nature

Right now, the rains are a distant memory, but it wasn't long ago that we felt our city was just soaking in water... and though we didn't have the major deluge that Chennai had, we too had our share of dampness and moisture. There are some organisms that thrive in this moist, humid environment, and though they have a short life, they still look beautiful, and intriguiging, when they appear. Mushrooms are a form of fungi... and in fact, the fruiting body of these organisms. Mushrooms come in varieties called bolete, puffball, stinkhorn, morel, and gilled mushrooms themselves are often called agarics.…

George Varghese writes:   From: George Varghese <grgvrghs@gmail.com>Date: 27 November 2015 at 14:14Subject: The sweetest investment you can ever make....To: Here's a chance to make a social, ethical, environment-friendly investment and get the sweetest returns you can ever imagine and also at the same time support a rural entrepreneur make a livelihood. Interested? Read on..... What this is about: A local farmer Nagaraj living near Bisilkoppa village, Sirsi Taluk is also an experienced bee keeper. He is interested in expanding his bee keeping enterprise by getting 100 new bee boxes. At a cost of Rs.4000 per box (box with bee…

Very often, after the rains, one sees dragons in the air. Not fire-breathing ones, of course; those belong in the realms of fantasy. But the often-ignored dragons I am talking about, are marvellous creatures, too! Here’s a closeup of a dragonfly that I took, recently. Dragonflies are called 'odonates'; that is, scientific-name wise, they belong to the order Odonata. Dragonflies are agile fliers; you can find them hovering, quite motionless, in the air, and then, suddenly, zipping off at great speed. Contrary to their gossamer, delicate appearance, they are voracious predators, both in their aquatic larval stage, when they are…

If we are apathetic to Nature today, and view the natural world as being something separate from our daily existence, certainly there was a time when it was not so. Much of our rich mythology deals with rivers, trees, and other natural features, and indeed, our ancients imagined mythical beings which combined several features of living creatures. We all know Narasimha, the half-man, half-lion avatar of Vishnu, but Bangalore, and Kannada culture, in particular, has some interesting depictions of some other mythological beings. As a woman who regularly uses Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses, (which means that I travel…

Swalpa Adjust Maadi (SAM)..this seems to be our attitude towards the others who share our planet. And some of them learn to adjust...but at what cost, still needs to be determined! Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore, 11th Jan 2015.

Caterpillars are creepy? Each time I saw a worm or a caterpillar wriggling, I would let out a shriek that would stun people around me. They sniggered when they found the reason. Times change and I now adore caterpillars. I got into the company of some ardent butterfly watchers, who did not mind lying on slushy ground or walking miles together in pursuit of butterflies. With them, I started to learn fascinating facts about butterflies. Butterflies exhibit mimicry, they migrate, plan amazing strategies to avoid predators; the list goes on. One life time is not enough to learn about them. To understand butterflies better, one has to…

ook release of "The Song of the Magpie Robin. The autobiography of Zafar Futehally" by Dr K Ullas Karanth.    Wednesday 10, December 2014. 6.30    BIC Auditorium, TERI complex 4th Main, 2nd Cross Domlur II Stage, Bangalore 560071   RSVP 98865 99675

Dr M B Krishna writes:   The birthday of Dr Joseph George who started the group birdwatching activities in Bangalore falls on the first of October. It is now over two years since his demise. So it was thought to have a memorial talk for theoccasion. Since Dr George did so much to show that non full time professionals too could be contributing to our knowledge of birds, it was thought Shyamal would be the best person to give the talk for the day. Especially so since Shyamal's recent visits to the museums in London and Tring have given him new perspectives and hearing bits and…

The second Sunday outing of the Bird Watchers' Field Club(BWFC) in Lalbagh had an unexpected event, with a happy ending. U Harish Kumar writes: On Sunday, the 13th July 2014, at our usual 2nd Sunday Birdwatching outing at Lalbagh, an incident happened. A Flying Fox got entangled to a strong thread (probably that of a kite) - and it was dangling down from a top branch of Bottle Brush Tree by a strong thread. It was struggling to get itself free. Just then, the birdwatchers group was passing by. They stopped, and for a change, they stopped looking at the…

My response to someone who asked about how to capture a snake and "rehabilitate" it: 1. In my experience, even common non-venomous snakes are identified as cobras by security guards and, indeed, many panic-stricken people, In 8 cases out of ten, we find that it is a non-venomous snake (a keelback or a rat snake). However, I do not rule out the possibility that it might indeed be a venomous snake such as a viper, a krait or a cobra.   2.Catching the snake is itself a very risky procedure, and there is no guarantee that there will be only…