One of the sounds I miss of the forests of the Western Ghats is the song of the Malabar whistling thrush. It's a laidback, aimless tune, the sort a village youngster would whistle as he walked to school across meadows and fields, lost in thought. It's no wonder the other name for the bird is ‘whistling schoolboy'.
During the early years of our travels together, many a morning we've lain in our tent listening to this bird's song ringing crystal clear above the endless gurgling of a stream. At that time of the day, the sky would be blue-black, untouched by sunrise, and the night crickets had many more minutes of buzzing left. No matter how inconvenient camping in the wet forests was, during those minutes of birdsong I kept my peace with the world.
Since the song is iconic of the tall evergreen forests, we've tried really hard to film the birds. They are black and skulk in the darkness created by riverside plants, a dull target in the shadows. On a couple of occasions, we saw one perched perfectly, the cobalt-blue of the forehead, wings and tail, spotlit by a sunbeam. But the bird never sat long enough for us to get the camera set up. Sometimes we came across smashed mollusk shells and pieces of crab shell lying amongst rocks on riverbanks: the remains of a whistling thrush's meal.
The birds often nest on rocky ledges behind waterfalls and the parents fly in and out through the curtain of water. But where plantations have replaced the forests, the thrushes seem to adjust. We watched one nest on a stone ledge in the porch of an estate bungalow in the Anamalais.
When the sun is high in the sky, I also miss the sight of a black eagle coasting silently above the rainforest looking for nestlings, small animals and reptiles. Its long, finger-like wing tips delicately use the air currents to advantage. Gliding so slowly, with barely a wing beat, it's remarkable it remains airborne at all. In forest clearings, it wheels overhead like other eagles, but on sighting an edible morsel, it puts on the brakes, stalling mid-air, and drops like a heavy stone on its quarry.
The sight of a black eagle cruising under the forest canopy, maneuvering between trees with just a flick of a wing tip, makes my heart beat faster. Although the raptor is silent, it is usually followed by the loud, rapid-fire sound of a toy gun, the alarm call of the giant squirrel, alerting other forest creatures to the danger.
When the sun sets, I'm nostalgic for the chatter of racket-tailed drongos. Trying to fathom what they are mimicking is a favourite end-of-the-day game. They switch from imitating one bird to another seamlessly. Sometimes, there may be as many as three or four other birdcalls strung out in one long warble.
On one occasion we were filming a deafeningly noisy cicada when it took off from the tree trunk. A watchful racket-tailed drongo perched high up on a tree swooped down and caught it in mid-air, right in front of our faces. As the bird flew up to its neat cup-shaped nest on a tree branch, the cicada continued to buzz until the drongo bashed it quiet.
At night fall, we would be back inside the tent, reading our books by torchlight. Before long, the comforting screech of the Ceylon frogmouth would start up. On the only occasion I've seen this bird, in broad daylight, it resembled the extension of the stump on which it was perched. So confident was it in its ability to be invisible that we could approach within metres of it. Slowly it batted an eyelid open and fixed us in a large-eyed glare. We would fall asleep remembering the stillness of its poise and hearing its repetitive calls. After all, tomorrow was another day.
