JUNGLE MIGRATION

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 242, 9 July 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

JUNGLE MIGRATION

Strange Happenings in Ceylon’s

Mountains

Once in every eleven years Ceylon’s mountain forests are the scene of events so strange that they come as a fitting climax to what must be one of the most curious of the unwritten chapters in natural history, writes John Hoc-kin, in the “Cornhill” magazine. In 1935 the eleven-year cycle came rouud again, provoking an unheavel unparalleled in the memory of those who have spent a lifetime studying jungle lore. The cause of these happenings at eleven-year intervals is the dowering of the Nilloo, a shrub growing abundantly in the forest above 5000 feet, and only blooming once so freely that thousands of acres of jungle become for a month a vast flower garden. The bees are the first guests at the forest banquet They arrive at the beginning of April, as the Nilloo bursts into blossom. What instinct draws them in such numbers to the mountain forests at exactly the right time to tap the lavish supplies of pale, scented honey is a mystery, but in March of every eleventh year anyone living within a fifty-mile radius of the centre of the Nilloo jungles will notice the unusual number of swarms zooming overhead, all flying in the same direction.' In the wake of the bees come the birds that prey on them—-the little beeeaters, so nimble of flight that, they will snap up any heavily-laden bee on the wing, and the honey-buzzards, robbers of the honeycombs the bees hang from the forest branches. In 1935 the bees came in unusual numbers, and that -was the beginning of the amazing events that followed, for more bees to pollinate the Nilloo flowers meant more of their favourite berries, and seeds for the pigeons, the jungle-fowl, the rats, the pigs, and the deer, and more birds and beasts to prey upon them. So, as soon as the honey season was passing, and the flowers bad begun to seed, the great invasion started. The pigeons came in thousands to glut themselves on the Nilloo berries; the jungle-fowl scratched, and fought, grew fat, and lost a little of their fear of guns; the pigs, visitors from the lowland forests perhaps a hundred miles away, grunted as they drove their snouts Into the carpet of Nilloo seeds; while the rats, feeding greedily, multiplied until there were millions of them. Meanwhile, above the banquet table, the big snake-eagles and the smaller chikras, circled, diving down when they were hungry to seize reptile or rat. At night owls took up the challenge, and finding rats so easy to kill, only tore them open to devour liver, lungs, and heart. While, padding through the

forest glades, the leopards, las r arrivals at the jungle feast, find game so plentiful that they need only to exert a little of their lightning cun.llng to secure more meat than they can eat. They are drawn to the Nilloo jungle by the instinct to keep close to their food supply, and not by the mysterious urge which must have prompted other guests to forsake their usual haunts from almost unknown country. Perhaps it is because this sixth sense is lacking that the leopards always get left behind with the rats to enact the climax of the jungle drama. By the end of May, or early June, the Nilloo has dried and fallen, and the pigeons, pigs, aud jungle-fowl have all dispersed to lower elevations. Then strange things begin to happen. The deer, normally among the most retiring of creatures, begin to be found lying up on the tea estates in the district. Here they are harrassed by the coolies, but even that does not drive them back, for they prefer the clumsy hunting of man to the terrors of the forests when hungry leapards are on the prowl. ’

With the departure of the Invading hordes, the leopords’ food supply is cut short. Normally in the whole of this jungle area there may not be more than half a dozen leopards. In June, 1935. the forests were said to be full of them, but as long as the rats remained there was no need for them to starve.

Then came the climax. The rats began to die in tens of thousands. The mystery of these deaths was never solved. Starvation was certainly not the cause, for the rats were fat, so fat, in fact, that the Tamil coolies accounted for the deaths of the ones torn by owls by saying they bad burst. In conjunction with the fact that many of the rats seemed to be almost blind, the belief was held that a virulent epidemic had come to wipe them out in thousands.

The wholesale slaughter of the rata made the leopards’ position desperate. Feathers found in their droppings showed that they were hungrier than ever. That- hunger increased until some of them were driven to acts of desperation almost unique in Ceylon jungle history. Extraordinary examples of savagery on the part of an animal go easily frightened by man, led people to talk of the menace of the leopard. For several weeks that menace did exist. But gradually it dawned upon those leopards that there would be better hunting in their old haunts, or perhaps it was gnawing hunger that drove them away. One by one they followed the other Nilloo visitors to the lowlands, and the exodus was over—for another eleven years.