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Today is the vernal equinox or the beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun rises exactly in the eastern direction and sets at a point on the horizon which marks the exact western direction. The sun remains above the horizon for twelve hours and remains below the horizon for the same period and so 'equinox.'

New leaves and shoots are on many trees. The Peltophorum or the Yellow Gold Mohur is abloom all over the campus. The golden petals drop off from the trees and form a virtual carpet under the trees. This tree is a native of Sri Lanka.

The Capparis creeper is in bloom in the NCC parade ground area and in many other areas on campus. This plant is the thondai (or athondai) creeper and the Pallava rulers used it as an emblem and wore a garland made of these flowers. The flower is mainly a bunch of delicate filaments which are white in the morning and turn pink in the evening.

March 25 :

Visited the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary. There is not much water in the tank. Most of the migratory birds have left and only the resident birds are here and that too in small numbers. Among the ducks are the Pintails, the Shovellers and the Garganeys who are winter visitors and breed thousands of miles away. A Pintail Duck was shot and killed in 1947 and on its leg it had a metal ring with an inscription in Russian. Dr J. P. Joshua, a former Professor of Zoology sent it to the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was found that the bird had been ringed in 1946 in a bird sanctuary in Russia in the Volga delta. Some of the birds that are found at Vedanthangal are also found in and around Tambaram.

March 31 :

Went to Arkonam to hunt for plant fossils. Ellis Shaw once took me to a tank called Namaneri where we had picked up curious-shaped stones. I went there again with some friends and located the site. It contains petrified wood-trees fossilized into hard material which looks like stone. Proper sectioning of the wood and looking through the microscope would reveal its characters. The material collected is with Jeyasingh and I hope someone would take it up for M.Phil. or Ph.D. work. Jeyasingh and I also picked up paleoliths or stone-age implements from the dry lake bed.

The stone-age implements can also be found on campus and at the Sriperumbatur lake bed. Men belonging to the Old Stone Age had left behind their implements for us to find them again after tens of thousands of years ! These implements were the only ones available to men who had not yet discovered the use of metals such as bronze and iron. Stone-age man made his tools often in the shape of an axe-head out of pebble-like stones formed out of quartzite. This material is not to be found occurring naturally on campus but can be seen as unused Cores at Sriperumbatur, which can be easily reached by bus or a two-wheeler within an hour.

April 15 :

The Forest Wagtails are seen in the garden. These birds are winter migrants who pass through the campus but they do not remain here as winter visitors do. The birds compare in size with the Common Sparrow but they have a long tail held in the horizontal position and wagged sideways. Other Wagtails wag their tails up and down. These interesting birds breed thousands of miles away in Siberia but visit Sri Lanka and the southern tip of India during the cold season. They have to escape the severe winter in their breeding grounds in order to survive and they cheer us up by their calls of spink, spink whenever they visit us.

There are other true migratory birds which are seen in campus every year. The Plaintive Cuckoo sometimes remains here for a few months as a winter visitor and sometimes it is seen only briefly in April when it passes through the campus as a winter migrant. The female Plaintive Cuckoo is chestnut coloured and looks quite different from the male which can easily be mistaken for a black Drongo. The Drongo, is a common black bird with a forked tail but the Cuckoo's tail is not forked.

April 27 :

It is getting hot but I must go to Thirukkalukundram to investigate whether the birds come regularly to be fed at the top of the hill or have disappeared. K. K. Neelakantan, a well-known ornithologist from Kerala had visited the hill temple in November and he had been told that the birds had not come for four days and he has raised a number of queries in the monthly Newsletter for Bird watchers. He wants to know whether the birds are dead or whether they have given up the habit of coming regularly for food. I started off for Tirukkalukundram which is on the Chingleput-Mahabalipuram Road with a camera but without the binoculars which had gone for cleaning.

I climbed the hill which is about 500 feet  high and pilgrims visit the seventh century temple built at the top of the hill. The main attraction is a pair of large birds which appear around noon time and eat the rice pudding (pongal) offered to it by a local man. There were about 200 pilgrims that day and they were sitting in an enclosure but the temple vimana was hidden from their view by trees. Around 11 a.m. an adult Scavenger Vulture (Neophron) took off from the temple tower. A nest with a juvenile bird could be clearly seen. Vultures have to depend upon hot currents of air to soar up and they cannot take off in the early mornings. I stayed there till the evening and the pair of Vultures made a trip to the nest every fifty minutes or so carrying offal. They did not alight on the platform to get the rice pudding from an attendant (pandaaram) who made several attempts to attract their attention with a large metal plate. He is not a priest as is commonly believed and does not wear a Sacred Thread. He had taken over the feeding from his uncle who had been doing it for years. I can now write to the Newsletter for Birdwatchers that the birds of Thirukkalukundram are not only alive but are bringing up a young one. I took some photographs showing the nest and the young one. This is not the first time that I have seen the birds breeding right there on the temple tower.

May 3 :

Almost all the winter visitors and the winter migrants have made their last appearance for the year. A few stragglers are heard/seen once in a way.

The Curry Leaf tree (Murraya konigii) in the garden is in bloom and is covered with a swarm of butterflies. Arul noted both the Indian Crow (Euploea core core) and the Glassy Blue Tiger (Danais limniaceae) butterflies. It is difficult to catch them at the top of the tree and to mark them with some label. Arul has kept in his notebook one butterfly preserved and dry with a label that he managed to stick on its forewing. Where do these butterflies come from so suddenly ? The Glassy Blue Tiger lays its eggs on the Marsdenia volubilis (Kurinjaa in Tamil) creeper found in the campus and the caterpillars eat the leaves. The Common Crow is a medium-sized butterfly which is dark brown in colour, and it lays its eggs on the Nerium (arali in Tamil) plant also found in the campus. The chrysalis turns into a metallic silver colour from which the adult butterfly emerges. We have to study the sudden appearance of butterflies in the campus to see whether they are migratory or not.

Even though May is hot, it is in this month we see the spectacular flowering of the Pride of India (Lagerstroemia Flos-Reginae) trees. The trees in the Arts Block quadrangle have a darker shade and those near the post-office have a lighter shade of mauve flowers.

May 23 :

Birds found on campus now are the permanent residents and the local migrants. Permanent residents like the Bulbuls, the Robins and the Doves breed here but the local migrants may breed in the nearby areas within a few hundred miles and visit the campus. It is very hot and birds visit our birdbath kept at the edge of the jungle a few feet from a southern window. The White-browed Bulbul has eaten up the pretty orchid (Spathogolotis) flowers kept in the flower pots. It is in the hot weather that we see the Bulbuls consuming flowers- sometimes part of the petals, sometimes the petals and sometimes the complete flowers. I have seen the Red-vented Bulbul eating the Ervatamia (nandiaavatta in Tamil) flowers at Chandran's place. Dayalan (Devanesen) reported to me having seen the Purple and the Loten's Sunbirds eating the white flowers of the cultivated Nandiaavatta flowers in their garden. Sanjeevi reports having seen birds carrying away Vinca rosea as well as the Jasmine flowers.

There is a Jungle Cat family living in the vicinity. There are two kittens which come out into the open and romp around. The adult is much larger than an ordinary grey cat and the kittens look like the small domestic grey cat. The other common mammals are the Black-naped Hare, the Mongoose and the common Squirrel. The other mammals like the Pole Cat and the Porcupine are nocturnal and are not normally seen during the day.

June 2 :

A group of tiny birds has started building a nest on a potted plant kept in front of the house. The plant, Euphorbia splendens has pretty red flowers and thorns. The tiny birds are Babblers and belong to the same family as the White-headed Babblers or the Seven Sisters (thavittu kuruvi in Tamil). The tiny Babblers have a reddish brown breast and abdomen and a white throat and it is generally brown on the upper side. They are called the Rufous-bellied Babblers and they usually travel in small groups. Even last year they built a nest in the same place but it got destroyed.

June 13 :

The nest was completed in one day about a week ago. There are three eggs. It has been reported that the large Babblers have nests with eggs laid by different individuals and the young chicks are fed by several members of the family belonging to one group. This practice is not followed by the tiny Rufous-bellied Babblers. Only the two parents share in the feeding of the young ones, who have the rufous coloured feathers like the adults.

June 15 :

The Weaver Birds or Baya (thookanan kuruvi) are found in the campus. These yellow and brown birds make intricate nests which sometimes get destroyed by the large Jungle Crow. The adult Weaver Birds eat a lot of grains from the agricultural land but they also eat insect larvae. There are hundreds of Munias which roost in the bushes near the house. These are the Spotted Munias. Munias are fancied as cage birds and are carried about by fortune tellers. We also have the White-throated and the White-backed Munias on campus which eat food grains as well as grass seeds. Once I saw a family of Munias using an abandoned nest for communal roosting. Most common birds do not go back to their nests once they learn to fly but the chattering Munias are different. On the way to the farm I saw six Munias which I have not seen on campus before. They were the Black-headed Munias. Before the farm got started there were very few Munias but now both their number as well as the number of species has gone up.

The weather is hot but the Gold Mohur (Delonix regia) trees look splendid with their spectacular display of crimson flowers. The native Golden Cassia (konrai) is in full bloom showing off its clusters of yellow flowers, like cascades of gold.

June 20 :

Arul and I tried to record the songs of the Magpie Robin (vannathi kuruvi) with the tape recorder without any special equipment. The Magpie Robin is a medium-sized bird in black and white. On the ground it keeps its tail cocked up and fights for its territory. Different individual birds sing different songs and Dr. Macphail used to enjoy the morning songs of these birds with such liquid quality of sound.

June 22 :

Today is summer solstice. The sun rises in the northernmost point on the horizon and it is beginning of the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere. From tomorrow the point of sunrise will gradually move towards the south and today is the beginning of Dakshinayana and the end of Uttarayana.

June 26 :

The wild coffee (Coffea wightiana) is in bloom after summer showers. A large black butterfly visits the whitish flowers. It looks like the Common Mormon butterfly which is usually black with some yellow spots. This specimen has some crimson in its wings. This is the rare cyrus form of the Common Mormon (Papilio polytes). There are three varieties of the Common Mormon. The female of the romulus variety looks like the Crimson Rose butterfly and the stichius variety looks like the Common Rose. The Crimson Rose (Polydorous hector} and the Common Rose (Polydorous aristolochiae) are large red-bodied butterflies which belong to the family of Swallowtails. The red-bodied butterflies are poisonous insects and they fly about boldly in their red and black attire. The female forms of Common Mormon are said to be edible and they closely mimic the Crimson Rose and the Common Rose. Birds which avoid the Crimson Rose might avoid attacking the females of the Common Mormon. The occurrence of the rare cyrus form of the Common Mormon can be treated as settled since I recall having seen two Common Mormon butterflies which had paired, in which the female resembled the male and it is characteristic of the cyrus form.

July 6 :

The Pied Crested Cuckoo is seen in the garden. It is a black and white bird slightly larger than the Bulbul and it has a fine black crest. Its food consists of, among other things, hairy caterpillars. It lays eggs in the nest of Babblers and lets the Babbler incubate and take care of its young ones. Another cuckoo which resembles a hawk is also found in Tambararn. It is the Hawk-cuckoo or the Brainfever bird. It makes a loud call during the day as well as the night. It used to keep people awake at night by its loud incessant call pee pe-oh and it was called the Brainfever Bird since the call would be so annoying to some people. This bird also lays its eggs in the nest of Babblers, and does not build a nest of its own.

July 11 :

Hundreds of butterflies are found congregating on the Duranta bushes with purplish blue flowers in front of Selaiyur Hall. One of the species seen is the Common Tiger (Danais plexippus) which is called the Monarch butterfly in North America. Monarch butterflies are known to migrate every year from the northern part of the United States to Mexico in the south over a distance of more than a thousand miles and also across the Atlantic from America to Europe. Could our butterflies belong to a migratory group? How do I know that these butterflies which had appeared suddenly had not just emerged from pupate? Well, some of the butterflies have faded and tattered wings indicating that they had not emerged fresh from the pupate recently. I can check this by marking them one by one. I had labels printed saying 'inform Christian College, Madras 45', with a space for number. I had the labels numbered, and I noted the species of the butterfly in my diary before it was marked. The label was stuck on the forewing using Durofix. Even though there were a large number of butterflies for a week very few labelled butterflies remained behind. The butterflies were mostly the Common Indian Crows or the Dark Blue Tigers. The Humming Bird, Hawk moth, a day-flying moth, was also seen along with the butterflies. The Duranta bushes are full of bluish flowers and so are the Pithecolobium trees nearby, thanks to a blocked drainage pipe from the Science Block.

August 8 :

Two large snakes measuring more than seven feet each were seen by a crowd of about hundred people near the eastern main gate. The snakes were found raising their heads and intertwining with each other and people thought they were Cobras. Ernst shot them dead, and they were found to be Rat snakes. Rat snakes are non-poisonous and they keep the rodent population down in the campus. There are four kinds of poisonous snakes in the campus and they are the Cobra, the Common Krait, the Russell's Viper and the Saw Scaled Viper. These poisonous snakes are rarely seen but the non-poisonous snakes like the Bronze-back and Wolf snake and the Green snake are more commonly seen. The poisonous Cobras and the non-poisonous Rat snakes look alike in size and coloration but one can distinguish between them if one gets a closer look at their heads.

August 20 :

A bird resembling the common Pariah Kite is seen mobbed by the crows. Its colour is a light grey and brown and it has a relatively long neck. On closer look it is surrounded by honey bees. It is the Crested Honey Buzzard which attacks honey combs and eats them up. George (Mathew) has also seen the Honey Buzzard at work very near his window.

August 25 :

A large number of red Velvet Mites (moodhaai in Tamil) are seen all over the campus. The red mites under the Mimecylon (kaayaa in Tamil) bushes walking on the dark blue petals had attracted the ancient Tamil poets who have sung about the mite and the blue flower. The mites, unlike true insects which have six legs, have eight legs. They remain underground before they emerge in large numbers.

At the end of August the first few migratory birds appear on campus even though the regular period starts during the middle of September.

September 8 :

Four fireflies were found on the verandah attracted by the electric light. The firefly is really a beetle and is the adult male of the Giant Glowworm (Lamprophorus tenebrosus). The larva is a black glow worm commonly met with in the jungle. The larvae live on snails, slugs, and earthworms and when it is very dry they dig themselves into the debris and remain inactive. The adult female remains in the form of a glowworm but changes its colour into dirty white and has a pair of antennae. The eggs are a little elastic and they hatch out if they are kept sufficiently moist. There is a smaller firefly called Luciola vespertina. It is also a small beetle and does not belong to any of the fly families.

September 11 :

Near the doctor's house a crow was seen frantically going about collecting food for a young male Koel. The male Koel is bluish black in colour and the female is spotted in grey. The Koels don't build any nest of their own but lay their eggs in the nest of a crow which brings up the young koels as its own. After getting fed the young Koel begged for more.

September 13 :

There is a Bustard Quail which is like the chick of a domestic hen. I saw two smaller quails, i.e. baby quails following the adult bird. It was a rare sight.

September 15 :

Cleaned up the loft where I found the camp cot which I had bought for taking to the bird-ringing camp organized by Salim Ali in the Little Rann of Cutch. The Potter Wasps had built a number of nests and they got broken. These familiar red mud wasps come into houses and class rooms especially during the month of March and build their nests fashioned like a small pot. They are seen usually near the fish pond sucking water before they fly off to a chosen spot on the ground where they moisten the mud and carry it in the form of tiny globules to the nest. Once they fashion the nest they go hunting for small caterpillars which are stored in the nest. The caterpillars are stung and kept alive in a kind of anaesthetized state and they lay eggs in the nest which is sealed by mud. The grubs of the wasp feed on the caterpillars and then pupate inside and then emerge from the nest by breaking open the nest. The Potter Wasp's population is controlled by a smaller blue wasp called the Needlewaisted Wasp which opens the nest and lays its eggs. The larvae of this blue wasp feed on the larvae of the larger Potter Wasp. The Needlewaisted Wasp seals the nest with a white substance. It also makes use of the electric plug holders in the house for its nest and the sockets meant for plugging in electrical appliances get blocked every year. When the mud wasps' nests got broken today accidentally, there were not caterpillars but instead of caterpillars many spiders and I took the whole lot to George (Phanuel) who found that fifty per cent of the material was made up of Jumping Spiders. There were no house spiders or large spiders.

I must be on the look out for the flowers of the spectacular Glory Lily or Glorioso superba (kaanthal in Tamil) and for the unforgettable white spray of Derris scandens flowers. The athondai flowers which bloomed in March have come to fruit and the fruit is reddish brown in colour which was compared to beautiful lips of women by ancient poets.

September 23 :

Today is the autumnal equinox. The sun once again rises exactly in the east point and sets at the west point on the horizon. It remains above the horizon for 12 hours and remains below for another twelve hours. This is also the beginning of the migratory season for birds at Tambaram.

September 26 :

A large yellow and black butterfly was seen in the Ipomea bushes and it turned out to be a Birdwing, one of the largest butterflies. It is much larger than the other black-and-red Swallowtail butterflies that we have on campus.

The Forest Wagtail is heard first and then it is seen in the garden. This small bird had flown thousands of miles, possibly touching the Andamans on its way and flying over the Bay of Bengal against the wind, which steadily blows from the southwest direction. Our campus is on the annual migratory path of these birds. I wonder why this winter migrant does not stay on in campus but goes on its way to Sri Lanka.

Sometimes the Forest Wagtails start arriving even a fortnight earlier and I can note their arrival only if I am very vigilant during this period and if I am specially on the look out for birds.

September 29 :

The Pittas are heard. The call is not clear like that of an adult and it must be an immature bird learning the art of giving the characteristic double whistle. How do immature birds know the way? The Pitta is a beautiful bird of the scrub jungle and its loud regular calls both in the morning and in the evening cannot be easily missed. It is smaller than a Mynah and it hops about on the ground in the bushes and the edge of the jungle. Its multicoloured feathers include red, green, blue, white and fawn. It breeds in the foothills of the Himalayas and one of its Tamil names is Kaasaanaatu kuruvi.

October 13 :

Saw a planarian in the garden. These flat worms are shiny black in colour and move about leaving a trail of mucous like the snails. It has a fan-shaped head edged with white. It is a perfectly harmless creature but residents on campus usually try to destroy it on the usual assumption that anything unusual must be potentially harmful. This principle runs through the fabric of south Indian life and a typical villager would easily believe that any unusual celestial phenomena like an eclipse or the appearance of an unusual collection of planets must foretell doom. The planarian, identified as Bipalium univitatum regenerates itself when cut into two or three pieces. I have seen some full-grown worms of about 100 mms length breaking themselves into smaller lengths which grow a head and a tail in due course. These also hatch out from eggs and the young ones are brownish in colour. These can be kept alive by keeping them under moist conditions.

October 23 :

The migratory season is on. The winter migrants like the Forest Wagtails have left, and the winter visitors that come after them stay here on campus for the cold season. Large formation of birds in flight are seen in the morning and in the evening. Looking through the binoculars they are not little birds but fat ducks who manage to be on the wing by rapid wing beats. It is a sight to be seen to be believed. The flocks arrive from the NNE direction. These ducks will distribute themselves among the various tanks throughout Tamil Nadu including tie Vedanthangal bird sanctuary.

What we can observe on campus are the smaller winter visitors. The Blue throated Flycatcher is a small flycatcher of the size of a common Sparrow. It marks out its territory by its incessant chatter and a melodious song. The male is a blue and orange bird with plenty of white and ultramarine thrown in. The female is a duller brown bird with no blue in it. The Orange-headed Ground Thrush is another regular visitor to the campus. It is a little smaller than a Mynah and it hops about on the ground. Its orange head contrasts with its bluish green wings. There is some difference between the male and the female in the colour of the wings. These beautiful birds can be seen in most gardens every year and these are true winter visitors. The small Dull Green Leaf Warbler is the most common winter visitor which visits every tree on the campus. It is quite small and merges neatly with the colour of the leaves.

November 11 :

The Glory Lily plant with its red and yellow flowers is full of black caterpillars. The tip of the plant has been eaten up and the plant cannot give any more blooms this year. It will come up again next year from the bulb. If it blooms in September it escapes from the caterpillars but in November it is difficult to save it from them. The same kind of caterpillars are also found on other lily plants and the leaves get completely destroyed. I must find out what it is. When kept in a bottle and fed with leaves it burrows itself into the earth at the bottom of the bottle and a pupa is formed. A small purplish moth blotched with black and yellow emerged. After some difficulty and going through page after page of the Fauna Volumes I identified it as Polytela gloriosae, a moth which is named after the Glorioso plant.

November 26 :

Purushotham (Samuel) reported that a small wader which was dissected yesterday in the II B.Sc. practical class had a ring on its leg. The young man who had discovered the ring after completing the dissection had not seen the ring before he started the dissection. The small aluminium metal ring was flattened out and cleaned. It had three lines of mostly illegible writing. I can make out the number 478377 and the legend INFORM ... MOSKWA. The attenders supplied the information that the bird was caught in a snare at Perungalathur lake. If this information reaches the Russian ornithologists who ringed the bird then it would establish the distance travelled by this bird visitor from Russia to Tambaram in South India. Rings that are used in India come in different sizes suitable for the different birds and the ring carries a legend asking the people to inform the Bombay Natural History Society. The ring is put round a leg and squeezed tight by a special pair of pliers. The number of the ring is recorded in a special ledger along with the date, place and the identification of the bird before it is released. Birds are caught using a nylon mist net into which birds get entangled.

December 22 :

Today is winter solstice and the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun has reached the southernmost point at the time of rising from the horizon. In the days to come the point at which the sun rises will move slowly towards the north and today is the beginning of Uttarayana. In Tamil Nadu we wait till 14th January which is the Pongal day, to realize that northern movement of the sun has begun.

January 1 :

Today is the day when bird counts are made in many countries and the maximum number of birds are expected to be found on a day like this. Unusual birds like the Southern Black Bird which is found on the hills come down to Tambaram and stay here for a few days.

January 3 :

I collected some red-and-black caterpillars from the Aristolochia indica plant. Its fruits are like little baskets which children use as toy baskets and adults in dry flower arrangements. These caterpillars are the larvae of the Crimson Rose and the Common Rose butterflies. The Common Rose has some white on its hind wings and its caterpillar has a tiny white band. These caterpillars got covered with tiny white egg-like objects which puzzled me. In the laboratory Sanjeevi observed the objects through a microscope and found these were cocoons. I kept the cocoons carefully and out of them tiny Braconid wasps emerged. The caterpillar which was the host of the parasitic wasps died. The Zoological Survey of India identified the wasp as Apanteles aristolochiae. The butterfly population gets checked by the tiny wasps. The pupate of the Common Rose remains as such for three to five months during the hot weather; the adult butterflies emerge after the rains when the atmosphere is sufficiently wet.

January 6 :

Early in the morning when it was still dark outside, I was awakened by a sharp call of a bird. I opened the front door and switched on the verandah light. On the floor was a nest and also a chick a few feet away. This is the end of a long story which goes back to the first week of July when a Loten's Sunbird (also called the Indian Maroonbreasted Sunbird) built its nest in the verandah above the light. The nest hung from the dry thorny branches of the Zyzyphus oenoplia plant which I had fixed to the ceiling to keep the bats away. The male Sunbird has a long curved beak and is brilliantly coloured with purple and green. The female is yellowish in colour like the females of the other sunbirds. The nest was used repeatedly four times from July to January and this is the fourth time. This habit of this sunbird to reuse the nest has been noted in Sri Lanka but it is the first time it is noted in India. I must report it in the Newsletter for Birdwatchers. I restored the chick to the parent birds which were busy feeding another young one in the nearby jungle.

January 14 :

Today is Pongal day. If Pongal is the beginning of Uttarayana then it would have been celebrated centuries ago on December 22 the true date of the beginning of Uttarayana, the time in which the rising point of the sun on the horizon starts moving towards the north.

A large number of Common Crow and Dark Blue Tiger butterflies congregate on Crotalaria retusa (kilukiluppai in Tamil) plants which have yellow flowers. The butterflies scratch the leaves with their legs and suck the juice with their probosces. The butterflies cannot eat leaves and do not have mouths. The chemicals in the juice probably give the butterflies protection against predators.

February 21 :

Arul and I went to Sriperumbatur to look for stone-age implements and also fossils. On the lake we have white clayish material known as the Sriperumbatur shale. When pieces of shale are broken with a hammer we sometimes come across leaf impressions of plants of the bygone period. These trees had lived here tens of millions of years ago. The trees with their leaves must have got buried in the white clay which has preserved them for millions of years. The trunk also would have been preserved in a petrified form which can be mistaken for an ordinary piece of stone. Arul was lucky to pick up a fossil wood which can be sectioned and analysed in the Botany department. The fossil material of Sriperumbatur are much older in geological time than the petrified trees of Tiruvakkarai National Park near Pondichery where the fossil material is available in abundance.

February 24 :

The winter visitors have begun their return migration. George (Mathew) also reported seeing huge flocks of ducks flying overhead in the NNE direction. Some of the flocks may be more than a furlong long with two or three V-shaped formations merged into one. The smaller birds start moving out one by one. A Blue-throated Flycatcher which had remained in the garden for three or four months is no longer heard. The Pitta in the garden may cease calling and we know that the birds are leaving. The main movement is during the months of March and April. The winter migrants like the Forest Wagtail which pass through the campus are seen a little later.

March 20 :

This is the last day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The earth has completed its course round the sun. Tomorrow is the vernal equinox the first day of another spring and another new year.