A species of squirrel endemic to Western Ghats called Nilgiri Palm Squirrel (Funambulus sublineatus) was spotted on December 24 in the Bolumvampatty Range in Coimbatore Forest Division by Prabhakar Veerarajendran of Osai, an NGO involved in conservation.
He was there on field work on butterflies, when he spotted a pair of these squirrels. The same thing is known as the Dusky Palm Squirrel (Funambulus obscurus) in Sri Lanka.
The squirrel was spotted in the Boluvambatty Range, which is in the southern part of the Coimbatore Forest Division.
And there is now a need to study its population here and its distribution to see if the Boluvambatty squirrels are connected to the ones in the Nilgiris and if they share a gene flow.
The Nilgiri Palm Squirrel is smaller and darker compared to the Indian Palm squirrel (Funambulus obscurus) which we can see all over Tamil Nadu in trees near our houses.
A small rare bird, the Black Baza (Aviceda leuphotes) found in South Asia and South East Asia, was sighted at Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) earlier this month by Tamilmarai and Vetri of OSAI.
They are migratory birds that winter in the south of the Peninsula and Sri Lanka. The black bazas have short and stout legs and feet with strong talons. They have a prominent crest and are found in dense forest, often in small groups. They feed mainly on insects.