Birds have fascinated human beings since early times. There have been many books, notes, and descriptions of birds and their behaviour in world literature, including several Indian languages. Birds have a special place in classical Tamil literature. Names given to some birds in ancient Sangam Tamil literature are still the same and in use (e.g., …
An edited version of this article appeared in The Hindu on 10 January 2013 and also online here. In his classic novel, Fahrenheit 451, American author Ray Bradbury writes about a future society, a complacent and troubled world, where the possession of books is illegal. Firemen in this dystopian world are tasked not with putting …
A new herd had been spotted and I got news that the herd was out in the open. I rushed to the spot as soon as I could and found the herd in a swamp surrounded by tea. It was 5 pm and the sun was going down casting a blanket of gold on everything …
After the NCF annual meet I returned to Valparai. It was the 31st of July and I was to leave for Bangalore that evening. I got a call saying that one of the herds that we have been following is out in the open and a female had given birth that morning! Elephant herd in …
The rainforest of the Anamalai hills in the Western Ghats provide ideal conditions for the occurrence of a wide diversity of remarkable fungi. Over the last few years, we have tried to document with photographs many of these fungi, trying to identify the species and learn more about their ecology. Over 27,000 species of fungi …