Author: Bhautik | Naturalist at Svasara

The Giri’s Geckoella (Cyrtodactylus varadgirii) is a lizard endemic to India. It was discovered as recently as 2016 and was named after scientist Varad Giri. This lizard is a ground-dwelling lizard and found frequently on leaf litter on forest floors. They are nocturnal lizards; during the day can be found under wooden logs and rocks . They grow to a size of 6 centimetres in length. Widely distributed in India,  besides in forests they have also been found living in human-habituated urban landscapes.  The photographs featured as part of the blog have been taken at Svasara Jungle Lodge, Tadoba.

Blog Write-Up: #BhautikRDesai #SvasaraNaturalist

Pic Credits: #BhautikRDesai #PrasunMajumdar #SvasaraNaturalist

We naturalists at svasara enjoy nature walks with our guests. It helps us elevate our senses of spotting, hearing and exploring in general! Moreover, it is simply rewarding to get to observe intricate aspects of nature that we would otherwise tend to miss or overlook on the jeep safaris.

It was one such morning walk, when I noticed something peculiar, a surprise really, there was a green bee-eater bird stuck in the web of a giant wood spider. Birds often eat spiders to gain protein and they also use their web as a material to line their nests, but they are aware how dangerous a trap a web can be and hence, avoid getting entangled. But, today I found the predator helpless and struggling for life.

It was actually an amazing reminder of how nature has provided the “small” species creative defensive means. In most cases, spiders will chose not to eat birds caught in their web as they are normally too large for their tiny mouths! They hence, prefer to cut the web themselves to get rid of the “extra load” on the web. Despite knowing these facts, it still made me wonder the fate of this beautiful bird, we hence, observed for an hour but finding not much action on either of the creatures’ side, we decided to return to the lodge. Being a bird lover, the next day, I was happy and relieved to get the update that the green-bee eater had been lucky to escape!