Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
The red-and-black seeds frequently used in the indoor games of my childhood, I learned recently, are deadly poisonous. Introducing the pretty and dangerous Rosary Pea or Indian Licorice. Now chew on that! Back when I was a kid visiting my grandparents, dinner would generally be over by 7 pm. The…
Sorry, we missed the March wallpaper thanks to too much work, too many appraisals, too few pay hikes and suchlike end-of-the-financial-year blues. But April, to mangle Eliot, is the coolest month. So, here’s Sandeep Somasekharan’s contribution to the splendor of your desktop. Let these two spotbills make April special. Download…
Devoid of flower through the year it is like any other tree pale of trunk and green of leaf. But come March, when the Flame of the Forest burns up the landscape for far furlongs, its incendiary sight you can neither ignore nor forget I remember Beej telling me about…
My love of owls has made me peer into abandoned quarries, tree hollows, rafters of old barns, and dilapidated houses. Last year, I watched three Indian Eagle Owl chicks grow from featherballs to subadults. We waited a whole year to publish this report, assured that they are now relatively safe…
In Valparai the endangered Lion-tailed Macaque inhabits tracts of dense evergreen forest hemmed in by tea plantations. It lives, literally and alarmingly, on the edge. Here are memories of a brief but illumining encounter with these fascinating primates
By Sandeep Somasekharan More on hornbills More Wordless Wednesdays
A birding lesson from the field: Don’t pass up a drongo — or any black bird with a forked tail Towards the end of our Parambikulam tramway trek, as I dragged my weary feet past a tree on which was perched a dark bird with a telltale fork at the…
December is seven days old and we’ve been sluggish. Blame it on the cold! Here’s our last wallpaper of the year. May the lemony yellowness of this Oriental White-eye light up your holidays. Seasons Greetings! Photo: Sandeep Somasekharan DOWNLOAD THIS PHOTO TO USE AS A WALLPAPER FOR YOUR DESKTOP OR…
Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan And if you prefer words, read: What’s black and white and hovers? The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
In the deciduous forests fringing the Western Ghats, look out for the charming Chestnut-headed Bee-Eater Bee eaters are probably a bird-lover’s (and photographer’s) favourite birds — breathtakingly beautiful, amazingly acrobatic and acquiescent. Early into my birding days, I ran into the Chestnut-headed Bee Eater (Meropus leschenaulti) when I had imagined that…
As a child they were the stuff of nightmares. My spider sense still tingles, but no longer in fear I remember having always kept my distance from Arachnids as a child. Quite often have tarantulas turned up in the toilet, and quite often have I persuaded my parents to smash…
If coochicooable was a word, it would fit the Indian Silverbill My first memories of fellow Ogre Sahastra are tied to a photograph he posted in the Infosys photography club. The first was of a group of tiny, brown birds with beautiful conical beaks shining like metal, perched on a…
While walking in the Nilgiris, listen closely for the guffaw of the Nilgiri Laughingthrush. And treasure it, for you’ll hear it nowhere else on earth When I had first laid my hands on a Sony prosumer camera I found I could photograph birds within reach, and the target of one…
A bad day of birding need not be a bad day with nature, not when you have a lush green paddy field to adore Another routine morning trip to see if I could catch some birds on the wing took me to a remote corner of Mandya, along a paddy…
The White-cheeked Barbet, earlier known as the Small Green Barbet, just melts into the canopy. But peer into the roof of leaves and you’ll see it devouring fruits and figs I saw this green bird for the first time at Polachira, a wetland near Thiruvananthapuram. My friend Rahul pointed to…
