Hairy Caterpillar on the drumstick tree

9th September 540pm

I initially thought this was Metanastria hyrtaca caterpillars, but I think they are actually Eupterote mollifera caterpillars.

Seen on our drumstick tree.

They were all crowded on the bark of the tree, in the shade in the day - when I first saw them.  

8th September - Tree 1 5pm.  Not much movement seen.

9th September Tree 2 - they were alive and one the move.  Seemed smaller than the other tree caterpillars.  I could not locate the caterpillars on Tree 1.

I will keep a watch on the tree - Hopefully, the caterpillars do nt completely defoliate the tree.  According to the literature on the internet, these moths scrape and gnaw at the bark as well as the leaves.  I did not see any leaves eaten up.

More as and when I observe.

12th September

Looks like both sets of Caterpillars are on one tree now!

Subsequently, for many days I could not locate them.  Then I found some at the lower part of the tree, and some going to the base.

27th September

Hairy Caterpillars on one trunk and a bark gecko on the other.

The caterpillars looked worn and scruffy.

One liked like it was making its way down to the soil?

Pupal stage is in the soil, I read.

Some more close to the soil.

All it takes is a few trees - Mumbai birds

eBird India Checklist - 3 Dec 2023 - Dosti flamingo complex - 14 species

I didn't see the flamingos since the Sewri spot is now inaccessible.  

Dosti flamingo complex
03-Dec-2023
6:46 PM
Traveling
2.01 km
66 Minutes
All birds reported? Yes
Comments: Empty plots around have fig trees


30 Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)
1 Asian Koel
6 Black Kite
1 Coppersmith Barbet
1 Alexandrine Parakeet
7 Rose-ringed Parakeet
1 Spot-breasted Fantail (White-spotted Fantail)
9 House Crow
2 Common Tailorbird
1 Blyth's Reed Warbler
2 Red-vented Bulbul
5 Purple-rumped Sunbird
6 Indian Silverbill (White-throated Munia)
25 House Sparrow

Number of Taxa: 14

In the heart of Sewri, it just takes a couple of fig trees and a Jackfruit to create a little haven for birds, it seems. 

The Alexandrine, the Silverbills and the fantail were such a delight. 

A Mocis frugalis - Sugarcane Looper -Identified via iNaturalist - spent the night on our room curtain.

A Blue pea vine had these beautiful blooms.

The Banyan did not have much bird activity and I wondered why.

It was the Jackfruit corner that was buzzing with sparrows, babblers, sunbirds and the fantail,

A spring morning in Delhi

 For amma.

Spring in Delhi is a wonderful time.  There was a nip in the air as I went for a morning walk in the Kailash colony area.  

The bottle brush was brilliant red, 

the boughs heavy with flowers.  My mother's garden has this tree as well.

But it was the Bombax - Silk cotton tree - that stole my heart and filled me with amazement and awe.  Nature's Ikebana, effortlessly balanced and poised.

The buttress roots, magnificent

the outstretched branches, graceful

the fallen flowers, poignant

and the blossoms on the tree, just spectacular.

The tree was abuzz with activity - crows, mynas, doves, parakeets, sunbirds, bulbuls, and many bees as well.

Memories of Assam mornings.  Memories of  laburnum yellows in summer.

Hollyocks - from my Delhi childhood

Petunia beds in profusion

Yellow Nasturtium from South America

And was that a Persian Lilac in bloom?

Collared doves going for a walk

A spread of daisies, past their prime, but still so pretty.

The native Curtain Creeper, which we had in our previous garden.

Work travel does bring pleasures and delights.

A limerick ode to Purple Rain

A tree stands, hungover,
wanting, it seems, to be here
moreover.

Syzygium cumini
Branches untidy
Fruits aplenty.

Drops purple squish, in season
beyond belief and reason.
Ignored by birds, bees and humans
and watching it go waste, such treason.

I try to pick them off the floor

but alway the grit is more.

Damaged and bruised are they by the fall.

I need a net, to catch them all!

Thanks to my faithful reader Sagarika

From the land of Jambudvipa

through these lines I proclaim-a

the plentiful and wild, purple rain-a.

Different shades of young

Russet Red

Chartreuse Yellow
Or Yellow Mellow?

Terrace views.

Mangifera indica.

Slaves, 4th of July and a morning walk

 Strange are the connections one finds.

Monday morning was cool and cloudy, the roads wet and "puddly" with the overnight rain.  I walked along Besant Avenue, having no stomach to face the Monday morning human litter that I was sure to find along Bessie Beach.

There was a time when Besant Avenue was a quiet, tree-lined avenue, with an occasional car, and an even more occasional walker.  It was 7 am and there was a steady stream of cars either way, but the pavement and the trees made for a pleasant walk.  From Rajaji Bhavan, past the tamarind trees, some Copper Pods and around the bend from the Scouting camp.  The Scouting camp seems to be totally abandoned - I had camped as a pre-teen Girl Guide in that very space, but now the gate is barred and there seems to be no activity within.  Good for the urban wildlife...some peace and quiet within.

Past a couple of Banyan trees that take up the whole pavement, with their telltale red fruits all smashed on the ground, and then I see the pavement strewn with these little white snow-flake like flowers.

I look up to see a bunch of trees within the TS campus in bloom, their branches coming over the wall onto the pavement.  I stop and stare, admire them, before moving on.

I retrace my steps back on the same pavement and give the trees more admiring glances.  They ring a bell, but I am not able to identify them.

A whatsapp message to Geetha and oh yes - they are Wrightia Tinctoria trees in bloom!  Paalai or the Pale Indigo tree, called Doodhi in the north.  I remember seeing them in full glory in the forests of Gir.  The flower formation is called a "Corymb-like cyme" on Wiki - though I could not quite make out the Corymb formation here.

I idly wondered who Wright was.  William Wright, was a Scottish botanist, and the genus Wrightia was named after him by the Botanist Robert Brown.  I wonder why.  It does not appear that Brown was Wright's student.

Wright for his part was a botanist, but what caught my eye was that he was a slave owner, believe it or not, with many slaves and an estate in Jamaica.  He was also against the abolition of slavery, says the Wiki, reference.   

And for me to find this connection on the 4th of July.

Greeted by Guazuma!

 26th June 2022

I visited the Nizhal OMR Tree Park after ages.  In my absence, I heard that Urbaser had helped clean the place of plastic and there had been clearing of the subabuls and undergrowth by a machine.

How different the park looked!  The trees stood out, tall and happy, and the Guazuma was ablaze with flowers.

The picture does no justice to the sight that greeted me and filled my heart with delight.

Exotic or not, the tree was resplendent, its branches sweeping all the way to the ground, each bough laden with flowers.  Thenpuchimaram (as it is called in Tamil)  was also buzzing with active pollinators.

The flowers with their pink stamens - fooled Rashmi into thinking this was an overgrown Lantana!  The leaves are hairy, and they are a good trap for dust - quite ideal for our city.

The berries are like rudraksha beads aren't they?

I happily wandered up and down the central path with tool in hand, looking at new leaves, hovering pantalas, screeching parakeets and the little Glory vines with flowers.  One of the obsessions of the Nizhal team is the "bio-fence".  This a green fence being nurtured assiduously by the whole team, and contain two types of plants - one which looks like karvepillai and the other that has these little little glossy leaves.

Now the soil near the border of the plot is probably the worst - rocky, hard, filled with plastic dumped across the wire fence and really those poor little saplings have had a hard time to grow.

June of '21, they played host to these caterpillars. As I loosened the soil around the plants, I let these caterpillars be.

These first instars of the Common Lime needed to be nurtured too.  

And now a year later, those same little caterpillar eaten karvepille like plants have grown 

 and were even flowering!

I was rather delighted at their progress.  Many of them had tendrils of the glory vine curling around their stem.  Now, those I did not let be, I removed them firmly and sent them back onto the steel wire fence

This is the other bio fence plant.  Such lovely glossy leaves and white stars for flowers.

The fig tree was fruiting and the wasps were zitting around.

All was well with the world, it seemed, as my heart felt lighter.

What a beauty

 IIC balcony, Delhi

April 9th 2022

Urban Wilderness Walk - Thiruvanmyur

29th August '21

In July this year, MNS launched a project called Urban Wilderness Walks, an internship for college students, with the goal of creating more nature educators in the city, and creating a kind of snowball effect for increasing connect to urban wilderness in the city of Chennai.  Spearheaded by Yuvan and  Kalpana, it is an amazing initiative.

Kalpana explained in the MNS bulletin -   

"The internship was begun with the aim of creating a community around biodiversity appreciation and study through training people in planning and conducting periodic urban wilderness walks in their neighbourhoods. The 27 interns, mainly from two womens’ colleges in Chennai - Stella Maris College and Womens’ Christian College - attended field sessions at Perungudi and Kotturpuram Urban Forest and participated in activities curated by M. Yuvan as part of their training module. For easy identification of common urban fauna, each intern received a copy of Preston Ahimaz’s “A Guide to Some Urban Fauna of India” as well as the Field Guide for identifying Common Birds, published by NCF.

As a first step the interns checked out their residential localities from the perspective of conducting wilderness walks, chose a suitable trail for the walk and invited people to participate in the walk. Inspired by Yuvan’s activity sheets they designed their own to suit the chosen trail and surroundings. The result - delightful activity sheets and unique activities formulated to engage the walk participants. Fun activities were created and implemented – estimating the age of trees by measuring tree girth, colouring insects and birds on activity sheets, drawing leaf shapes, drawing food chains, urban flora and fauna bingo, identifying birds through calls, making bird sounds, enacting commonly observed behaviour of animals, checklists for biodiversity observed on particular trees, open ended questions...the list goes on......."

This hybrid orientation - online and offline - culminated in a series of walks by the interns in their areas - Pallikaranai, Velachery, Thiruvanmiyur, Adyar, IITM, Mandaveli, Royapettah, Triplicane, St. Thomas Mount, Washermanpet, Madhavaram, Perambur, Ayanavaram, Mugappair, Aminjikarai, Kolathur, Virugambakkam, K.K. Nagar, Ambattur and Avadi.....  I attended the one conducted by Keerthana in Thiruvanmyur, along Kuppam Beach Road.  

Each of the interns made lovely little posters like this one on the left that I received.   

The previous night we had heavy rain, and it was a slushy walk to the starting point which was near Bhavani medai.  It was a small group that started the walk.

It is the end of August and the "Mayflowers" are in bloom, I loved the colours on this one, all washed and bright.  It is unsurprising that the British brought this tree in, so attractive and graceful.  As we were finishing our walk, we also saw one that had fallen in the overnight rain - the shallow roots once again evident.

My big learning was the approximation of a tree's age - Four feet from the ground, measure the girth in centimetres and divide by 2.5!  This Rain Tree near the fish market, was around 90 years old, then! As old as my father!

My next discover was courtesy Usha, who added to the walk with a small detour into Teachers Colony and and ancient Shiva temple there.

What caught my immediate attention was a fig species tree, growing all over and into the temple wall.

The Shiva temple houses the samadhi of Siddhar Bala Ramalinga Nathar who used to worship here, centuries ago.  It is all bricked and plastered now, so it was difficult to imagine its antiquity.  There was a lovely Nandi as well.

Took a picture of the leaves of this fig, which was not a Peepul.  Was it the Rock fig - Kallala tree?  I doubt it, as the edges are not wavy and nor are the veins pink. More like Icchi maram, or Talbot Fig?

The roots below and the temple were supporting this enormous canopy above.

In the compound was the second ancient tree - a Peepul - that we measured, and this emerged as 110 years of age! It was a glorious sight, since it had grown unfettered and unimpeded, with a uniform all-round canopy.

I learned about murungai "Pisin" or the resin from the bark - supposedly a widely used herbal remedy for stomach ailments

The Murungai trees on the road were in fruit, in abundance!

A small roadside guava was in flower too

We continued up Balakrishna road- with its Australian Acacia trees and Bauhinias.  We saw a bunch of sparrows flitting through the trees, a few sunbirds, heard a Koel and some red vented bulbuls. A screechy parakeet flypast up above too.

Cotton stainer bugs species scurried in the undergrowth as also large black ants.

We turned west on First Seaward road, and saw the beautiful Jamun trees.  Of course the area is dotted with Neem trees as well.

It was an interesting and enjoyable morning, and we parted ways, wishing Keerthana all the best for her future walks as well. As  Usha and I made our way home, we were filled with positive energy, as a morning walk is bound to do.  Never mind the sweat of course!