Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
I have just returned from a 7-day birding tour of the Great Rann of Kutch. Seven days, in truth, are hardly enough to explore this vast and varied landscape. The Rann, a salt marsh that is inundated for a few months every year during the monsoon, dries up completely around…
Acting: Let our actions speak, let our words give them wings Warming: Of our hearts, not of our planet Thawing: Of cold wars, not of our polar ice caps Rising: Of movements for sustainable living, not of ocean levels War: Against poaching, pollution and militarism Seeing and believing: May we…
Via The Guardian, I chanced upon this interesting list of the ten men most wanted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Their crimes range from illegally importing polluting vehicles into the US to dumping contaminated grain into the ocean, in addition to releasing harmful effluents. Most of these men…
If Ram Gopal Varma had imagination, he’d make a movie on insectivorous Pitcher plants. One helluva motion picture, that’d be
Do all birds possess an instinct to flee predators? Or is this behaviour a result of conditioning? Research on some island birds has shown their inability to recognise mammalian predators. This may offer an explanation into how native species in island ecosystems that have evolved in the absence of mammalian…
As someone said, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The last place to look for solutions is probably right where the problem lies. PhysOrg reports on how the early inhabitants of the Amazon basin boosted crop productivity by enriching their fields with…
For over ten years, researchers have toiled away in the Greater Mekong region, uncovering its secrets. A WWF report describes the region as the “richest waterway for biodiversity on the planet, fostering more species per unit area than the Amazon”. Quantitatively speaking, in number of species, that’s 20,000 plants, 1,200…
Crows are among the hardiest of our planet’s birds. Most species of corvids, a group that includes choughs, jays, treepies, magpies and nutcrackers, are intelligent, adaptable and aggressive. They dominate their environment and make the most of available resources. Of all corvids, crows are particularly fascinating. They are extremely vocal…
When I was a child, the Brain Fever Bird was one of my mystery birds. Its plaintive call, rising to a feverish crescendo, kept me awake on many moonlit nights. I was to encounter the bird again, and again, and again, and each time the story wedged itself deeper in my imagination
A winters day In a deep and dark December – Simon & Garfunkel, I am a rock It’s been a long, long time since my teeth have chattered in Bangalore. While the reason for that may be partly due to my accumulated reserves of adipose (I always tell anybody who…
Via PETA: a heart-rending video of animals being skinned alive for their fur If you don’t have the stomach for it, here’s what the video is about: In China’s Hebei province, workers are skinning raccoon dogs alive. PETA claims that over half of the finished fur garments imported for sale…
Sálim Ali didn’t call it the Idle Schoolboy for nothing. If, uninitiated, you hear its song in a damp nook of the forest, you may be pardoned for suspecting the presence of spirits, or maybe goat-hoofed Pan playing his merry pipes. The call is eerily like human whistling, so much…
The fog clung to the ground in great murky blankets when I arrived at Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary on this Friday morning. At 6 AM, traffic on NH 8 via Mehrauli and Gurgaon had been thin, but my gruff but kindly Sikh cab driver held my gaze for an astonished moment…
Between November 21 and 25, I was in Rae Bareli, a place whose name most of us remember only during the elections (it happens to be the constituency of the Gandhi family). Rae Bareli and Unnao districts are in the heart of the Gangetic plain. The countryside is characterised by…
The rare Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), also known as the Abyssinian wolf or Simien jackal, inhabits the Bale mountains of southern Ethiopia, about 10,000 feet above sea level. In 1990, a rabies epidemic reduced the largest population of these animals from 440 individuals to only 160 in under two weeks.…
