Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
Imagine if forest, rivers and air enjoyed rights just as we do. Next week, Ecuador will vote to give nature her rights. If passed, the law could be the first ever reversal of anthropocentric frameworks in Momma Nature’s favour. Let’s wait and see. More The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife,…
The BBC has a meditative article around whales, and a literary great to whose work the whale was central. Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Herman Melville pondered the future of the whale in a chapter titled Does The Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? Will He Perish? Melville, a seafarer, wrote…
If you are not entirely new to penguins and their mysterious ways, you’d know that not all of them prefer to live in snow and ice. The fantastic GeoBeats online video community has a feature on penguins in Patagonia. What surprises me is how these birds nest so casually despite…
William Blake wrote: A Robin Redbreast in a cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. Prisons may be a good place for conservation education to begin. And prisoners may turn out to be the most sincere conservationists. But the general public – many of whom are better off incarcerated –…
There are times when a species introduces itself to you – sometimes ceremoniously, but often without fanfare. This is a seminal moment in the life of any naturalist or nature enthusiast. I remember one such feeling way back in 2001 – of being in the company of sage, wise elders…
A shortage of fish is causing nesting guillemots to kill their neighbours’ chicks. Scientists studying these hardy British birds in a colony in the Firth of Forth are anxious about an impending catastrophe. Guillemots are highly social and huddle together in vast colonies to protect themselves against marauding gulls and…
Sarah Palin, whom we love to hate for at least two things – Republican and pro-hunting – has now been condemned by our loosely united fraternity of eco-enthusiasts as a ‘global warming denier.’ Cute. Arizona’s Centre for Biological Diversity has awarded Palin the Rubber Dodo award for insisting that the…
Via AB Apana’s very engaging blog, I came across WildFilmHistory, a riveting website that chronicles one hundred years of wildlife filmmaking. The website hosts profiles of nearly a hundred wildlife filmmakers from the familiar to the obscure – Jacques Cousteau, Gerald Durrell, David Attenborough, George Schaller, Doug Allen, Jen and…
The second newsletter from the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is out. This fascinating and ambitious project compiles the work of several researchers in a very attractive and user-friendly format. A web of webs, it comprises several sites linked together in a daisy chain, sort of like life itself. Content partners…
Wildlife Direct links to a large number of excellent wildlife blogs from around Africa. The list also covers a blog about Orangutans in Malaysia, Snub-nosed Monkeys in Vietnam, Amazon Parrots and a blog on the wildlife of the Seychelles. An excellent resource. More here Technorati Tags: Wildlife Direct, conservation, blogs…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFm8xWmIyF0] For the second time (the video above is the first sighting), a Sumatran rhino in Borneo has shown itself on camera. This guy is one of about 25 or 50 individuals known to remain in the wild. A camera trap was successful in capturing the subject, thought to be…
KolkataBirds has compiled a very interesting showcase of the best bird photographers in India. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that brushes aside all criticism or opinions one may have of this list and the methods employed to compile it. It’s a bewildering list – some…
From a respectful distance, I have always admired Kalyan Varma for his gift – the talent to tell stories and unravel mysteries through his wildlife photographs. But his coverage, in March this year, of a leopard trapped in the village of Valparai is sheer testament to the fact that this…
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, stop whatever you are doing and bring your eyes here to ogle at the tallest legs in zebra stockings on the unglamorous ungulate that Cousin Giraffe nicknamed Shorty. Only relatively, of course. Enough bad puns. After long years, a wild Okapi has been recorded…
With the death, by Sting Ray stinging, of Steve Irwin in 2006, couch potatoes lost a beloved star prankster. The natural world, to its immense relief, lost a bothersome pest. And naturalists, most of them wallflowers who shied away from television cameras, must have smiled smugly at the warming absence…
