Beautiful nature writing

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyXaxVgoFM4/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Who else but Yuvan. 

" I have discovered for myself how a Hornet eats bees. I am feeling child-like excitement about it. It's the funniest and most laborious way to feed. I saw it happen last month and have been seeing it again and again since. A lesser banded hornet once it grabs a bee, flies to a nearby peaceful leaf and hangs upside-down exactly by one hind leg, hooking onto its surface one of its tarsal claws. Dangling around, it wraps and squishes the bee with the rest of its five legs and buries its mandibles into it. A friend sent me a photo of it first, then I saw it twice by a river few days later, then in a park, then in a brinjal field. Hornets hanging upside-down on one leg, eating bees.

The southwest monsoon has recoiled herself into the ocean. And now October heat is here and heavy. Its humidity hammers on the skull, feels sometimes like embers on skin. The sea wind is felt only in the mornings and evenings. A few dusks ago I went to my terrace to feel the breeze through my clothes, see the orange sun setting and the kites and storks returning to roost. But from the North Barn swallows were streaming in. Most flying towards Pallikaranai marsh, and some just dawdling in the sky. Seeing them after months, these cheery way-farers, boisterous pilgrims, brought lumps to my throat. I whispered 'welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome….. ' to each one which passed. Then sky reddened, pinkened, purpled. Blue-tailed bee-eaters glided through the colours, back to roost. They are visitors too making their way here from other parts of the subcontinent as winter settles. Their soft-trilling filled the glowing sky, their spaced silhouettes - slender-billed, tender-winged, needle-tailed - made my neck clamp, scalp tingle unbearably. All of existence, for a while, was bee-eaters trilling.

Over the last week my 4th batch Urban Wilderness Walks interns at Madras Naturalists' Society have been mapping trees in their localities, investigating how trees shape human socio-political life around them, and collecting tree stories. 30 stories from 30 neighborhoods of Chennai..."

There's more in the Insta link.