SWORN ENEMIES.

The leopard appeared from a patch of jungle about 300 yards from me loping downhill and  heading in my direction! Behind the cat was a water buffalo bull in hot pursuit. When both animals were about 150 yards from me they both disappeared down a dip in the ground and then emerged on a ridge with the leopard making for an outcrop of rock about 75 yards from me and to my right. Then, getting to a high point it stopped and looked down at the buffalo which was having difficulty climbing up behind it.

It was a very hot afternoon and I was on the edge of clump of tall trees in the Galoya National Park. Before me was a large open area where I had often observed herds of elephants feeding. I had begun to look over the place with my binoculars, when I heard langurs giving out alarm calls that told of the presence of a leopard in the vicinity. The calls came from jungle directly in front of me. It was just as I focused my attention on this spot that the leopard and buffalo came into view. A few yards behind came a small herd of about twenty adult and juvenile buffaloes.These animals pulled up soon after breaking cover allowing the leading animal to get on with the chase alone.

From where it stood on the rock the leopard turned around, looked down and snarled at the buffalo as it tried awkwardly to climb after it. The cat then leapt down making straight for thick jungle about 100 yards away. It appeared to be in no hurry, striding leisurely along. It was as if it knew that the buffalo would have trouble climbing down and going round the rock to continue the chase. With the buffalo closing the gap between them, the leopard disappeared into the jungle.

There followed a loud crashing as the buffalo burst through the thick cover, then silence for a few moments before the big bull emerged with vines and creepers entangled in its horns. It stood there for a minute or so looking around for his herd then, when he saw where they were, he shook his head and snorted as if to say, “I gave the bugger heaps!” The bull then trotted up and rejoined the herd after which all the animals started calmly moving back to from where they came.

I had no doubt that the  leopard would have got away safely by climbing a tree so I stayed where I was for about half and hour hoping it would come back into the open but it didn’t show up.

PERFECT CAMOUFLAGE

Here is a picture I took of a lizard on the trunk of a bottlebrush on the footpath in front of my home in Kippa Ring. It  was taken with a Canon PowerShot A400 on the afternoon of the 1st February 2008.

The Galoya National Park & the Senanayake Samudra

The Galoya National Park came into being in 1954 and was administered by the Galoya Development Board until 11 years later The Department of Wildlife Conservation took over. The park covers an area of 198 square miles in the dry zone southeast of the island of Sri Lanka. It was established for the purpose of protecting the catchment area which came to be known as the Senanayake Samudra. This, the largest reservoir in the country was named after Don Stephen Senanayake, Sri Lanka’s (then Ceylon) first Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs.

It was his idea for the construction of a dam to be built at Inginiyagala that eventually resulted in the flooding of the Galoya Valley and the creation of a body of water with a surface area of 7680 ha.

The building of the dam was undertaken by the American construction company, Morrison-Knudsen and was a multi-purpose project similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The reservoir is as deep as 100 feet in some places and has several small islands which are the tops of the hills that were once a part of the landscape of the Galoya Valley before it was inundated. In shallower spots the trunks and branches of dead trees rise from the surface to provide perches for several species of waterbirds.

The park is a sanctuary for many species of animals including elephant, leopard, buffalo, bear and crocodile.

LEVIATHANS OF THE DEEP

Alone on an outrigger canoe in the middle of the Senanayake Samudra, Sri Lanka’s largest reservoir, I was transfixed by a strange sight. About two miles from the closest land there was what appeared to be a crow treading water! As I watched, it took off every now and then to a height of a few feet before landing back on precisely the same spot. I decided that there had to be something solid like a floating log the bird was alighting on. But on approaching the spot I found it to be the carcase of a giant catfish. It was about 8 feet in length. The massive body was deeply scarred indicative of an attack by a crocodile. The crow had been feeding on this carcase tearing off chunks then flying up whenever the floating dinner dipped gently below the surface.

It was my first sight of a giant catfish and, up to then, didn’t know they existed in this reservoir. Weeks later I was to see another - also dead and bearing scars that told of an attack by a large predator like a crocodile.

Back in the 1960s I was working as technical assistant to a team of wildlife researchers from the Smithsonian Institution, USA.  Based in Inginiyagala, my work took me to almost every nook and cranny of the huge national park that bordered the Senanyake Samudra. The park was the newest in the country and was not developed. The only road into the park was a dirt track that only went about half a mile then petered out into thick jungle. All the fieldwork here had to be done on foot and so I had many exciting and a few hair-raising encounters with wild animals.

In the initial stages of the research project we had to hire an outrigger canoe from fishermen to get across large stretches of water. Often I was left to do the fieldwork by myself and it was on one such occasion that I came upon the crow feasting on a floating catfish. A few months later the project acquired a small boat and outboard motor.

One day, while walking with a researcher along the bank of the reservoir, we rounded a bend and were startled by a scuffling sound in the bushes. Looking up we saw two mongooses rush out of a huge hole in the carcase of a giant catfish. We could see that this monster was the victim of a clash with a crocodile and had been washed up on the shore some days earlier. This fish was not as large as the one I saw floating on the water; only about 6 foot long but large enough for the mongooses to creep inside its body and feast on its innards! The stench of the rotting fish was overpowering and the flies were swarming in their millions! So after my companion had taken some photographs, having laid his binoculars close to the carcase for size comparison, we beat a hasty retreat!

In future posts I shall write more about the Senayake Samudra, the Galoya National Park and my experiences in Inginiyagala.

A man I’m sorry I never got to know.

My father-in-law, Charles Weinman, was one of the finest gentleman I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. He was also one of the most intelligent men anyone could hope to meet in a day’s march.

As a teenager, I fell hopelessly in love with his daughter, Denise. Then, when after a fairly lengthy courtship, I wrote to Charles asking for the hand of his only daughter in marriage, his reply was brief and sententious. Giving his consent, he replied, "I don’t intend this to be a homily. Both of you are well in command of your senses to make the right decisions…” I was twenty seven and Denise was three years younger than me.

Unfortunately Charles didn’t live long enough to see his grandson, Wayne, who arrived a couple of years after the Old Man passed away.

Another grandfather whose life span was too short to afford him the opportunity to rejoice in the birth of what was to be his only granddaughter, Denise, was Dr. Weinman. I do not remember his given name/names but I do remember Charles telling me that his father was “of Jewish extract”. Certainly, the name (pronounced ‘whyman’) suggests that this would have been so..

One of my greatest regrets in this regard is that I didn’t have the curiosity and perhaps the downright impudence, as a young man, to pick the brains of my elders, long and hard, so that I may be privy to some very interesting and useful information about family history that I would have been able to pass on to the generation that has succeeded mine. However, whether in this day and age, that generation would consider any such information valuable is a moot point!

 

This is a photograph of the late Dr. Weinman, the oldest  I have of any family member, living or dead – a man I never got to know.

The Drumstick Tree

On the 16th October 2009 I came across a very interesting article on the murunga tree, also known as the drumstick tree, at http://badusure.com/murunga and submitted the following comment and, since then, it’s been “awaiting  moderation” – whatever that means!

I have a rather interesting childhood memory which I recount here for whatever it’s worth.
 

I remember that back in the 1940s, poultry in  large areas of Sri Lanka, (then Ceylon) including Kandy where I was raised, were affected by an epidemic which, I guess, could best be described as a form of bird flu. Infected chickens would cough violently, be unable to eat and die in a day or  two. My maternal grandmother treated our sick birds with an ayurvedic medicine made of the bark of the murunga tree ground up into a paste with ginger and garlic. She made little pellets of the stuff and hand fed them to the birds as soon as they began to show symptoms of the disease. I did some hand feeding too and nearly all of the treated chickens survived. I might add that not only does Murunga grow well in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries, they do well in Australia too! Just at this time of the year murunga trees in Australia bear fruit and friends who have trees in Queensland tell me they are laden..

Footnote: I reckon I should have substituted force fed for hand fed.

Greetings!

My name is Des.