Sahyadrica

Finding signs of wild animals in sandy stream beds, wide riverbanks, in dense forest understorey, often riddled with those of the domestic kind – the livestock – is like going on a treasure hunt. Every afternoon when we returned we sat under the warm winter sun listening to each other’s finds. I found a pile of scat on a boulder, full of hair, fluffed up because it was old and dry, and while I discussed my contemplation on the field to assign it to its rightful owner, my companions yelled their opinion at once: jackal hai re ! Well, jackals do love relieving themselves on boulders, unlike cats that prefer to do so away from a pugdundee , or antelopes that have specific latrine sites. On this particular survey, I stood on a 700 m escarpment overlooking the backwaters of Bansagar on Son. There was an undeclared competition among us; if I said I found tiger’s pugmarks, one of my colleagues found water trailing another’s by the river, and another found a tigress with adolescent c