Sahyadrica

The salt-sprinkled chocolate browns of the estuarine mudflats are criss-crossed by the prints of carbon-black tyres. The wind is crisp, and the recurring whoop-whoop-whoop of the enormous ghostly wind turbines is ubiquitous, occasionally punctuated by sounds of trucks that trod on the pathless mudflats to reach the nearest salt port. On this truck-trodden path, we look for signs of a particular bird that blends well with the grey-brown landscape, the MacQueen’s Bustard, a rare winter migrant. It is nowhere to be found, but along sparse grasses, pale green in colour, are tracks of various birds imprinted on a layer of fine, seemingly frozen crust of sand. One of which belongs to this bird. The smaller tracks belong to, we think, Desert Warblers; those small, hypersensitive brown birds seen probing the grass strands for tiny morsels during early winters. The largest of all, the three-toed prints, belong to the Common Crane, we acknowledge without a doubt. We saw them graze in a small ...

by Vishal Rasal I have visited Sewri only twice, and on both occasions I’ve asked myself: what on Earth are these birds doing here? There are answers that are quite startling. In this article, Vishal talks about Sewri and its renowned visitors, Lesser and Greater Flamingos, the plausible reasons why they chose this place, and what we can deduce about their future from recent updates on the conservation-versus-development debate on Sewri. In Vishal’s words… Flamingos against the rising sun in Sewri, Mumbai The city of Mumbai is never short of surprises. From skyscrapers cluttering the precarious coasts of the Arabian Sea to the forest fringes of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, this city is one of the handful few to harbour great biodiversity sandwiched between a large human population. And just as Mumbai proudly boasts of whales off its coasts and leopards in its forests, it is also peculiarly famous for its purple-winged migrants – flamingos. A city of flamingos agains...

On a planet whose treasure lie not in the precious stones and metals, but in life, you will find that life fills all the possible – and impossible – niches carved by the action of wind and water, fire and earth, and sun and moon. This life has evolved to adopt the pace of nature. But the pace of nature is not always patient and calm. Although life evolved to the rhythm of the passing seasons, many animals and plants adapted to the changes on the planet – changes that are brought about daily by the celestial bodies. The mud forest of Konkan These ecosystems are called the intertidal zones, a place between the high-tide and the low-tide mark. In this harsh environment – harsh for it is rapidly changing from being completely aquatic to being roasted under the tropical sun – life has evolved many special adaptations which allow it to thrive, and amongst the many intertidal ecosystems lay the mud forests – mangroves. The tangle of mud forest Nagla Block, SGNP The mangrove for...