“Chamgadarh? Woh toh yahan nahi hote” (Bats? You don’t get bats here), said a villager in a matter-of-fact way. His friend added scientifically, “Yahan toh thand kaafi hoti hai. Thande ilaakon mein chamkadarh nahi hote” (It gets quite cold here. Bats don’t occur in cold places). I was in a quaint Garhwali village near Dehra Dun. I had already spent a week without getting any substantial information. It was late February but the light winter chill meant that bats were still not as active as was expected. I looked at the naïve face of my field assistant, Zareef Khan – a hardworking Gujjar boy from around Rajaji National Park. He hadn’t seen a single bat since he started working with me. I wondered if he thought he’d rather find a Yeti than a figment of my imagination. Dwarfed by the hills, I looked around in awe and frustration; the undulating shrub-covered hills, the turquoise Song river and the redstarts flitting on its stones seemed to be asking sarcastically, “Who on earth gave you this bright idea of studying bats in the Himalayas?”
Who wouldn’t want to study bats in Uttarakhand? It’s interesting in more ways than one. Uttarakhand has a great diversity of habitats which corresponds to the vast gradient of elevation. The foothills are dominated by sal forests, and as one goes higher the vegetation changes – in ascending order – to forests of pine, oak mixed with rhododendrons, deodar, fir and spruce. This diversity of habitats enhances the biodiversity of the hills. On account of its geographical position, Uttarakhand sits at a point where species assemblages from Europe, the Far East and peninsular India meet. However, the most important reason that very few people know about is that Uttarakhand is home to one of the rarest bats in India – the Peters’ Tube-nosed Bat (Harpiola grisea). This species was first discovered in 1872 by German biologist, Dr. W. Peters from a specimen collected by Captain Hutton in Jharipani (Jeripanee in colonial literature) near Mussoorie. However, it became lost as soon as it was found. There were appallingly few bat surveys in the 20th Century in Uttarakhand and all of them failed to find the Peters’ Bat. With no records for more than 100 years and the deteriorating quality of its habitat (especially in Mussoorie), doubts were raised if the species was extinct, when in 2002 a team of Zoological Survey of India scientists rediscovered the Peters’ Bat—not in Uttarakhand but—across the country in Mizoram! No sightings since then, the Peters’ Bat remains as enigmatic as ever. Its status, especially in Uttarakhand, is anybody’s guess.
With this background I set off to explore the hills of Garhwal to create an inventory of bats and their ultrasound calls (which are species-specific). I started my work around Dehradun. After a frustrating first week my luck took a turn for the better after my friend, Bhaskar Bora interrogated all his local friends and dug out information about a cave roughly 30 km from Dehradun. We caught the largest insectivorous bat of India there – the Great Himalayan Leaf-nosed Bat (Hipposideros armiger). This bat has a thickset face and carries a grumpy expression resembling that of a bull dog! My mistnet captures started getting better due to a combination of gradually warming weather and increasing familiarity with the terrain. Zareef and I set nets up every night at placid, shallow and secluded parts of the many rivers that flow into Dehradun. The results were highly encouraging. In just five nights we had caught 15 species of bats; three-fourths of these were new to me (or ‘lifers’ as we call them in birding parlance). There were two interesting Eurasian species, the Common Noctule (Nyctalus noctula) and the Leisler’s Bat, or simply, Lesser Noctule (Nyctalus leisleri). These are among the most common bats in Europe but are restricted only to the Western Himalayas in India. On our last night of netting at Dehradun we went to a fabulous and isolated gorge. A Rock Eagle-Owl flew off angrily, disturbed by our presence. A Himalayan Palm Civet—inquisitive as ever—paused briefly to check what we were up to. I looked around at the steep slopes that surrounded us and whispered to Zareef that it seems like a suitable habitat for catching free-tailed bats. Zareef and I checked our nets fifteen minutes after dusk and were sent into the panic that a mother experiences on seeing her kid cross a road! The nets were full of European Free-tailed Bats (Tadarida teniotis), a species that had only been reported from three other locations in India! Excitement replaced our panic as I learnt that ours was the first record from Western Himalayas. These free-tailed bats are peculiar animals with ears that come up and ahead of the face. They also have a shrew-like tail. Their body is marked by a characteristic, pungent, musky odour. At hand, they are the most docile of all bats. The real fun, however, is to release them after all the data are collected. Free-tailed bats are the swifts of the bat world. Their long and pointed wings do not allow them to get enough lift for taking off if dropped from a height of six feet. Even if you open your palm and coax them to fly they would refuse to take off. So the only way to make them fly is to throw them up in the air! In four hours we had caught well over 30 individuals – which meant more than 15 high-throw competitions between Zareef and myself!
After our success at the foothills we were ready to move to the next difficulty level where the terrain was rough and rugged, and forests transformed into splendid combinations of oak, pine, rhododendron and deodar. Mussoorie is honestly not quite the ‘Queen of the Hills’. Unabated development and boisterous tourists have reduced this once-harmonious town to a sinkhole. Landour, however, is the place that I hold in high regards. Despite human pressures there are still fragments of quality oak forest, more than of half of which lies in the property of Woodstock School. The school gladly allowed me to work inside their property with great results. As an aside, Landour also has some fine cafes and bakeries. On a related note, you might even meet some bats at the cafes while enjoying a meal that is more than luxurious during field days! One evening, I was chatting with Virender Singh Pawar, the award-winning naturalist of Jabarkhet Nature Reserve when we spotted a group of bats gracefully gliding and hawking moths resting on the window of an uptown café. The manager was a nice man and having remembered me from a previous dinner at the restaurant, he knew that I wasn’t a freeloader when I sought his permission to catch bats from their window. However, he asked us to wait until the guests had left for he feared that they might abandon their dinner and the café altogether at the sight of a bat. Once the guests had left, it took only three sweeps with a modified butterfly net to net one of the bats. It was an adorable Intermediate Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus affinis).
The most tranquil part of Mussoorie lies roughly 10 km west of the library on the road to Kempty Falls. This is Benog Wildlife Sanctuary, the erstwhile home of two legends of Uttarakhand – Sir George Everest and Himalayan Quail! My expectations were raised as soon as I stepped here; a pair of flamboyant Long-tailed Broadbills was nesting right at our doorstep! The same night we put up a mistnet at a brook in a wonderful oak forest. We trapped until 1 am and caught seven species, including my second favourite, the Indian Barbastelle (Barbastella darjelingensis). Barbastelles are probably the oddest among the Old World bats. They are a dark sooty-black in colour and their ears face exactly forwards, just like our eyes!
Two weeks later we cut across the Devbhoomi, following the Ganga in her majestic form and the furious Alakananda to reach our destination. Mandal valley situated at 1600 m in the lap of Kedarnath is as idyllic as I had imagined. It is best described as a scene straight out of our clichéd childhood drawings of ‘A Scenery’! Mandal is the gateway to Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary where I spent my best days and nights trapping bats and watching wildlife. From 1500-3000 m we netted at various habitats catching an assortment of common and rare bats. The first breakthrough came when we noticed an unusual habitat at 2500 m. It was a neat clearing in the middle of relatively undisturbed broadleaved forest and my intuition told me that something interesting might try and cross the clearing and get caught if we placed a net across it. I didn’t have any species in mind, nor was I greatly expectant. We hadn’t caught anything until 11 pm and the persistent hoots of the Mountain Scops Owl were turning into a lullaby. Just when we decided to pack-up I spotted a tiny leaf-like object wriggling in the mistnet and rushed to remove it. It was a small bat, densely covered in golden-yellow hair like a Yeti. Then I checked the face clearly and its tube-like, bifurcating nostrils gave away its identity. It was a Little Tube-nosed Bat (Murina aurata) – a new record for Uttarakhand and also the first tube-nosed bat that I had seen in my life! After this we caught three other species of tube-nosed bats (but not the rare Peter’s Tube-nosed!) from other parts of the state and two of them were new records. These fascinating bats are strict forest dwellers and hence important indicator species. The next night we finally caught my favourite bat. At 3000 m, we found a serene brook lined by rhododendrons at the intersection of sub-alpine forests and alpine meadows (bugyal). Just an hour ago, we had startled the elusive Himalayan Musk Deer that hopped out the brook and stared at us for a while before darting away. We had also accidentally flushed the cryptic Eurasian Woodcock while setting up our net. I knew luck was on our side. At 9.30 pm, we caught the much anticipated Kashmir Long-eared Bat (Plecotus wardi). This is the cutest bat that I have had the privilege of seeing. Its beady eyes and large ears that are nearly the size of its body can sink the heart of the worst of bat haters! Data be gone, I just wanted to sit and marvel at that wonderful bat.
I am often asked why I decided to study bats. An honest answer is that I wanted to avoid competition from other wildlife scientists. But the larger answer is one that cannot be explained; it must be felt. It is the sense of exploration, of which Uttarakhand was a testimony. The hills, the darkness of the night and the inherent elusiveness of bats shrouded them in a three-layered veil. Five months and more than 30 species later, we managed to unravel some of their mysteries which will now serve as baseline information to address critical questions about the interactions of these enigmatic nocturnal wonders and their mystical land.
Note: An edited version of this article was published in Live Mint in May 2017 (https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ykDjfdBV3KEYYRIcrWhsGK/The-Chamgadarhs-of-Devbhoomi.html).
Blah Ka Nas 