Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
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.
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…
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan All rights reserved The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
How to fish in troubled waters. Or how to spice up your dinner with an old pan, a tattered towel and a lump of cooked rice!
Never mix cricket and a jungle adventure, the World Cup’s mascot seemed to tell us! Setting out on the bird trail Lopsided finances can crush a budget birding trip when one member of the party considers opting out. Harder still when the reason for his abandonment of our greater purpose…
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan All rights reserved The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
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…
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.…
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. …
How long before a koel discovers that it is not a crow? The family of House Crows (Corvus splendens) in my yard is upset. For the past few weeks mother and father have been teaching their youngsters to fly. I have often seen the young crows follow their parents about,…
Though far from unique as coconut palms go, this tree had the character of a pioneer settler, in that it had been planted at a time when the surroundings were overgrazed, fallow and barren. No surprise then, that it announced itself as king of the garden. Growing in stature and…
For 20 years the mango tree that my father planted had stood its ground. It took less than 20 hours to bring it down.
You must be familiar with that old joke: How many morons does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer shall be illumined presently to the patient reader of this post. But first, the story of a sting operation. Apart from a long line of little black ants bearing whitish larvae…
Tawny Coster (Acraea terpsicore) Photo: Beej The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
