his gripes. Eventually the guy had taken the matters in his own hands and had made a move.

The monkey is perilously near to the vultures now, See how some vultures are staring at it.
 

“What could it have been? What do you think the monkey was doing?” we asked the guide.

The guide shrugged. But the driver said, “Monkeys are curious by nature. May be he was trying to see what was happening there.”

We do not think the driver was right. Monkeys are as curious as we are. We know that. But monkeys are not foolish. Monkeys living in the jungle don’t approach the predators to investigate what they are doing clustered at a point. They instinctively know that there is a kill there. Also, why risk your life in such worthless curiosity? Large vultures, especially if they are the long billed ones, are known to carry off small animals and make a meal of them.

So, the question arises, what was this monkey doing there? If we could have waited a bit more at that place, may be we would have got the answer. But in the absence of that kind of luck, we can only make guesses.

Was the kill over which the vultures had gathered that of the mother of the smallish monkey?

Or, if the monkey was a mother, was her child lying there at the focal point of the cluster having become food for the winged predators?

We think one of these options is true.

There is one more question. But you know what that question is. One is normally more interested in the fate of creatures that are alive rather than the ones which have already walked off the living scene. 

(Note: This post is the tenth post on wildlife as I have observed it in the Wildlife Sanctuaries across India. I have not spun any story that is untrue. Everything that I have written is a faithful reproduction of what happened in front of us. We have been exceptionally lucky to have seen so many things.)


For those of you, who are wildlife buffs and have not seen my earlier posts, I give the links below.
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/03/baghira-log-huts-at-kanha-national-park-fall-in-love.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/02/in-kanha-national-park-a-constipated-tiger-photoblog.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/our-first-trip-to-bandhavgarh-reaching-there.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/10/the-ignorant-nonchalance.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/king-vulture.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/kanha-summer-vs-winter.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/tiger-on-foot-well-almost.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/two-scenes.htm
http://avinashjee.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/an-evening-next-to-a-kill.htm