Midweek Musings 28 17.06.2026
Bio indicators of the Environment
By Malini Shankar
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| A pea hen found its way up an avenue tree on Police Statoion Road, Basavanagudi in Bangalore at 933 a.m. today. © R.P. Nagaraj (special arrangement) |
I am unleashing my heartfelt excitement today, shooting straight from the heart!... I saw with my own eyes a pea hen – a female peacock in common man’s parlance hop onto a tree branch on the thick foliaged tree on the opposite pavement in front of my house bang in the middle of Bangalore urban district. Over populated, congested Basavanagudi is a greener suburb ok… but in all the five decades I have lived in Basavanagudi, I had never seen a pea hen. During the COVID-19 Lockdown citizens in nearby Banashankari and in far off BEL Layout had recorded the presence of peacocks, pea-hens, leopards… the COVID 19 lockdown had sent us birders and wildlifers into a tizzy indeed!
I have seen many big birds in the wooded area
where I live – including black kite, Geese in the beautiful Basavanagudi
Bungalows of yester years but never before a pea hen.
Today I was sitting in my house garden about to
start my pranayama when I saw a huge / big bird land on the branch of tree on
the opposite pavement. I first saw only its tail, a tree branch of the Gulmohar
tree on the pavement in front of my house… was blocking my view. So I preened
my eyes and bent sideward to see if I can catch a glimpse of this mysterious
bird. I was so pleasantly surprised to see its green throat and a crown of
three feathers on its head. Its eyes was unmistakably that of a pea hen. I
immediately called out to my house help to come and have a look. By then the peahen was sliding down on the
slanting branch, so it perked up higher and sat with better grip… affording to
me a full glance of its shimmering green throat. Both of us could clearly see it
was indeed a pea-hen. Then a common crow
came chasing it… The peahen waltzed its way up to the higher echelons of what I
had presumed was a silk cotton tree. After that I couldn’t see it from my
house. I called out to my neighbor in
front of whose house this tree is there on which the peahen was perched. He too
came out, scanned the tree, found it and clicked the picture of it perching up
there while blissfully asleep.
To be able to see a Schedule 1 bird species in
a thickly wooded urban area is nothing short of a miracle indeed. But it is a
bio indicator of a degenerative landscape: it signifies that the thick wooded
area is going to degenerate into a dryland ecosystem am afraid. Pea fowls are not
indicative of a thick wet evergreen rainforest only. It is more indicative of
grassland ecosystems in a dry arid zone. That means the thick green cover in parts
of green Basavanagudi is degenerating. Thick wet evergreen forests degenerated
into dry lands like shrub-land ecosystem and grassland eco system… reflective
of desertification process.
On the opposite pavement (in front
of my house) I planted a Pride of India Tree (Lagerstroemia speciose) during
the mourning period of my grandfather’s passing in February 1995. This has now become
a one tree bird sanctuary according to Mr. Vinod Raja who filmed
birds in my house garden. Not just birds, I have documented the presence of Squirrels,
nocturnal creatures like the slender lorris (Loris lydekkerianus),
monkeys, bats, barn owls, Hooted Owl, on this Pride of India Tree.
It is time to legally notify and
protect lofty trees under Park Protection Act simply because it has been
housing rear and endangered wildlife. It is the least we can do to protect our
immediate environs in a sprawling urban area. Now that’s responsibility to our
Biodiversity.
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