Dandeli, Karnataka
Bird of the Day: Black-naped Monarch
Dandeli, Karnataka
Bird Behavior at Xandari III
For the first two installments of this video series, please click here and here.
With footage filmed between late October and early December of this year, the compilation video below features twelve different families of birds, not including the domesticated chickens we have as egg-suppliers on property.
First, a Rufous-tailed Hummingbird scans its territory for trespassers; next, a female Yellow-throated Euphonia eats some tiny fruit from a local tree, and a male of the same species sings his bubbly song, which includes a mimicked phrase from the Rufous-breasted Wren toward the Continue reading
Insect Behavior at Xandari
Over the last month or so, I’ve been recording videos of animal behavior at Xandari, and I finally have enough to share a small compilation of insects doing their thing on property. Sometime during the next week, I’ll also upload a video of new bird behavior observed here.
In the video above, you’ll see a small colony of leaf-cutter ants Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Rufous-bellied Niltava
Bhimtal, Uttarakhand
Earthships
Photo via ThisIsColossal
In New Mexico, a community of ecologically-conscious citizens have built homes that are almost completely made out of recycled materials, and their utilities come from the sky: solar and wind power, and rain collection gutters. We’ve featured a series on straw bale construction, a slightly similar idea, in the past, but, as you can see in the video below, these “earthships” have even more going for them.
Bird of the Day: Crab Plover
Mandvi, Gujarat
Bird of the Day: Lesson’s Motmot
Tacacori, Costa Rica
Bird of the Day: Indian Pitta
Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu
The Evolution of the Cleanest Continent
In addition to the successful planting of millions of trees and bushes in parts of Tigray, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), the announcement of another ambitious initiative by several African countries during the United Nations’ summit of climate change in Paris could spearhead the continent to becoming the world’s cleanest in the following decades.
Bird of the Day: Crimson-backed Sunbird
Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary, Goa
Bird of the Day: Ashy Bulbul
Pangot, Uttarakhand
Bird of the Day: Sarus Crane
Bharatpur National Park, Rajasthan
Bird of the Day: Steely-vented Hummingbird
Tacacori, Costa Rica
Bird of the Day: Anhinga
Vaduvoor Lake, Tamil Nadu
National Appropriate Mitigation Action
Ripe and ripening Caturra coffee at Xandari Resort, Costa Rica.
We have a strong connection with coffee here at Raxa Collective, especially given the recent developments in coffee growing at Xandari Resort in Costa Rica over the last year. With the COP21 climate change summit in Paris happening this week and the next, there’s been an announcement by Costa Rica’s Ministry of the Environment (MINAE) that 25,000 more hectares of coffee plantation in the country will be converted to carbon-efficient, National Appropriate Mitigation Action farms, funded in part by the UK and Germany. Lindsay Fendt reports for the Tico Times:
Costa Rica began its coffee NAMA pilot program in 2013 with 800 small producers. The donated money will allow Costa Rica to expand the program to more than 6,000 family-owned farms. By 2023, the country plans to have implemented the NAMA best practices in all of its coffee farms.
The pilot farms reforested unused areas of farmland, reduced their dependence on chemical fertilizers and employed other innovations on a farm-by-farm basis. The strategies already have been proven effective. Coopedota, located in the Los Santos region southeast of San José, became the world’s first carbon neutral coffee producer in 2011 by utilizing many of the NAMA recommendations. Along with improving efficiency, the coffee cooperative burns coffee bean byproducts to produce its own energy. The cooperative’s members say in addition to helping the environment, the changes have saved them more than $200,000 a year in costs.
Bird of the Day: Ruby-cheeked Sunbird
Manipur, India
Bird of the Day: Red-vented Bulbul
Bangalore, Karnataka
The New Bread Basket
Image © Shutterstock via GreenBiz.com
We all enjoy eating bread, whether it is gluten- or wheat-free, whole grain, French baguette, Italian ciabatta, or any of the myriad other styles of baking. In a new book called The New Bread Basket, author Amy Halloran explores, as her subtitle explains, “How the New Crop of Grain Growers, Plant Breeders, Millers, Maltsters, Bakers, Brewers, and Local Food Activists Are Redefining Our Daily Loaf.” An excerpt, via GreenBiz.com, follows:
People will keep studying one another and drawing on their ingenuity to build sustainable farms and food systems. Alan Scott jump-started a new old-fashioned approach to bread with his oven plans, offering an alternative route to a food that had been industrialized. Other innovators are fiddling with ovens and mills, turning dairy tanks and silo bottoms into malt systems, scaling down equipment and deindustrializing processing. They are making tools to fit a future they are shaping.
Bird of the Day: Brown-fronted Woodpecker – Male
Pangot, Uttarakhand
Bird of the Day: Intermediate Egret
Bangalore, Karnataka
