Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
All posts authored by Sahastra
Ever wondered why some birds never fly? And we are talking of little birds, not ostriches and emus… Flit: v. To move lightly and swiftly. I have always been amazed as to how some birds never seem to fly — they always flit. Whenever I have come across a flock…
Meeting the Bar-headed Goose, arguably the world’s highest flier, in its breeding grounds at 15,000 feet is a rare and humbling privilege
Though not as grandly picturesque as the Golden Shower or the Flame of the Forest, the Copper Pod tree makes its yellow-crowned presence felt all over the flower-carpeted ground It’s a humid May forenoon and even in the shade there is no respite from sweat. The sea, a mere 100…
Lifeless, numbered, fated to become furniture, the dismembered corpses of ancient forest trees are stacked neatly in the Dandeli Timber Depot. Peer closely at these images gleaned from that brooding graveyard — your mind’s eye might detect fate-lines gone awry, cracked smiles, suppurating wounds, faces contorted in silent pain, broken hearts, gnarled…
Ladakh’s bleak and bare landscape springs to joyous life when Himalayan Marmots, these oversized ground squirrels, come out to play.
A chance find in a Pondicherry flea market points to an unknown Tamil Nadu pilgrim party’s mysterious journey to the base of Mount Kailas in 1948, only two years after Heinrich Harrer arrived in Lhasa Last Sunday, as I am prone to do on weekends, I paid a visit to…
Few people know (or care) that this favourite locale of filmmakers is a spectacular mangrove ecosystem throbbing with life The mangrove forests of Pichavaram comprise an intriguing ecosystem Tickets in hand, negotiations with the boatman closed, we should have been on the boat, headed for our first visit to a…
Wherever you go in the world, Mallus can be identified on Vishu’s eve as they strip Golden Shower trees bare of flowers! On that cheery note, Happy Vishu!
Life is so quiet and still in Madhyamaheshwar that it’s easy to imagine why local people believe that the deity is drunk A wayside shrine en route to Madhyamaheshwar A moss-encrusted tree on the trail “I found myself moved by the simplicity of this shrine. It was a place where…
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…
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…
Driving between Chennai and Pondicherry, approximately 30 km before you reach the former French enclave, you cannot but notice a small inlet channel from the sea passing below a narrow bridge and then expanding into a vast lake stretching all the way to the western horizon. This is Kaliveli, the…
Photo: Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Demoiselles, like other cranes, suffer on account of habitat loss and degradation throughout their breeding and wintering ranges. With the spread of agriculture in the Eurasian steppes a large swath of the species’ breeding territory is threatened on account of disturbance, grazing and hunting. In India, where the cranes winter,…
In 2002, while in Chopta (part of Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary), we had tried to visit the Musk Deer Breeding Centre but were denied access. They behaved as if it were a nuclear installation, a friend who was with me then had observed. Later in August 2006 I was in…
