The familiar bar-tailed godwit, plovers, looking so different in their breeding plumage.
Thanks to Umesh for sharing this absolutely beautiful video.
The familiar bar-tailed godwit, plovers, looking so different in their breeding plumage.
Thanks to Umesh for sharing this absolutely beautiful video.
In my To-read list now - “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” - a book of essays by scientist and SUNY Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book has sold 1.4 million copies, according to the NY Times article - You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction. An article that was shared by Dr Ravi Chellam on the MNS group.
Of late, I have been listening to arguments about science vs other modes of enquiry - and how not to slide into what I would call old-fashioned superstition and blind belief, while at the same time being open to older traditions of wisdom and learning.
She says - "sometimes what we call conventional Western science is in fact scientism. Scientism being this notion that Western science is the only way to truth. It’s a powerful way to truth, but there are other ways, too. Traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous science, is a more holistic way of knowing. In Western science, for often very good reasons, we separate our values and our knowledge. In Indigenous science, knowledge and values are always coupled. It’s an ethically driven science."
I came across a similare dialogue between Amitav Ghosh and Dr Annu Jalais at the Kolkata Literary Festival, '23, and since it was in the context of Sundarbans, it felt very relevant and immediate for me. So tiger charmers, masks at the back of the head, vaccinations...and I must say I am more in line with Dr Annu in not dissing science.
But the telling point that Amitav Ghosh makes about how all countries seem to be still in a colonial mindset of trying to control and consume, despite the glaring evidence of climate change, finds an echo in Prof Kimmerer's response as well, I felt.
Q: I see the success of your book as part of this mostly still hidden but actually huge, hopeful groundswell of people — and I mean regular people, not only activists or scientists — who are thinking deeply and taking action about caring for the earth. But that groundswell isn’t part of the story that we’re usually told about climate change, which tends to be much more about futility. What are the keys to communicating a sense of positivity about climate change and the future that’s counter to the narrative we usually get?
Ans: The story that we have to illuminate is that we don’t have to be complicit with destruction. That’s the assumption: that there are these powerful forces around us that we can’t possibly counteract. The refusal to be complicit can be a kind of resistance to dominant paradigms, but it’s also an opportunity to be creative and joyful and say, I can’t topple Monsanto, but I can plant an organic garden; I can’t counter fill-in-the-blank of environmental destruction, but I can create native landscaping that helps pollinators in the face of neonicotinoid pesticides. (Which research has suggested is especially harmful to wild bees and bumblebees.)
So much of what we think about in environmentalism is finger-wagging and gloom-and-doom, but when you look at a lot of those examples where people are taking things into their hands, they’re joyful. That’s healing not only for land but for our culture as well — it feels good. It’s also good to feel your own agency. We need to feel that satisfaction that can replace the so-called satisfaction of buying something. Our attention has been hijacked by our economy, by marketers saying you should be paying attention to consumption, you should be paying attention to violence, political division. What if we were paying attention to the natural world? I’ve often had this fantasy that we should have Fox News, by which I mean news about foxes. What if we had storytelling mechanisms that said it is important that you know about the well-being of wildlife in your neighborhood? That that’s newsworthy? This beautiful gift of attention that we human beings have is being hijacked to pay attention to products and someone else’s political agenda. Whereas if we can reclaim our attention and pay attention to things that really matter, there a revolution starts.
Being creative and joyful in our interactions with the natural world - something I recall that Garima Bhatia and I spoke about when we met a couple of months ago, and that organisations like NCF and Palluyir Trust, and MNS also are doing.
Covid quarantine Morning coffee on the patio steps. Watching the Quisqualis fallen blooms Being disturbed by a buzzing. |
Watched the way she shovels so powerfully front legs flinging the sand making tunnels laying eggs feeding larvae catching flies. |
Ficus mysorensis - the mysore fig, at the Timber Depot in Dandeli |
As with all fig trees, an ecosystem in themselves. |
The fruits loved by birds and squirrels, including the hornbills. |
I could happily spend hours here. |
Inside the rounded fruit of a fig tree is a maze of flowers. That is, a fig is not actually a fruit; it is an inflorescence—a cluster of many flowers and seeds contained inside a bulbous stem. Because of this unusual arrangement, the seeds—technically the ovaries of the fig—require a specialized pollinator that is adapted to navigate within these confined quarters. Here begins the story of the relationship between figs and fig wasps.
The queen of the fig wasp is almost the perfect size for the job—except, despite her tiny body, she often times will lose her wings and antennae as she enters through a tight opening in the fig. “The only link the fig cavity has to the outside world is through a tiny bract-lined opening at the apex of the fig, called the ostiole, and it is by means of this passage that the pollinating fig wasp gains access to the florets,” as described in Figweb, a site by Iziko Museums of Cape Town.
Once inside, the queen travels within the chamber, depositing her eggs and simultaneously shedding the pollen she carried with her from another fig. This last task, while not the queen’s primary goal, is an important one: She is fertilizing the fig’s ovaries. After the queen has laid her eggs, she dies and is digested by the fig, providing nourishment. Once the queen’s eggs hatch, male and female wasps assume very different roles. They first mate with each other (yes, brothers and sisters), and then the females collect pollen—in some species, actively gathering it in a specialized pouch and in others, accumulating it inadvertently—while the wingless males begin carving a path to the fig’s exterior. This activity is not for their own escape but rather to create an opening for the females to exit. The females will pollinate another fig as queens. The males will spend their entire lifecycle within a single fruit. Each species of Ficus has a corresponding specialized species of wasp that fertilizes it.
Source: http://pangolins.org |
The main bungalow |
The Sullivan and Wells rooms, date back to 1941, when they were the quarters used by the house help. |
This is the view from the Sullivan. The Paralai estate is organic, and I wondered if this explained the abundance of bird and animal life. |
The bench with a view |
The main bungalow at night |
Hello! Alert and vigilant at our every move. We retraced our steps as these three ladies were in our way. |
Myophonus horsfieldii. |
Myophonus horsfieldii |
the “whistling schoolboy”. And yet, when one awakens on monsoon mornings to the symphony of its whistles, the name seems inadequate, and one wishes one had greater tribute to pay. In the great traditions of Hindustani classical music, it is the Raag Malhar that is associated with the rains; among our birds, surely then, this is the Malhar whistling thrush.One morning we caught the Whistling Thrush having a bath in the garden bathtub.
The whistling thrush has a fondness for flowing waters on the hill slopes. There it hunts aquatic snails, frogs, and crabs, staying open to what opportunity may offer, including worms and bird nestlings. Holding the prey firmly in its bill, the thrush batters it lifeless on a rock before consuming it, concluding their predatory bout with a piercing whistle, perhaps, or a dipping flight down the stream in search of more. With the approach of the monsoon, as the streams are recharged with waters, its song acquires a new zest and the bird begins to breed, even as other bird species in the rainforest are already done with their nesting and are out with their young. It builds a nest in little nooks and crevices along streams, among rocks and cut banks. When forests give way to plantations and rocks to buildings and bridges, the thrush, fortunately, is forgiving and may adopt a space under the eaves or a hole in a wall to nest. Yet, the streams and rivers are never far.As long as the streams are alive, even with a vestige of flowing water, the thrush may survive in the ever-changing hillscapes. One may see it in coffee, cardamom, and tea plantations, swamps, and rocky, wet slopes, and hill towns.
Two orange headed thrushes |
Zoothera cyanotus |
Green Forest Lizard |
Our walks skirted the thick patches of shola forest that separated the estates, and served as refuge for the wild animals by day. |
The bulbul roosting tree |
Rufous babbler |
Hill Neem - a favourite with the hornbills |
The evening light was beautiful and magical. |
Dusk, and the magpie robin would signal the end of the day, even as the bulbuls crowded in to the trees in the bungalow for their nighttime roost. |
Our first sighting of these magnificent hornbills. (Buceros bicornis) |
When we returned, we were told that they do visit the trees of the Bungalow, but only when very quiet..... I thought we were quiet enough! |
The Grass Hills, in the background, from the garden of the Manager's bungalow. |
I visited 2023 November, so it has been close to a year . 26th October 2024 8-10am To my delight, I discovered a skywalk across the Sarjapur...