Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
Day 1 was an ‘acclimatizer’. Ha. Acclimating is an oxymoron. Ask those who laboured up the slopes from Neuli to Shakti and ended up painfully breathless by the end of the day. Part 2 of Sandeep Somasekharan’s report of The Green Ogre trek to the Great Himalayan National Park in 2012
Even birders rarely felicitate bulbuls with a second glance, worse if they are Red-whiskered or Red-vented Bulbuls. But when we head up to the hills, the sight of the Himalayan Bulbul is a joy to us. For it means we are in the hills, and there’s a bounty of birdlife waiting to be discovered.
Warming up for our trek to the Great Himalayan National Park, the Ogres spend time in Delhi, waiting impatiently to get there. Part 1 of a new series by Sandeep Somasekharan
Christmas day, I took out my socks and found my car keys inside. I took it as a portent and headed out birding
A Fourth of July trek report from Mission Peak, California. Warning: Birds inside.
The first time I came upon ‘chough’ I thought it was a dictionary entry for an act of expectoration by one with a North Indian surname. It would be a few years before I got the hang of what it was really – a kind of crow
The goose was headed for the bar, as it were. Or, at least that’s how some understood it. Never take a bird’s name too literally – and other wisdom from interacting with non-birders.
On the rarest of rare occasions, your boring desk job can get really interesting. If it takes you on short trips to lands unseen. July 2012 was one such, for it took me the United States and kept me there for four months. I was mostly busy with work but the weekends were left to me. So what does a bored birder do on weekends? That one’s a sitter.
On the first day of 2014, we found this adorable Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) in half minds whether to sing or not. Warm sunshine, sandy beaches and blue skies – who wouldn’t want to?
The Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola) is a bird of decidedly unique appearance. It found along the coasts of Asia and Africa, where it chases after crabs and deftly pries them open with its highly specialized steak-knife of a bill. Here’s a picture of one on a beach in Kerala.
Rain drives some of us indoors. But a Green Ogre loves nothing more than to step out, get wet and click madly. Uh, let’s go see what the birds are up to.
For many years, the Spotted Forktail was just an apparition in a dream. Now, happily twitched off the list, it is one of my favourite Himalayan birds.
In flu-fearing Hong Kong, Victoria Park is perhaps the sole isle for anyone who cares for a spot of garden birding.
It wasn’t a day fit for birding, but even on such a dull day Melbourne had plenty to offer to a jet-lagged birder on a lightning first-time visit to Australia.
The thin line between beautification and photo-manipulation can get troublesome… if the culprit manipulates the vital evidence!
