A STRANGE SIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 115, 18 May 1938, Page 9

A STRANGE SIGHT

JUNGLE MIGRATION

HAPPENINGS IN CEYLON

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 Hockin in the "Cornhill Magazine"). In 1935 the eleven-year cycle came round again, provoking an upheaval unparalleled in the memory: of those who have spent a life-time studying jungle lore. ' The cause of these happenings -at eleven-year intervals is the flowerihg of the Nilloo, a shrub growing abundantly in the forest above 5000 feet, ; and only blooming once so freely that 1 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 draw* them in such numbers to the mountain forests at exactly the right time to tap the lavish supplies of pafle, 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 swar#is zooming overhead, all flying in the same direction. THE BIRDS FOLLOW. In the wake of the bees, come ijie birds that prey on them—the little bee-eaters, so nimble of flight that they will snap up any heavily laden bee on the wing, andjhe honey-buz-zards, robbers of the honeycombs ,the bees hang from the forest branches. In 1835 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, Afce 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 had 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 Nill&o seeds; while" the rats, feeding greedily, multiplied until there were millions of them. THE LEOPARDS LAST. ~ ', Meanwhile, above the banquet table- . the big snake-eagles and the smaller chickras circled, diving down whea they were hungry to seize reptile-of rat. At night owls took up the challenge, and finding rats so easy to kSJI, ■ only tore them open to devour liven lungs, and heart. While, padding through the forest glades, the leopards, last arrivals at the jungle feast, find game so plentiful that they need only exert a little of their lightning cunning 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 promoted the other guests to forsake their usual haunts*from almost unknown country. Perhaps it is •"because this sixth sense is flacking tH&t 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, and 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 harassed' by the coolies, but even that does ijot drive them back, for they prefer the clumsy hunting of man to the. terrors of the forests when hungry leopards, are on the prowl. THE RATS DUB Off. With, 1 the departure of the invading hordes, the leopards' food supply is cut short. Normally in the whpli* of this jungle area there may not toe 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, fats ' began to die in tens of thousands. The mystery of these deaths was never " solved. Starvation was certainly riot 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 had 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-rats made the leopards' position desperate. \ Feathers found in their droppings showed that they were hungrier tha£n 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 so easily frightened by*-man led people to talk of the menace of the leopard, For several weeks that megace did exist. But gradually it dawned upon those leopards that there woulU be better hunting in their old haunts, or perhaps it • was gnawing hunger that drove them away. One by one they foils-wed the other Nilloo visitors to the lowlands, and the exodas was over—for another eleven years. ~