More at http://www.sanctuaryasia.com |In the Field
By Tarun Menon
FACING PAGE A diminutive Oriental White-eye braves the cold in
search of its next meal.
If you have grown up in peninsular India like me, acorns
and pine cones existed mostly in Western literature, or
in my case, American cartoons featuring chipmunks! The
thought of something so quintessentially temperate
existing in a largely tropical country barely crosses one’s
mind. Yet in the western Himalaya, which usually evokes
images of snow-capped peaks, glaciers, conifers and even
rocky meadows, the temperate broad-leaved oak forests
can be encountered along the way at an elevation of
1,500 m. to 3,000 m.
These forests are made of several evergreen oak
species (The oak, though a textbook example of a
deciduous tree, is actually evergreen in India), but what is
truly unique about them is that they do not have much
diversity in tree species. Single species stands of trees like
banj Quercus leucotrichophora, tillonj Quercus fl oribunda
or kharsu Quercus semecarpifolia dominate the forest as
one travels upwards. However, the lack of diversity in tree
species is more than made up for by the immense variety
of shrubs, herbs, mosses, creepers, lichens and epiphytes
found in the understory nurtured by a dense canopy of
complexly-branching trees. This kind of forest structure
thus gives rise to a number of niches and habitats for
diverse fauna - especially of the feathered kind to feed
and nest in.