Shikra - The Abandoned Hunter

Jhalana Reserve Forest, Jaipur

The genetic race for domination of this planet is pretty much over for our species at this time. Humans have taken the prize, that is the world’s environment and every other species is now dependant on the Man Beast with no chance of catching up. Insects will always rule as far as sheer numbers go. In fact, we still don’t have any names for millions of species of those guys. That said, every species in the world will adjust and evolve to this world and environment as shaped by The Man at this time. What’s funny though is that things in this system seldom stay constant historically and a spanner usually finds its way into the works just when you think a hierarchy of pecking order among the different species is in place. Our lives are too short and our recorded history too brief for all of us to comprehend the true scale, nature and impact of chance, causality and evolution on the life on this planet. The planet has hit the reset button 5 times with major extinction events. The closest we came to that was during the Younger Dryas, between 12900 and 11600 years ago. Interestingly, we’re just starting to speculate that we lost almost half of Humanity then along with advanced civilizations like Atlantis and Lemuria. We’re also just starting to narrow the cause of that reboot down to an asteroid strike which actually caused the Biblical Flood. Wasn’t the first strike, first flood or first anything and it’s rather unlikely that a bunch of Penguins trekked from Antarctica to the Middle East to get on any boat to save themselves. What came from the sky was a huge rock and by chance. In the larger scale and scope of things, this stuff just happens and will happen again unless prepared for. Ref : “Beyond Armageddon.”

So as things are, our world has changed to a lower oxygen environment where, smaller cousins of larger animals find more success in human built urban settings. Rodents and Insects thrive in human cities and that draws their predators like Leopards who are smaller, non confrontational cousins to Tigers and among birds, smaller raptors that can maneuver in urban environments like the Kites and in India’s case, The Shikra, which translates to, “The Hunter”, have seen success and grown in numbers leaving behind numbers of the larger and once successful Eagles and Vultures.

Shikar in Hindi translates to “The Hunt” and Shikra, to “The Hunter”. Now, when a 10th Century language like Hindi names a species as “The Hunter”, that says a lot itself. Thing is that Humans have used animals for their strengths since they got wise to domestication. Falconers who were very popular in India since 500 BC or so realized that the Shikra although small at 25 -30 cm for a Raptor, was an easy to train, prolific hunter who adjusted all too well with Humans and they used this bird through the centuries to do the real hunting that fed larger falcons and to take down other birds. These smaller guys were doing the grunt work in their falconing hierarchy of tasks for centuries and easily taking on much bigger birds than themselves in combat. Not many falconers recruiting these days but the partnership has obviously been pretty profitable for both species. Causality takes over here and it’s no surprise that we have no idea how many of these guys exist right now. We broadly expect the number to be between 500,000 to 999, 999. We brought them into our towns and villages and now they’re smart enough to live around those while they stay out of our hair as much as they can while continuing to handle pest populations for us.

Our “Hunter” is known as the Little Banded Goshawk in Africa and is very similar in appearance and behavior to The Chinese Sparrowhawk, Eurasian Goshawk and Eurasian Sparrowhawk. The feed on rodents, insects, lizards, small bats and other birds mainly. People have reported Babblers getting together in groups to fight them off and Kingfishers getting into aerial fights where they dive into foliage and even into the water to get away from The Shikra.

The Shikra in the photos is a huntress from Jhalana. Her yellow irises show that. The males have red irises. This was a very special day for me when I went back to the forest after the rain and its reflecting, refracting light. The whole place was all lit up like I was in a fairy tale or movie dream sequence. I wrote about that magic in "The Dazzling Forest" and it’s the pictures of this Shikra in that light bathed forest that made it all worthwhile to be hiding my cam under the seat through the rain. What struck me the most was that she picked up on me from so far away and gave me that judgmental look with those pretty eyes on seeing me. I just had to have that look and she held it too, for a while. Her eyes and the forest just matched so well in that magical setting. Amazingly lucky, that coincidence that totally made these pictures special.

Coming back to how different species on this planet all evolve as per the Master Human Race now. Pigeons and Shikras were both useful for Humans. One was a cute and fashionable pet at a time and also delivered our messages while the other hunted for us. They changed themselves because of that association that lasted centuries. Well, the Pigeon just forages around our dwellings these days, pretty much characterless without its Man given purpose and I see so much literature calling them pests. People forget that we’re the ones that made them this way while enabling their population explosion. The Shikra went the hunters way cause it retained that skill (that we exploiated) and can still use it to have character. It pretty much stays out of our way these days while using what we taught it to continue advancing it’s place in the planet’s genetic race for survival which is still on for all of the other species.

It’s Evolution Baby !