Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
I have a faint memory of my grandmother telling me about a small bird that swooped down from the trees and picked up the young chickens that she reared on her little farm. She called it “eramullan” in Malayalam. I had always wondered what it might have been but I…
Coffee in full flower Early this week I travelled to Coorg on assignment. Mild spring showers had triggered a riotous explosion of coffee blooms. Planters depend on these early rains, known locally as Blossom Showers, for the next year’s coffee crop. The dark-leaved boughs drooped under the weight of the…
The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
While combing the Marakkanam beach in Tamil Nadu, north of Pondicherry, Sahastra, Beej and I came across an object that was pale green and symmetrical, with bands radiating from a central orifice at the top. Five white bands radiating from the centre can be seen Being city-slickers from landlocked Bangalore our…
The Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) visits the subcontinent in winter. It is also resident in the Himalayas and to a lesser extent in the Western Ghats
It was a typical Friday morning at work. I was getting a status update from my team when my friend Deepu called. Another friend Prajual had informed him that he had found a fallen raptor on the pavement leading up to our building. He had lifted it and placed it…
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
At 6,000 feet oxygen isn’t as easy to aspire as I’d like. My lungs labour to adapt subcontinental lethargy to the punishing demands of altitude, and for a while I am oblivious to the spectacular Himalayan scenery drifting by in a sweat-soaked blur only furlongs away from my fumbling feet.…
As we headed out of Guwahati airport towards Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, the Bugun Liocichla (Liocichla bugunorum) was on our minds. Though none of us mentioned it (since no one wanted to be thought of as a twitcher), every one of us was hoping to catch a glimpse…
Much has been made of the “extinction” of house sparrows. Rural countrysides where farmers practice agriculture traditional crop cycles still have sizeable populations of the birds. At dusk, small trees tremble with fluttering boarders settling in to roost. Their frenzied chirruping, like the jingle of millions of coins in thousands…
If you are the type that stops to smell the flowers, or wonders what happened to that little brown bird that bustled about in the hedge until just a few weeks ago, or smiles at the bare avenue trees flaunting a flush of pink blossoms, you’re a candidate for Seasonwatch. …
The name has a definite ring, doesn’t it? So much that a friend, a newbie birder who had just come down to bird with me Mysore, went back and told his friends that he had a good sighting of a ‘Tommy Eagle’. The Tawny Eagle (Aquila rapax) was the first…
The Asian Paradise Flycatcher can appear quite unbelievable for those laying eyes on it for the first time A female Asian Paradise Flycatcher I distinctly remember the first time I saw an Asian Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone paradisi). It was May or early June and I was in my mango orchard…
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Jennifer Nandi makes a quick dash to Havelock Island to peer into a world of colourful fish named after parrots and butterflies Introduced in November 2009, the Makruzz is a hovercraft. It leaves at 7.30 in the morning for Havelock Island and, well ahead of time, we are at the…
