Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
Got milk? You’re thinking mammals. These are higher-order warm-blooded vertebrates that are, more often than not, covered in body hair or fur, have external ears, and feed their young on milk produced by specialised glands. Exceptions? Yes, a few.
In the presence of two regal cats we watched mesmerised and awestruck. Some of that aura rubbed off on us I have wandered only a handful of forests. Most wildlife enthusiasts might have traveled more in one year than I have over the last five. So I never complain about not having seen most of…
Someone once told not to look a gift horse in the mouth checked the dental signature of a Moose instead and discovered 12 molars, 12 premolars, 6 incisors and 2 canines. Oh dear, a moose is actually a deer, as Ogden Nash evidently knew! Confronted by a mouse or moose,…
Fluffy and tubby, the Indian Giant Squirrel is a treat to watch anywhere you may wander in the forests of peninsular India
Ladakh’s bleak and bare landscape springs to joyous life when Himalayan Marmots, these oversized ground squirrels, come out to play.
Half-mouse and half-hare is the Royle’s Pika. One of the most adorable mammals in the Himalaya
The Chinkara or Indian Gazelle (Gazella bennettii), more of a newsmaker for its association with a trigger-happy Salman Khan, is a sight to behold in the arid wilderness of Rajasthan and Kutch
The Indian Desert Jird, a diurnal rodent, lives in huge colonies and is a great food source for desert cats, jungle cats, jackals, mongooses and raptors.
