Starlit Earth

CLN is teaming up with Naturalists, Bird Watchers and of course the Coorg Wildlife Society to bring out a series of world class photographs of the wildlife of Kodagu. Foremost amongst this is a collaboration with Dr. Bishan Monnappa.

In addition to being an exemplary wildlife photographer, Dr Bishan is an accomplished Orthopaedic Surgeon having done his MS in Orthopaedics at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal. He is proud alumni of St, Anne’s School at Virajpet (set up in 1841). After working at KMC Manipal he is now self-employed at his own hospital (P N M Hospital) at Gonikoppal. He is renowned for dealing with problems relating with the musculoskeletal system, with the utmost care and well kitted facilities.

The first of the series is titled Starlit Earth. The photographs and select text are the © of Dr. Bishan Monnappa.

Fireflies are a kind of winged beetles which use bio-luminescence as a tool for mating. The males display a species specific pattern of “flashing” (Pun intended) while flying through the air looking for a mate. These are responded to by a single flash by the female…which are perched on the leaves or branches… Interesting here is the synchronous flashing, exhibited by one percent of the 2000 species of fireflies around the world. The large group of fireflies produce synchronous, repetitive ,rhythmic flashes in unison…sometimes lighting up the whole forest at once….. There has been lot of hypothesis and postulates as to why it is so..starting from mate selection, increase of mate recognition going upto warning the competitors and predators….. But it is a mesmerising feeling to be standing amidst them in the middle of the forest and to be surrounded 360 degrees by millions of these stars within your reach..blinking in tandem, random, haphazardly and synchronously all at the same time…The Real 3D AVATAR…..No photographs or words can do justice to this phenomenon…..Here is a humble and a static expression of a Dynamic Phenomenon…. Shot in Coorg, Karnataka on 16th April 2015…f/3.2, ISO 3200, Shutter 30 sec,Manual at 14mm.

The 19th Century German missionary and chronicler Hermann Moegling documented the beauty of fireflies, vividly in his book as mentioned below:

I cannot refrain here, though it be at the risk of tiring the patience of the kind reader, from attempting a description of a natural phenomenon, peculiar in this degree of beauty to the April and May nights of Coorg. I advert to the yearly appearance of the fire-fly.

The beautiful insects are, I know, not peculiar to Coorg. They have their periods of nocturnal revelry all over India, I believe. But nowhere have I seen them in such astonishing abundance and brilliancy as in Coorg. A thunder storm, succeeded by a rich shower, has closed a sultry day. The sun has set unobserved. The Western sky is overhung with clouds. In the cloudless East, the full moon rises slowly. The air perfectly pellucid; the stars glittering in fresh glory; not a breath of wind; all still. You turn from the broad red orb of the rising moon to the host of golden stars on the deep azure, from them to the retreating clouds, lit up here by faint lightnings, there by the pale beams of the moon, their bold edges fringed with silver, and wonder at the beauties of the world above, where on the dark blue depths of heaven light seems to vie with light in the illumination of the vast dome, built by the unseen Master. But a scene of strange beauty is spread below. Shrub and bush and tree, as far as the eye can reach, burn with magic light. The ground, the air, teem with lustre, every leaf seems to have its own fairy lamp. The valley at your feet, the wooded hills to your right and left, the dark distant forest, all are lit up and gleam in ever varying splendour, as if every star had sent a representative to bear his part in this nightly illumination of the poor dark Earth. Whence all at once these innumerable lights ?.

No sound is heard, silently all these shining throngs pass before you in fantastic confusion. Look at this bush, that tree! Myriads of fiery sparks brighten up with red glare through the labyrinth of leaves and branches: a moment and they vanish. Now they flash up brighter than ever, as if this world of phosphoric lustre was animated by pulsations keeping regular time. You sit and look, and think you could sit all night beholding the fairy scene. I have seen nothing to be compared with these dissolving views, except perhaps the phosphoric splendour of our tropical seas, when under a soft breeze your boat glides through the placid waters in a starlight night, throwing out large furrows to the right and left, sparkling with myriads of blue lights, which spread strange brightness around the dark vessel, and gather again in its wake forming a long line of radiancy to mark its course over the deep.

End April and early May is the time of the year when the fireflies display their magic – please look out for this phenomenon at your plantations and send us pictures with your personal experiences and stories through SUBMIT POST tab. 
We will publish them if they pass the litmus test of clarity and enthusiasm!!