Coffee agroforests are home to diverse animals and working along with them is a mystery. You see their trails, marking and scat but not the animals as such. Following animal tracks is always fun as it always tells a story. Once while following an elephant trail, I could see how the baby elephant had playfully run all over the place, whereas the adults would have made a straight path without any deviation. Elephants visit coffee agroforests almost every day, What do they do? What do they feed on?
Talking to farmers and observing the elephant trails over the years, I observed that they feed on jack fruits, fruit trees, and bamboo plants. They also playfully bring down small trees, coffee plants and rub their backs against the same spots in different locations. Firstly, I wanted to see how they get to the jackfruits on the higher branches. I checked the jackfruit trees and found deep tusk marks as if the elephant tried to shake the tree to make the jackfruit fall down or it tried standing on two legs to reach the jackfruits on the lower branch. In order to capture these much elusive creatures moving happily in coffee agroforests in the night and feeding on the jackfruit, I set up a few camera traps and was surprised with quite a few models. The loner, small Indian civet, Tickell’s blue flycatcher and the happy couple.
I could not capture the elephants feeding on the tree but did observe quite a few models curious about my camera traps who almost took my camera down 🙂 Happy watching the magnificent giants living amongst us in the coffee agroforest.
