On the bank of a gushing river in the forests of India’s Western Ghats, under the black velvet dome shimmering with countless stars, a tree lights up with flashes of neon, and goes dark again. On the opposite bank, another … Read More
A lone male sparrow, perched on a television cable that runs past my window, calls every morning. He is raising a family in a ceiling nook of a store room on the opposite terrace. He’s a neighbor I have been … Read More
We witnessed this during a large carnivore monitoring exercise conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) in Dhargad, Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. Two of my colleagues, Rajesh Bhendarkar and Amol, and I, left the field station in the morning … Read More
An extraordinary relationship between two living entities that goes back 70-90 million years, since the time of the reign of the dinosaurs, is bound to be that much more special and specialised, to the point of mutual obligation. The ubiquitous … Read More
The web of an orb-weaver spider is a giant sensory organ, a deadly trap, an architectural wonder, and a spectacle of elegance. Members of this group build large, intricate, concentric webs using a toolkit of different special-purpose threads produced from … Read More
Early June 2010. Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. The forest is monsoon green. With me in the legendary ‘Main Watchtower’ is Chikanna, caretaker of the Kalhalla Forest Resthouse. From my vantage point, I am gifted with clear visibility thanks to three … Read More
Soil. Have you ever, even for a brief moment, stopped to wonder about this fundamental resource? How easy it is to overlook the omnipresent soil, because, hey, it is always there, inert and infinite. I will have you know that … Read More
In August 2016, we finally decided to fulfill our longstanding dream of spending quality time observing the herpetofauna of the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) of Tamil Nadu. It took us seconds to convince Vishnupriya Sankararaman (Shashank’s wife), who is … Read More
On a night walk in the Doyang Valley, Dr. Anish Andheria stumbles upon a rarely recorded phenomenon – a four-party association between three insects belonging to three different orders (Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and Hemiptera)… and a plant! Photo: Dr. Anish Andheria … Read More
“We are spending INR 1,300 crores to build nine kilometres [in Pench Tiger Reserve]… This is public money. It is up to you to decide whether it’s correct or not”, said the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin … Read More