Ways of Seeing: Watching Wildlife From Near and Far

I spend most of my time in nature blissfully lost in a parallel world of tiny creatures — a world in which ants, spiders, wasps, and a million other things tell captivating stories. This minuscule world requires me to move slowly and stare at things long enough to have at least one person stop and question my sanity. For instance, when I point people to an ant-mimicking spider, most respond with gasps. Some, however, are convinced I do not know what a spider looks like (“Where’s the web?” they say). When I point to a twin-tailed spider camouflaged seamlessly in the bark of a tree, most people take a minute or two to find it. Because my life as a nature educator revolves around introducing people to animals like insects, spiders and sea slugs, I experienced a similar delay in processing seeing an animal more than a few metres ahead of me. Over the past 5-6 years, my experiences of the natural world have included very little time spent observing larger animals at a distance. It was time to look at nature anew. 

For two weeks in November 2022, I rambled around Munsyari, Uttarakhand and watched nature from a distance. A distance from which animals such as birds and mammals were reasonably comfortable with my presence and allowed me a peek into their daily lives. With help from local experts Ram, Raju, and Jagdish, I slowly discovered the joys of looking at animals that weren’t insects and spiders.

On my first evening in Munsiyari, we bumped into a pack of four Indian jackals at the edge of Munsiyari town. With daylight slowly fading into dusk, it took me a few seconds to see what Jagdish was pointing at. The jackals’ patchy black, grey and rusty red made them merge with the leaf-littered tarmac behind them. We watched the opportunistic omnivores search for food. Indian jackals hunt small prey such as rodents and reptiles; they also feed on fruits and scavenge animal remains. Their unfussy diets lead them to the edges of human settlements, where they sift through human-generated waste. The jackals moved from scanning the road to a patch of forest, where they raked through a dense layer of leaf litter in search of small prey. It was remarkable how their coats camouflaged with the forest floor as they did with the road.

Over the next few days, I had stopped staring exclusively at the ground, bushes, and trees around me. I spent most of my late mornings in Munsiyari looking up at griffons as they caught thermals and climbed spiral routes toward the sky. The magnificent birds had been on my bucket list for at least nine years. Admittedly, spotting an enormous bird with a 10-foot wingspan against a blue sky is hardly a sign that I am gaining the ability to find life at a distance. I began to pay attention to my other senses, particularly in forested patches. Despite doing some homework on birdcalls, I initially struggled with them in this new bioregion. Then, one morning, I heard the familiar sound of someone playing a snare drum solo on a tree trunk. My eyes followed my ears and took me to another bucket-list bird, the Himalayan woodpecker. The relatively small woodpecker (under 25 cm) hammered away at a tree bark in search of an invertebrate meal — insects and spiders are among its primary food. As the days went by, I became more attuned to auditory and visual cues from other birds. The tweets of the chestnut-headed tesia and the screeches of the monal became familiar sounds, the reds of the dark-breasted rosefinch, and the orange of the alpine accentor became distinct shades in my palette of memories.

Just when I felt like I was doing well at spotting larger creatures, an animal taught me that a few days of learning can only take you so far. After nearly five minutes of pointing and creative instructions such as “...see that cow? see that patch of grass? draw an equilateral triangle...” from three different people, I finally saw a group of four Himalayan goral, a gorgeous goat-antelope endemic to the Himalayas. To be fair, the goat-like animals were at least 700-800 m below us in a densely vegetated valley. They walked around a lush patch of grass nestled between trees and fed for nearly half an hour. It was amazing to sit at a distance and watch the gorals comfortably chomp on grass, relatively undisturbed. What was more impressive was how easily my nature walk companions spotted the animals from such a dizzying distance. Gorals have a coat of muted shades of brown that blend right in with their surroundings, and from where we were standing, they were just tiny dots in the landscape. The vultures of Munsiyari, with their remarkable eyesight, would have been proud of my human company that morning.

As I expanded my line of sight, I met an animal that felt like a reward for my efforts. Atop the chilly heights of Khaliya, I spotted a Himalayan pika scurrying from a small den to a patch of grass amid a vast blanket of snow. The Himalayan pika is found only at altitudes above 2,400 m in remote areas of Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Nepal, and Tibet. And I had the privilege of spending over 15 minutes watching this tiny relative of the rabbit gather grasses and seeds. The tailless pika is about 17 cm long, slightly longer than a ripe Alphonso mango and just about makes it to this list of animals larger than insects and spiders.

How does one go about spotting nature at a distance? First, you immerse yourself in the natural history of the space you hope to explore. You patiently observe the habitat and dig into the existing literature on the area and the lives it hosts. Second, and this is quite important, graciously accept the expertise of local communities, nature guides, and scientists.

I have spent years immersing myself in the context of tiny life forms, looking for nature within arm’s reach. Munsiyari’s people and wildlife reminded me that the world is filled with natural wonders, no matter where you look. It could be building a web between leaves, gliding between mountains, or hopping across the snow with a mouthful of grass.