Sahyadrica

There are countless ways of expressing the bond we share with the world around us. Not only visual, but also sensual – even silence is a medium of expression. I’ve been using words and photographs as a way to express what I see and feel for quite some time now, but there are countless – metaphorically – instances when I was witnessing a miracle of nature when the silence engulfed me and I was at loss for words, and those moments, although I cherish them for what they were, will never translate into something that I could write, or photograph. I spent the last week by the beach trying to make sense of the world through the medium of numbers and figures – I was a part of a PRiMER course of Gubbi Labs here to learn statistics, mapping, scientific reasoning, and expressing – and at the end of the day I buried my feet in the sand watching the sun set over the horizon and dolphins leaping from the waves. Words swelled into my head like a hightide every time I walked on the beach, but ...

The Corbett Foundation and Earthwatch Institute (India) have come up with an easy-to-use app called Spider Watch that looks at 50 common species of spiders belonging to 23 families found in India – whether you’re in a city, a garden, or a sanctuary – you’re likely to find them there. This app was made to facilitate on-field identification of common spiders of India, with an objective to bring these little tigers of the undergrowth to the forefront, and to inculcate further interest in them. Just search for “Spider Watch” on Google Play store from your android phones, or follow this link . Its usage is fairly simple. Here are some screenshots of the app: This is the title page, of course. Once you're through the app, you will come across such a page. The "play" symbol on the top left corner will run you through this page, or you can scroll down by yourself. The one with a magnifying glass symbol will take you to a new window showing thumbnails of all spid...

First Saturday of September is celebrated as International Vulture Awareness Day ( www.vultureday.org ; it was celebrated on September 6, 2014 this year) to raise awareness concerning vultures, and especially their threateningly declining numbers. An article exploring the rapid decline of vultures of India was published in The Hitavada’s Insight supplement, which I am reproducing here with some elaborations. You can read the online version here or here . Insight, The Hitavada Sunday, September 7, 2014 The Plight of India’s Vultures When was the last time you saw a vulture soaring high in the sky? We asked every forest guard and every villager we met as we traversed through the forest villages of Kanha Tiger Reserve, and their answers were all exactly the same: many, many years ago. Only a handful of forest guards see vultures soaring in the skies today, and all of them mostly in the core-zone of Kanha Tiger Reserve, far from any human interventions where they feed on carca...

There is certain intelligence to animals that can captivate you with their gaze. Owls happen to be one of them. Those who have seen an owl have been enchanted by their gaze forever. Hardly anyone ever forgets seeing their first owl. I’ve mostly seen them in their natural habitats– where they belong – blissfully sitting still in the afternoon sun only to become active during dark, and unfortunately, I’ve seen them where they don’t. The ruckus of Jungle Owlets, a he-owl calling a she-owl, is omnipresent where I live. It is also the most pleasurable to hear, and mystic. Then there are the Spotted Owlets, the phantoms of the night, with their large bulbous eyes they look at you in perseverance. They sit by the streetlights at night and in their wooden caverns by day. And there are Collared Scops Owls, the fairies of the dark, with their cautious deep dark eyes and tufts of horns, sprinting from branch to branch. All of them, in the day, would be solemnly sitting in their respective a...

" If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound ?" There are some old puzzles that have physically and philosophically raised questions about what happens when a tree falls if no one is there to perceive it. It questions not the role of a tree in a forest ecosystem but the reality which is perceived by an individual – be it you, I, the tiger, the deer, the butterfly, the ant. It is a fundamental question answered soundly by science, but failed to be understood as an extension to other things, say, for example, if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it – or see it – does it matter anyone ? A road winds through Kanha's prime Sal forests at the edge of a meadow The philosophical question therefore raises an eye, it twitches my nerves, and I find something little but vital missing. This missing information, perceived today more than it was in the yester-years, is that of the raging war between ecology and economy that the ...