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| A female Sambar Deer on a hill top. |
In the year 2009, my father bought a piece of untouched forests in village Haripur in Punjab, which lies in the Shivalik Mountain range. It was far away from civilisation with little to no population in a 500-acre radius at the time. It was until 2012 when I first went there and saw the tropical dry evergreen forest. My father had a prefabricated temporary house made there as one can't make a proper brick and cement house on forest land. The house was in the middle of a valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides and one could see the sun setting perfectly behind the mountain range. The house was completely empty and abandoned and no one went there for quite a few years until the past 5 years. When I got into bird watching, observing wildlife and capturing it in my camera, I thought of what all rare and elusive fauna I would find in that place.
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An aerial view of the Farm in 2017
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When I went there after so many years, it was still green and luscious but there seemed to be very little sign of wildlife which I had never noticed till that time. Well, of course, there was an occasional sighting of a Sambhar deer and a few common birds, but it wasn't what I expected of an untouched dense forest in the hills. It was a great place nonetheless and I started going there more often with my brother and friends for fun and barbecues. |
| In 2020 after a forest fire. |
Once my brother and I along with some friend's scanned the land with a drone all afternoon and set up a barbecue till sunset and by the time we were done, it got dark and we started to walk back from the house to the entry point in the forest which is almost 5 kilometres and our car couldn't go beyond 2 kilometres so we had to navigate 3 kilometres through the dense forest at night. We had torches because without light it was complete and utter darkness and we couldn't see beyond a metre without them. We lost our way several times in the beginning as there were 10 foot long densely packed weeds and bushes in the way, but then we finally landed on the path made by a river which leads us back, but then we got lost again when the path divided into two and then finally we saw our car and everyone sighed in relief. On the way back to the car we even heard and saw a pair of Large Tailed Nightjar's which was a new bird for me at the time. Then everyone got into the car, but it still takes a lot of time to get back to the main road because the remaining 2 kilometres is also a dense forest and one can't drive very fast there. One the way back to the main road we suddenly stopped the car as we were cut off by a long trail of Wild Boar's crossing our path and all of us looked at them with awe. As we approached the end of the path we stopped again to see a Jungle Cat sitting in the middle of our way. The Jungle Cat is an elusive species of small wild cat's whose population is going down by the day. It was a wonderful experience finding such species of fauna and avifauna in a matter of hours, it was as if the forest came alive during nighttime. Every year during summers the valley would fill up with Indian Pitta's and we could hear their melodious call from each corner. Once we even saw a group of 8 of them surrounding a bowl of water at 7:30 in the evening.
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In May, 2021, with water bodies.
| As of recently, in the past 5 months that place has gone through drastic changes and for the better. In January, my father had a path cleared to the house and had all the unnecessary weeds and bushes removed. In a matter of weeks, my father acquired permission from the Divisional Forest Officer of Ropar Mrs Monika Yadav, to set up water for the flora and fauna of the farm. Several solar panels were set up behind the house to power a tube well which was used to fill up small ponds to provide water for the forest. Even the dried up seasonal river filled up with water to an extent. All the extra unnecessary shrubs and small trees were cut down. This process is called 'Thinning', in which selective removal of trees is undertaken to improve the growth rate or health of the remaining trees as overcrowded trees are under competitive stress from their neighbour's. Through planned forest thinning and carefully placed introduction of water, the whole area was now flooded with wildlife and several species of birds. In a census I conducted over a weekend I was able to record 124 different species of birds and animals such as Indian Muntjac's, Sambhar deer, Wild Boar's, Indian Crested Porcupine, Jungle Bush Rats, Indian Jungle Cat's, Indian Golden Jackals and the Indian Palm Civet. The labour was still at work around the house, creating a water reservoir for irrigation in the forest and furnishing the house so that one can stay there overnight.
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| The Blue Throated Blue Flycatcher which I saw. |
I ventured into the deeper forest in the evening and sat under a bamboo thicket facing an old brick weir which is basically a small dam. There was no activity for a bit, probably due to all sound I made crushing the dried leaf loaded path when I walked there. After a while, I could hear several birds chirping, but it was very difficult locating them through dense branches and leaves. Suddenly a small blue and orange bird caught my eye while it was foraging for insects on the ground navigating through the dead leaves. I looked at it through my camera to click its photo and saw that it was a Blue Throated Blue Flycatcher, a summer breeder in the Himalayas.
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| Orange Headed Thrush Female |
As I was capturing this bird in my camera a dash of orange swooped in from behind. It was a pair of Orange Headed Thrush's collecting nesting material. I was overwhelmed with the amount of flamboyant birds I saw when suddenly I heard the sui generis call of the Indian Pitta right beside me as it appeared from the undergrowth. It was a bird that literally had 9 different colours on its body.
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| Orange Headed Thrush Male |
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| Indian Pitta, the nine coloured bird. |
It was extraordinarily wondrous seeing such colour in the dry and dull coloured surroundings. While walking back to the house I saw several Green, Blue Tailed and surprisingly Chestnut Headed Bee-Eaters swooping in the main pond in front of the house to drink water. As it got dark we saw the sunset and the moon emerge from the skyline. Around 9:00p.m we started hearing Large Tailed Nightjar calls from several directions and my father and I went to find and photograph them.
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| A Spotted Owlet during nighttime |
My father held the torch and tweaked my camera settings according to the dark. Whilst following the Nightjars call we found some Spotted Owlets which was also a great sight and made for a good photo. A Barn Owl also flew over us but we came to dead end with the Large Tailed Nightjar. We had walked till the very starting point of the farm where a Jackal was strutting around and ran away after seeing us and then we heard a different call from that of the Large Tailed Nightjar. It was a Savanna Nightjar which was flying in front of us and as my father followed it with a torch I tried to take its photo but got a blurry shot as it is difficult clicking fast-moving objects at night. We returned back to the house only to witness two Large Tailed Nightjar's swooping in on the pond to drink water in the dark, illuminated by the full moon.
The next morning I woke up and sat in front of the pond with my camera on a tripod and around 5:00 a.m there were so many birds that I lost count. I could see Peacock's dancing on the hills, several Red Jungle fowls and Bulbuls drinking water from the pond. A great many flycatchers, robins and warblers were all gathering on the bushes, a herd of Sambar Deer was roaming around to quench their thirst and the tips of trees were laden with Bee-Eaters, Yellow Footed Green Pigeons and pairs of Golden Oriole's. At this point, I was rather tired of clicking photos and had a month's worth of photos to post-process.
I found it very astonishing how a water source and some selective reduction of vegetation can completely replenish a dormant forest and how my father managed to do so in the past five months. Work still remains unfinished in those forests as there are more water reservoirs to be built across the several acres of land and I look forward to seeing what all various, elusive and vibrant species of animal life arrives there in the time to come.  |
| Four Indian Pittas together at the farm. |
