Wordless Wednesday – Tawny Coster at Gingee, Tamil Nadu
Tawny Coster (Acraea terpsicore) Photo: Beej The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Encounter: The Bronzed Frog
In April 2006, we trekked from the Iruppu waterfalls in Kodagu (Coorg) to the Brahmagiri peak on the Karnataka-Kerala border. After crossing the lower bamboo-dominated patches we crossed a transition zone and reached a nice shola patch at the edge of the high-altitude grassland. That’s where we saw the frog.…
Encounter – Booted eagle
Though smaller than other Aquila eagles, the Booted Eagle (Aquila pennatta) is a powerful bird of prey. It hunts reptiles, small mammals, and medium-sized birds, including crows and partridges. A pale morph Booted Eagle banks in flight My first prolonged and high quality sighting was near the Ranganathittu Bird…
Wordless Wednesday : The Bird Trappers
A Spotbill Duck trapped for the pot in western Uttar Pradesh Amid caged quails trapped for the pot, a girl holds a Yellow-fronted Green Pigeon Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Mysore’s scrublands – Dwindling paradise
To a layperson, scrublands connote territory that is laid to waste. Dead, deserted places to stay away from. But that impression deserves to be tested. Scrublands, in fact, are dry, open spaces with a thin layer of surface grass, occasional shrubs and small, hardy trees such as acacias. Visit one…
An afternoon in a Nilgiri shola
The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which includes the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu apart from regions in Karnataka and Kerala, has some of the highest ranges in southern India including Dodda Betta, the second highest peak in the Western Ghats. These high ranges are notable for a peculiar kind of forest…
Wordless Wednesday – Shadow-play
Common Bush-Brown butterfly (Mycalesis perseus) in wet-season form flirting with the shadow of a Tulsi plant (Ocimum sanctum) on my balcony on a sunny afternoon, and eventually perching on it. Enough said. Well, that was almost wordless. Photos: Beej The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from…
Lichens, Beatrix Potter and Symbiogenesis
The unpresented paper In 1897 the eminent chemist Sir Henry E Roscoe, know for early studies on vanadium, presented a paper to the Linnaean Society in London on behalf of his then unknown niece, Beatrix Potter, a mycologist and gifted illustrator. Beatrix loved illustrating lichens and fungi and these detailed…
Encounter – Draco dussumieri, master of camouflage
If your guide points to nothing on the bark of a tree, you can be sure you’re looking at (but not seeing) Draco dussumieri, the Southern Flying Lizard!
Wordless Wednesday: Sarus Crane gestures hypnotically
Caption this! Photograph: Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Encounter – Hill Swallow
The Hill Swallow – note the rufous throat and face ‘One swallow does not make a summer’ is part of a quote attributed to Aristotle. In truth it represents a very Eurocentric position on swallows, in this case the Barn Swallow that migrates south to India in winter. On my…
Encounter – the Short-toed Snake Eagle
Meet the Short-toed Snake Eagle (Circaetus gallicus) or plain “Short-toed Eagle”. It is a raptor of open countries, grass/ scrublands and semi-deserts, which, as its name suggests, loves to devour snakes and reptiles and occasionally mammals as well. And yes, the toes (or talons) are shorter compared to other birds of prey.…
Sundarbans Diary – The Enormous Estuarine Crocodile
Cruising through the backwaters of the Sundarbans in India, Jennifer Nandi marvels at the estuarine crocodile, even as her thoughts turn to the conflict between these fascinating reptiles and the ecosystem’s human inhabitants Estuarine crocodile sunbathing in the squelchy ooze The plan for today begins with breakfast on board. Once…
At Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, was the leopard watching us?
Off we went, my namesake Arun and I, early Saturday morning on the Diwali weekend. Our destination – Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, a hill in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district. At the top of the hill is a temple but, of course, our visit was a pilgrimage of a different…
Offbeat – My family and other animals
Today, January 7, is the birth anniversary of Gerald Durrell, beloved author to some, and to others a path-breaking conservationist who changed the flavour of the word ‘zoo’. I have been inspired by Durrell for most of my life, although circumstances (and a general lack of guts and initiative) have…