11th November 2017, ANET
Got an early start this morning and went birding with Akshay, Madhuri, Mahima and a Vice Chancellor of a university on the mainland (I forget which one). This sweet and polished man had arrived at ANET last night with his wife. He was so intrigued by our visiting Andaman scops owl by the dinner table and all the chatter about the birds you see in and around campus that went along with it, that we enthusiastically volunteered to take him birding for the single day he was there for. At night, we took a walk down the road outside under the cloudless, starry sky looking for any snakes and/or owls. We were rewarded with an Hume's hawk owl (whose call we followed until sighted) and, sadly, snake roadkill. It was wonderful to see how excited this little man was to see the owl sitting in a tree, blinking into the street light. He tilted his golf cap to one side and tried to get a good photo of it, but then handed his camera to me to do the same - just in case his hadn’t turned out well enough.
After breakfast this morning, I noticed that I had an email about my human ethics application*. I finally had a format to work with, so I spent the rest of my day making sure all of it was in place. I was glad to finally be doing this systematically, after having taken a moral standpoint (in my head) about how unethical some other studies I had read about were. I was quite excited about all of the ethnographic work I was going to do, and writing out the application gave me the chance to really get into the details of what I had planned. I spent two hours being sidetracked reading papers and anthropological methods that looked at issues qualitatively. I also got my datasheets and ethogram** in place. I impressed myself with the outburst of productivity - but I know it was mostly a distraction from the fact that it was already the second week of November and I wasn't in Nicobar yet.
I then took a breather, had an icy bath (after much personal motivation) and decided to watch Baby Driver, since Chandy had been nagging me to for months. The smell of brewing chai dragged me out of the library and its falling geckos. The chai had drawn more than just me, so the rest of the evening transpired through multiple conversations about local fishing practices, the Nicobarese communities, social science, owls and local dogs. As tends to happen around a table (that converts into a makeshift table-tennis top) with fun and seasoned island researchers, I can barely remember how these topics came up.
Here’s a list of the birds we saw this morning:
Brown shrike (~3)
Andaman coucal (2)
Common mynah (many)
White-breasted waterhen (3)
Red collared dove (5)
White-headed starling (many)
Blue-eared kingfisher (for the first time! The blue is so vivid, even when the sun isn’t shining directly over it, that it looked unnatural. Like an image taken by a Photoshop enthusiast with the saturation taken up all the way.)
Plume-toed/glossy swiftlet (many)
Long-tailed parakeet (2)
Small minivet (5)
Black-naped oriole (2)
Greater racket-tailed drongo (3)
Olive-backed sunbird (3)
Red-whiskered bulbul (4) (these guys were never meant to be on the island - they were introduced and have now set up shop with resolve.)
Chestnut-headed bee eater (4)
Oriental white eye
Black-naped monarch (being chased by the white eye)
Vernal hanging parrot (3) (with a bright green Phelsuma/Andaman day gecko lying along the trunk of the same tree)
Oriental magpie robin
Collared kingfisher
Green imperial pigeon (3)
Andaman flowerpecker (I love how the islands have but a few species with ‘Andaman’ or ‘Nicobar’ before the bird group - makes them so easy-lazy to identify.)
White-throated kingfisher (2)
Crested serpent eagle (a long, clear and close sighting, just by the beach. Saw it catch and eat what I think was a lizard.)
Asian koel (female)
Common/Eurasian moorhen
Andaman drongo (2)
Wimbrel
______________________
*Since I planned to do social surveys and talk to people from multiple communities about their lives with monkeys, I had to get a human ethics clearance before I could begin. After sending in my proposal twice and sending a bunch of emails, I finally discovered what was expected of me that^ day.
**An ethogram is a list of behaviours - along with their detailed, literal descriptions - that an animal could potential engage in. I had created one in advance for the Nicobar long-tailed macaques that I was about to study based off of what I had observed them doing during my recce visit in the monsoon.
Got an early start this morning and went birding with Akshay, Madhuri, Mahima and a Vice Chancellor of a university on the mainland (I forget which one). This sweet and polished man had arrived at ANET last night with his wife. He was so intrigued by our visiting Andaman scops owl by the dinner table and all the chatter about the birds you see in and around campus that went along with it, that we enthusiastically volunteered to take him birding for the single day he was there for. At night, we took a walk down the road outside under the cloudless, starry sky looking for any snakes and/or owls. We were rewarded with an Hume's hawk owl (whose call we followed until sighted) and, sadly, snake roadkill. It was wonderful to see how excited this little man was to see the owl sitting in a tree, blinking into the street light. He tilted his golf cap to one side and tried to get a good photo of it, but then handed his camera to me to do the same - just in case his hadn’t turned out well enough.
After breakfast this morning, I noticed that I had an email about my human ethics application*. I finally had a format to work with, so I spent the rest of my day making sure all of it was in place. I was glad to finally be doing this systematically, after having taken a moral standpoint (in my head) about how unethical some other studies I had read about were. I was quite excited about all of the ethnographic work I was going to do, and writing out the application gave me the chance to really get into the details of what I had planned. I spent two hours being sidetracked reading papers and anthropological methods that looked at issues qualitatively. I also got my datasheets and ethogram** in place. I impressed myself with the outburst of productivity - but I know it was mostly a distraction from the fact that it was already the second week of November and I wasn't in Nicobar yet.
The ANET library
Here’s a list of the birds we saw this morning:
Brown shrike (~3)
Andaman coucal (2)
Common mynah (many)
White-breasted waterhen (3)
Red collared dove (5)
White-headed starling (many)
Blue-eared kingfisher (for the first time! The blue is so vivid, even when the sun isn’t shining directly over it, that it looked unnatural. Like an image taken by a Photoshop enthusiast with the saturation taken up all the way.)
Plume-toed/glossy swiftlet (many)
Long-tailed parakeet (2)
Small minivet (5)
Black-naped oriole (2)
Greater racket-tailed drongo (3)
Olive-backed sunbird (3)
Red-whiskered bulbul (4) (these guys were never meant to be on the island - they were introduced and have now set up shop with resolve.)
Chestnut-headed bee eater (4)
Oriental white eye
Black-naped monarch (being chased by the white eye)
Vernal hanging parrot (3) (with a bright green Phelsuma/Andaman day gecko lying along the trunk of the same tree)
Oriental magpie robin
Collared kingfisher
Green imperial pigeon (3)
Andaman flowerpecker (I love how the islands have but a few species with ‘Andaman’ or ‘Nicobar’ before the bird group - makes them so easy-lazy to identify.)
White-throated kingfisher (2)
Crested serpent eagle (a long, clear and close sighting, just by the beach. Saw it catch and eat what I think was a lizard.)
Asian koel (female)
Common/Eurasian moorhen
Andaman drongo (2)
Wimbrel
______________________
*Since I planned to do social surveys and talk to people from multiple communities about their lives with monkeys, I had to get a human ethics clearance before I could begin. After sending in my proposal twice and sending a bunch of emails, I finally discovered what was expected of me that^ day.
**An ethogram is a list of behaviours - along with their detailed, literal descriptions - that an animal could potential engage in. I had created one in advance for the Nicobar long-tailed macaques that I was about to study based off of what I had observed them doing during my recce visit in the monsoon.
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