A confession, a tiny rhino, a squirrel and the Morelet's

I don't know what others think in the photo below, but without being too judgemental, I suspect someone is trying to hide something and I think given the chance to confess, we may well find out what happened to a certain flying creature…  Unfortunately with egrets and herons living in exceptionally close proximity to crocs, this is a reasonably common occurrence.  But bear in mind they also receive a lot of protection from other predators by living within the croc enclosures.  Only the slow, weak or foolish get eaten so I guess it could be called 'survival of the fittest'.

This rather large flying creature is apparently a rhino beetle.  It took some time to get this photo as it was intent on flying away, we eventually managed after it realised it wasn't going anywhere until after I got a photo.  When it was flying it reminded me a lot of the New Zealand weta.  A huge, almost cumbersome creature.

Rhino beetle

The Indian squirrel is tiny!  About the size of a chipmunk (if you've seen one of those) or a medium/large rat (I suspect we have all seen one of those!)  It is incredibly fast and it has taken me weeks to get a photo that isn't just a blur from one edge of my photo to the other!  Very cute indeed.

I am observing some Morelets hatchlings each night and this is a photo of the second time they were platform fed.  Up until now they have been tong fed - long metal tongs that allow us to control who gets what in terms of food.  They each had turns so Mr Feisty-Pants (name changed for privacy reasons, lol) who would leap at the tongs as soon as he saw them coming got the first bit and then the rest took turns while Mr Feisty-Pants attempted to get to the tongs before the slower more timid crocs.

Mr Feisty-Pants on the right guarding the food while the littlest one tries to climb aboard

The ranks don't seem to have changed now we place all the food on a platform and they help themselves.  Mr Feisty-Pants is still the first to eat and the others have to be quick witted and clever to get to the food.  They are getting much better at this now and the last feed they had, everyone got a good share of the food.

Snake vs Gecko

This morning I was sitting in the library whiling away some time when something caught my eye in the window.  I looked up and waited and then suddenly a gecko started to try to climb the glass.  It looked very funny as it couldn't get any traction, I assumed there was something tasty up higher and eventually the gecko ran up the outer windowsill and sat up there for a few minutes.

I laughed and watched it's antics.

Then all of a sudden something else caught my eye at the bottom of the window and I realised there was a snake and that was why the gecko was trying to get up the glass. The snake had the gecko in it's mouth and they fought and turned for some time.  The gecko escaped a few times, but the snake was a bit more flexible and was able to follow the gecko very quickly.

I didn't know at this point what snake it was, but I now know it was a bronze back which is nonvenomous.  It came in a tiny hole/gap from the outside window and got itself trapped between the inside and outside windows with a huge gecko in it's mouth.  No idea how it thought it would get out again if it ate the gecko as it's belly would never have fitted out the little hole again!

Anyway, human intervention followed much to my disappointment as I was enjoying the spectacle.  The outside window was opened and the snake took off like a robbers dog without it's gecko.  One of the women opened the inside window - much to my horror! - and the gecko was sent packing too.

I hope the gecko survives - although I suspect a a very sore head for a day or 2!
Annoyingly I only had my iPhone so my photos are very average.

Beef day

Thursday was beef day for the crocs.  Twice a month huge amount of beef that is already chopped into portions arrives and it gets sorted into buckets for different enclosures.  The beef is all parts of the cow as it is important for crocodiles to get skin, bones and offal.

The fun part is getting to throw it into the pens and watching the crocs down it in single gulps.  They enjoy their beef days very much.  My aim got a lot better after a few direct hits of a lump of bony meat straight onto the crocs head - the noise was very loud, being bone landing on bone.  I suspect if the crocs could talk, their words would have been unrepeatable.  Poor things!

The idea is to ensure that the smaller crocs who don't push forward get their share of the meat too.  So long distance throwing of beef is important.  I was rather proud of myself when I threw 2 lumps in a row that landed inside the crocs jaws.  I think we were in sync with each other.

Selecting a piece... 

Eyeing up a deserving beast

And throwing it!

I much prefer the fish feeding days…  Beef is a bit stinky and sticky!

Egrets, ears and ewwwwww!

The last few days have been manic.  We are cleaning virtually the whole place as there is an inspection on Monday.  My main job has to been to scrub bird poop off walls surrounding the enclosures and a few pond scrubs too.  Its dirty smelly work, but somewhat satisfying to see the difference once each section is finished.

I am looking forward to Monday evening very much indeed!

I have also been feeling rotten the last couple of days and during the night I discovered I had another ear infection.  I am very unimpressed as this is the second one in just over a month.  Considering I don't remember having one in my adult years at all, then to have two like this is very frustrating!  I only have half a course of drugs as for some reason the Dr only prescribed that for me.  So I am hoping I can source another half course.  Cross fingers!

One of the night heron chicks on a fence int he pond

There are 2 night heron chicks who have fallen from their nest and are in the Siamese and Nile enclosures (side by side enclosures).  They've been there for several days now and I can't help but wonder what their fate will be.  They are probably not old enough to source their own food yet.  They drink from the crocodile ponds but so far the crocs have left them alone.  They can't fly yet either so I suspect it won't end well…  Poor little things.

A night heron

An egret at sunset

Egret

Egret egg fallen from a tree (hatched - egg is empty)

Unfortunately when you have a crocodile park and a nesting zone in the trees above, there are often sad tales of untimely endings.  Both night herons and egrets nest here.  It is an amazing sight to watch them building nests and feeding young.  The noise is incredible, especially when the macaques try to raid the nests!  The birds all start to 'scream' and they dive bomb the monkeys.  Sometimes the birds win and sometimes not.

Snakes!

Today I got up at 5.30 am and took walk with a couple of local snake hunters.  They are approved by the powers that be to catch snakes and although I know very little about it, they apparently collect venom for anti venom.  They are licensed and have a strict protocol to follow - the big one is that they never kill the snakes.  They are captured and then released.  They are very protective of the snakes and go out of their way to ensure they live safely in the community.

We were out for about an hour this morning before we came across our first snake.  It was a very good introduction for me…

A baby Olive Keelback

We then walked another hour and a half or so before we came across our second snake.  And wow!  What a stunner!  This is one of India's four most venomous snakes and this was a beautiful example.

Spectacled Cobra in it's nest

One of the guides

Carrying it to somewhere safe to let go

The 'spectacles' that it takes it's name from

We let this big one go in a different location to where it was caught simply because there were a few local men watching as they caught it and the usual reaction to a snake in their field or surrounds is to kill it.  So it was carried some distance until we had no followers and in a quiet spot it was let go.

So even though we only saw 2 snakes, they were both incredible in their own ways.  I loved holding the little one.  It seemed quite calm and didn't struggle or complain at all, although I'm sure it was stressed to the max.  We let it go back where we found it and it went off like a robbers dog.  Faster then I could say 'good bye snake!'

Jaws III, a very big saltie

Jaws is the star attraction at MCBT and people come on Sunday to see him get fed.  He's about 17 feet long and chunky.  He doesn't venture out of his water that often when people are around, but when he does, he's very impressive.  Having seen Lolong last year and at 21 feet, he's hard to beat in terms of impressive, but Jaws III is pretty cool.

His favourite person feeds him while Colin Stevenson does a talk about Jaws III and crocodilians in general.  Jaws gets to eat lots of yummy meaty stuff after an obligatory walk around to show his impressive size.

I love crocs!

OK, so you already knew this, but having been at Madras Croc Bank now for 7 nights, I can honestly say, my love for crocs is doing nothing but growing!

Each day I get to walk around the enclosures and look at 18 of the 23 species still alive today.  Sometimes they're hiding and I don't seem them, sometimes they are all out basking so I see several.

There are always 100's of muggers (Crocodylus palustris) to be seen so no matte what, I get to watch them everyday. There are a couple of muggers of note. One I have seen every day I have been here. She sits where she built her nest and guards it with great maternal responsibility. She doesn't know there are no eggs in her nest though. There are too many muggers here so they cannot allow more to hatch at this point.

The other mugger of note, is a tiny wee thing about 2 years old.  It was probably missed when egg collections were done a couple of seasons ago so the lucky little blighter hatched and has survived to this point.  A year of so back there were 6 apparently.  Now there are probably only 2 left - the other one lives in a pipe and sits there basking with only his head out.  They are at high risk here with such large numbers of adult muggers in the enclosure and also with the nesting water birds living above.  But somehow this little fellow has beaten the odds so far and I see it basking at the end of the day in a spot near some tree roots.  This determined little croc deserves an award for bravery and canniness!

Brave little mugger 

I have fallen in love with the gharials (Gavialis gangeticus).  They are so incredibly unique - there is nothing in the world like them.  They are extremely shy and very wary of humans especially, which is a very good thing for such an endangered species.  There are many reasons this croc hasn't increased in numbers in the wild with al the support it gets, but too complicated to go into here.  Some political, some local communities, some logistical…

Male gharial underwater 

Feeding the gharials in the nursery is a highlight of my week.  I love to go in and throw the little fish to them.  I aim for the side of their snout and if my aim and their preparedness work right, they snap their head sideways and voila! a fish ends up in their teeth.  They manoeuvre the fish so it is head first (so the fins etc don't get stuck in their throat) and down it goes.

The little gharials are even shyer then the bigger ones - they are used to being pushed out when it comes to food especially so it's vital to ensure they get a good feed too.  They take a fish and climb back onto the land and eat it, then climb in again.  Very cute wee things.