Her Little Prince…
A cub awakes with his mother’s call
Not the one that pierces nature’s walls…
But a calm & loving sound, of firm re-bounce
One of motherhood’s delicate squalls…
Race the cub does, to his mother’s gentle care
With one wary eye, watching us humans there…
Yet confident in his hops, knowing we dare not
He claims his loving brushes, licks and stares…
This tiger cub, his mother’s little prince
One who stood so wary, yet surely evinced…
Through mother’s loving licks, his naughty gimmicks
Rendered him a darling, full of exuberance…
May he grow to growl like his father
Expanding his lands, further and further…
Under his mother’s tutelage, he will make a fine passage
From a child to manhood, strong and steadier…
- Raghavendran Kandaswami -
This queen’s family rolls the dice every season – this season, they’ve made plenty of appearances so far – some with the mother and others, with both parents in tow. This lady, the grand matriarch (Irdi Nallah or Sukhribodi female) of Kolsa range of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in eastern Maharashtra, is of reasonable age for a tigress with cubs and will possibly soon be led out of her territory, probably by a female cub from her current litter. However, the grit with which she has held territory for so long is testimony of a true warrior tigress. While her daughter has moved territory occupied by her, where she raised two, maybe even three litters; this female stands strong reigning over her lands in full.
We’ve been fortunate to see three of her four litters. This time, having seen her more closely with younger cubs and with past understanding by observing her whereabouts, we reckon, this family is going to be a treat to watch this summer.
Having said that, the reality of a tiger’s territorial landscape and psychographic conditioning is sometimes much different from how we usually see it. We prefer boundaries, defined by empirical observations. They do too, but only psychologically. While tigers protect their turf as much as humans do, their ability to adapt makes them more agile than we believe them to be.
As humans, we prefer a degree of finiteness to everything, driven by a strong sense to explain a phenomenon. While most occurring phenomena can be explained, much of a tiger’s life is fraught with challenges that pushes their boundaries, making them explore more than we can imagine. For example, a popular tigress’ territorial range in the central India landscape was presumed to be the size of a normal tigress’ range. However, her monitoring through radio-collaring has yielded information of her territorial range being far greater than what is usually observed non-intrusively.
However, this mother has a definitive territory when she is raising a family and with cubs like that, the range will be seeing a bright future…
31 Dec 2021, Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Chandrapur, Maharashtra