Meluha Moment – In which I blink my third eyelid ;)
The nictitating membrane protects a bird’s eye from dryness and injury. You might call it a Meluha moment, this blinking of the third eye. Take a look and be amazed.
Author: Sandeep Somasekharan
Sandeep Somasekharan (or Sandy as friends call him) took his headlong plunge into photography with a three-megapixel Nikon point-and-shoot he purchased in 2003. The avid reader and occasional scribbler started enjoying travel and nature more as he spent more time photographing. Meeting Beej in 2008 helped him channel his creative energies in the form of essays and nature photographs that he started publishing on The Green Ogre.
Sandy loves to photograph birds and landscapes, and considers photography and writing as his meditation. Now based out of the US, Sandy juggles his time between parental duties, a full time engineering role, writing short fiction in Malayalam, and an occasional birding trip thrown in between. His debut novel in Malayalam hits the bookstalls in January 2025.
Sandy can be found at instagram as @footprintsonlight
Morning Raga by the Kentish Plover
On the first day of 2014, we found this adorable Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) in half minds whether to sing or not. Warm sunshine, sandy beaches and blue skies – who wouldn’t want to?
Winning The Toss: Blue-tailed Bee-eater pops a meal
Humans toss pancakes but birds like the Blue-tailed Bee-eater grab venomous insect prey like wasps and bees in mid-air and thrash them dead to dislodge the sting before tossing them in the air a la Rajinikanth with the cigarette
Say, does this Crab Plover speak Malayalam?
The Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola) is a bird of decidedly unique appearance. It found along the coasts of Asia and Africa, where it chases after crabs and deftly pries them open with its highly specialized steak-knife of a bill. Here’s a picture of one on a beach in Kerala.
Monsoon romance: Birds love rain, rain loves birds
Rain drives some of us indoors. But a Green Ogre loves nothing more than to step out, get wet and click madly. Uh, let’s go see what the birds are up to.
April Fooled: A drongo’s spot of bother!
The thin line between beautification and photo-manipulation can get troublesome… if the culprit manipulates the vital evidence!
Encounter: White Storks wintering in Polachira
In the Polachira wetlands of Kollam, southern Kerala, the sight of a White Stork, a winter visitor increasingly hard to come by in the subcontinent, fills the mind with memories seen and imagined
Birds Bizarre: Revenge of the Plum-headed Parakeets?
The sky swarmed with hundreds of Plum-headed Parakeets, uncommon visitors to Punchakkari’s wetland habitat
Onathumbi: Onam with the Picture Wing Dragonfly!
What is Onam without its leitmotif — the Onathumbi or Picture Wing Dragonfly?
All is not well with Alleppey
The Vembanad Lake in Alleppey, once praised by Lord Curzon as the “Venice of the East”, is a Ramsar Wetland and a Birdlife Important Bird Area. But those tags have not stopped greedy and exploitative tour operators from turning it into a sickening playground of hooligans and a dumping ground for trash. Here’s a horror story that will turn Stephen King’s stomach.
Encounter – Plumbeous Water Redstart
Married to foaming mountain streams, the Plumbeous Water Redstart is a constant companion to the trekker in the Himalaya. As cattle egrets are to grazing bovids, mynahs to figs, and flowerpeckers to Singapore cherries, Plumbeous Water Redstarts (Rhyacornis fuliginosa) are married to Himalayan streams.
Encounter – Yellow-billed Blue Magpie
After every birding trip there is always one bird that occupies our thoughts after we return. For me, it was the Yellow-billed Blue Magpie As a voracious reader of Tintin, my first impression of a magpie was a rather plain, pied bird with a needle-like beak (thanks to the illustrations).…
Encounter – Common Kingfisher
It was early days when I still hadn’t started birding seriously. A fun trip with some friends to Edamuri falls, near Mysore, more of a ‘get your feet wet’ trip. As we stood along the shore of the irrigation channel, taking off our footwear to drench our feet, I heard a…
Download the June calendar wallpaper!
It’s already June, eh? We’re pretty hung-over, having just returned from the Great Himalayan National Park, where we spent most of the last week of May observing The Green Ogre Spring-Summer Conclave. It’s hard to erase that ache in the heart when we look back at our pictures. Those glorious…
The Green Ogre Calendar Wallpaper for May!
To download this file, just enter your email address and you will receive the download link by email. [download file=”http://greenogreindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/MayWallpaper.jpg”] If you have trouble receiving the download link, first check your Junk or Spam folder for the email. If it isn’t there, contact us and we’ll fix your problem. Enjoy!