Wordless Wednesday – An Edgar Allan (Hoo)Poe mystery
The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Year: 2011
Encounter: The Himalayan Marmot
Ladakh’s bleak and bare landscape springs to joyous life when Himalayan Marmots, these oversized ground squirrels, come out to play.
Tree or no tree, who gives a fig?
A fig tree in fruit is a forest in itself: every creature in the vicinity is attracted to the sprawling canopy to eat the ripe red fruits, or the fruit-eaters. Sadly, these lovely fig trees are disappearing with our appetite for wider roads
Remembering Simon and Garfunkel in Ramanagaram
The wind blew down from the hillock and hissed in my ear: “I am a rock” A stray spell of sun lit up Ramanagaram’s famous rocks It wasn’t a winter’s day, as Paul Simon would have had it. But it had rained all night and the morning presented a stipple…
Raptor Friday – The Lesser Fish-Eagle
Formerly thought to be a resident of the Himalayan foothills, the Lesser Fish-Eagle has pleasantly surprised us by nesting along rivers in southern India Formerly thought to occur only in the Himalayan foothills, the Lesser Fish-Eagle has now been confirmed as a resident breeder along the Cauvery River in Karnataka…
Encounter – What’s black and white, and hovers?
Ogres Sandy and Arun recollect their encounters with the common but lovable Pied Kingfisher Black, white and eats fish Sandy: The first time I saw the Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) was in Thekkady, Kerala, in my fledgeling days of bird-watching. As a kid I had read that kingfishers were of many…
Wordless Wednesday – Two for Joy
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan View Wordless Wednesday archives The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Odisha Diary: In the court of the Sun God
After chasing down the Mangrove Whistler in Bhitarkanika, Jennifer Nandi journeys to the temple towns of Konarak and Puri, where a technicality stops her from washing away her sins A pair of Yali, fearsome mythical beasts, guard the temple gates True to his word, the boatman is already at the…
Osama is dead, but will the cranes fly again?
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, will America allow Afghanistan to lick its wounds and restore its natural heritage? In India, the wintering Siberian Crane has been missing in action for nearly a decade Afghanistan has always suffered for its place on the map. For millennia, before traders discovered…
Tree-hugging for beginners
When you can’t hug the whole tree, start with a new leaf Photograph: Beej The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
On the wing – Whiskered Tern unloads excess baggage
Pooping on the fly — a tern for the worse, or the ideal weight-loss solution? In flight, a Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybridus) unloads extra baggage by leaving a trail of guano. Defecation in flight probably helps optimise body mass for energy-efficient flight, especially after a bird has recently fed. Whiskered…
From Madurai to Mount Kailas, a pilgrim’s puzzling progress
A chance find in a Pondicherry flea market points to an unknown Tamil Nadu pilgrim party’s mysterious journey to the base of Mount Kailas in 1948, only two years after Heinrich Harrer arrived in Lhasa Last Sunday, as I am prone to do on weekends, I paid a visit to…
Wordless Wednesday – Don’t shoe me away!
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan All rights reserved View all Wordless Wednesday posts at The Green Ogre View Sandeep’s Flickr photostream The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Audubon’s birds – poetry on canvas
In Audubon’s time the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina Parakeet had not yet become America’s most celebrated (and lamented) extinctions… Audubon’s painting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which was considered extinct until 2006 when it was reportedly rediscovered (source: Wikimedia Commons) As Google has already informed you, today is the 226th…