Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
BR Hills Oct 9 – 12, 2008 Birders: Dr Prashanth, Sahastrarashmi, Sandeep, Bijoy Oct 9 – Nagavalli Tank, Chamarajnagar en route to BR Hills via K Gudi 1. Spotbill Duck 2. Gadwall 3. Black Ibis 4. Eurasian Spoonbill 5. Lesser Whistling Duck 6. Barn Swallow 7. Green Sandpiper 8. Red-wattled…
It’s not the tiger – I have never been lucky enough to see one in the wild and I have never gone to Ranthambhore looking for one. I believe my time will come and I shall wait for it. The creature I’m looking for is a rare little rodent (probably…
Over at Short Sharp Science (the New Scientist blog), I ran into a post that lists ten animal behaviours that are absolutely bizarre. Of these, prurient soul that I am, I selected just a few sensational behaviours related to their sex lives: Shark bites, love bites: The male White-tipped Reef…
A hybrid bike, a new brand of toilet paper, reusable tote bags and a water-powered clock are among seven eco-friendly products listed by Scientific American. The bike, manufactured by a Taiwanese company, is pegged at $2000. Who’s buying? The water-powered clock sounds cool – all you need to do is…
In a direct attack on Creationism and its ists, Gumby the Cat has written an Open Letter to Creationists. Very saucy, very snarky and very entertaining. And very venomous. It could have been better argued but that’s exactly what makes it pure light reading. But, it appears the writer has…
As humans, we have bestowed upon ourselves the power to engineer great catastrophe – fire and flood, of course. But would you have thought earthquakes? Yo, man, we have the power to shake it up. Among the top 5 ways to cause a man-made earthquake, as Wired blogged in June,…
There’s a good reason to keep humans out of forests: Trash! Some people stood here to enjoy the scenery, and left behind evidence of ample enjoyment At birdsofbombay, Sunjoy Monga posted about a cleanup drive in Sanjay Gandhi National Park. A tireless team comprising schoolchildren and other volunteers recovered a…
Disturbing news from the Guardian website on the killing of raptors in Malta and local hunters’ rage towards British conservationists. This is hatred of the Crown gone way too far. The excerpt says it all: Thirty British volunteers and a delegation of five staff from the RSPB have spent the…
Last night, over dinner, some friends and I worried about whether America will elect Sarah Palin for everything she is not. And then, I worried about being worried. And that made me worry some more. So I worried about that. Eventually, I thought, if the American people don’t know better,…
The yellow rubber ducky in your bathtub can be more useful than you think. NASA scientists are using ducks like this to track the movement (read recession) of glaciers in Greenland and Canada. Duck out of water? Thumbing through some old articles, I’ve been pondering the fate of the world’s…
With environment finally figuring in the US Presidential Election debates, Scientific American has a nice summary of how Obama and McCain, and Biden and Palin stack up in terms of their approach to environmental issues. Listen and read The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Over at Life Less Plastic, Jeanne Haegele writes: And I still buy milk (in a glass container) and meat (wrapped in paper at the deli), and use my own cloth produce and grocery bags. In my three-decade-plus lifetime I have seen my parents do the same. Why, only about 15…
In spring of 2001, my good friends Bruce Lee Mani and Rajeev Rajagopal (better known as guitar player and drummer, respectively, of Thermal And A Quarter) dragged me to the Himalayas on a trek for which I was quite unprepared. Bass player Rzhude, who had been there and done that…
Numbers of the Red Squirrel, once Britain’s pride, started to dwindle when its more aggressive cousin, the American Grey Squirrel, was introduced in the country. With protection, the Red Squirrel clawed back. But recently, the squirrels have gone missing and scientists fear that a virus – squirrelpox – has wiped…
Everything you didn’t want to know about birds but probably asked about too often. “These mysterious beautiful creatures that came to our planet suddenly in 1962 are still an enigma today” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfvEgWINUFc] via BirdChick The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
