Common leopard butterflies are found across the Western Ghats up to 2000 meters. These butterflies prefers forest edges, grasslands, damp patches and wild flowers. This butterfly has black spots and wavy lines with a-pinkish violet tinge underneath the hind wing. Continue reading
Not all of it is spectacular (zoos are not our cup of tea, generally speaking) but especially the “budding birders” initiative has our attention; we are grateful for the Hindu’s coverage of some the news about several conservation schemes to be established in Kerala:
A primary environment care project with the cooperation of grama panchayats; Rs.259-crore ‘Krishi Raksha’ scheme to protect crops from wild animals; forest academy at Arippa; and ‘Urinunarvu Kadinunarvu’ for the development of Adivasi settlements are among the projects identified by the Forest Department for implementation under Mission 676. A Rs.15-crore project will be launched to conserve water in the catchment areas of rivers and forests during the summer. Continue reading
Thanks to Genevieve Fussell for pointing this exhibition out to all of us:
In 2009, the Irish photographer Paul Gaffney walked nearly five hundred miles through northern Spain along the Camino de Santiago. Inspired, in part, by his interest in Buddhist meditation, he set off, three years later, on a series of walking trips through rural Spain, Portugal, and France. Continue reading
Photo credits: Renuka Menon
Pahalgam is a famous Indian tourist destination situated at the state of Kashmir. The Lidder River runs through a beautiful, undulating meadow called Baisaram surrounded by thickly wooded pine forest. Continue reading
Ansun Sujoe, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Sriram Hathwar, of Painted Post, N.Y., were named co-champions of the 2014 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. Their siblings helped them celebrate the first shared title since 1962. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Thanks to National Public Radio (USA) for keeping us apprised of who’s who in the world of words, spelling edition:
For the first time in 52 years, the Scripps National Spelling Bee crowned two winners last night, after the final two competitors exhausted the word list. The winners were Sriram Hathwar, an eighth-grader from Painted Post, N.Y., and Ansun Sujoe, a seventh-grader from Fort Worth, Texas.
“I like sharing the victory with someone else,” Ansun said. “It’s been quite shocking and quite interesting, too. It’s very rare.”
Here are the words that brought Thursday night’s competition to a close, from the Scripps Spelling Bee site (we’re including the definitions just in case you’ve forgotten them): Continue reading
Shutterstock/KuLouKu
We appreciate the increased interest, across all the media we track, to the cultural and environmental aspects of beer production. Thanks to the Atlantic‘s intrepid investigators for this one:
In late November of 2009, the town of Cockermouth, in the Lake District of England, had a flood. Heavy rains—16 inches in 24 hours—led the rivers Cocker and Derwent to overflow their stone barriers; the buildings of the medieval town, as a result, ended up submerged in 10 feet of water. Among those buildings was Jennings Brewery, one of the few establishments in the world that brews real ale—a beer, rich and dark and featuring a texture that connoisseurs might call “chewy.” Real ale is, to the extent that beers resemble animals, endangered. This is partly because it requires a very particular type of yeast in its brewing: a yeast that, during fermentation, sits on top of the wort, the sugary liquid extracted from the mashing process, rather than sinking to the bottom. Continue reading
Hebbal Lake, Bangalore, Karnataka
shutterstock.com
In its weekly “good reads” section Conservation has this following summary of an article in Scientific Reports, of interest to our reef watchers/protectors:
In November 1835, the HMS Beagle visited Tahiti, in the South Pacific. Climbing up the island’s slopes, the young Charles Darwin looked across the sea to nearby Moorea, and saw an island surrounded by a barrier reef. During and after his voyage, Darwin constructed a theory for reef formation that explained how fringing reefs grow into barrier reefs, which then convert into atolls. “The close similarity in form, dimensions, structure, and relative position between fringing and encircling barrier-reefs, and between these latter and atolls,” he wrote, “is the necessary result of the transformation, during subsidence, of the one class into the other. On this view, the three classes of reefs ought to graduate into each other.” Continue reading
Photo credits: Renuka Menon
Poori is a deep fried flat bread made of wheat flour. A dough is prepared by mixing fine maida flour with water and a spoonful of ghee, which is then divided into small balls. These balls are flattened using a rolling pin and individually deep fried in cooking oil. Continue reading
Kaziranga National Park, Assam
Photograph by Robert Harding/Corbis
A blog post at the New Yorker‘s website rounds up recent news from the Antarctic’s underwater environs, and its not what could be mistaken for good:
It’s been an exciting news month for the polar ice sheets. A study published on May 28th in the journal Nature indicated that, fourteen thousand six hundred years ago, the rapid shedding of Antarctic icebergs raised the world’s median ocean levels by six and a half feet in a little more than a hundred years. That bit of paleoclimatology comes on the heels of a pair of studies, published two weeks ago, concluding that glaciers in the West Antarctic have passed a tipping point and are now doomed to disintegrate and melt. Sea levels will rise by four feet, and up to ten feet if the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet follows. A third study concluded that parts of Greenland’s ice cap will be eaten away from below, since it is piled atop newly discovered canyons, which will allow warm ocean water to encroach inland for up to sixty-five miles. The rising waters won’t be witnessed by anyone reading this post, as the really big effects lie hundreds of years in the future. But, if the predictions are correct, all of Florida south of Fort Lauderdale will eventually drown. So will broad swaths of the coastal countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Continue reading
The Common Tiger Butterfly is found across the Kerala’s Western Ghats up to 2500 meters. These butterflies prefers open forest, flying close to the ground in wooded habitats and migrating to the higher hills during summer. Continue reading
State bird of Karnataka
Bangalore, Karnataka
Many universities in the western and northern regions of the world are concluding their academic years about now as summer break begins, which means it is time for Raxa Collective to begin welcoming interns. Some who join have already completed their undergraduate degrees, and prior to beginning their “real” careers they come to spend time in one of our communities, collaborating with our staff, local communities, etc..
One such case is a contributor who has just completed an undergraduate degree; before heading to New England to pursue Ph.D. studies he will carry out projects at Xandari that will allow him to perfect his Spanish language skills. Since he is going to be in the same community as these people below, starting in August, we post this “suggestions on summer reading” article from Harvard Gazette as a prompt for James to make his own summer reading recommendations in a new post. If he takes us up on this prompt we will see who follows his lead and shares their own reading recommendations…
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer. Yeats and Bishop made Bret Anthony Johnston’s summer reading list but, he said, “I’m eager to happen upon unexpected used bookstores, tag sales, and library fundraisers, where I often buy books outside of my typical reading inclinations.”
Bret Anthony Johnston
Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Director of Creative WritingThis summer I’m going to read W.B. Yeats and Elizabeth Bishop, and “Wynne’s War,” a new novel by Aaron Gwyn about special forces on horseback in Afghanistan.
Photo credits: Dileep
Calveri Mount is a beautiful destination, situated on the high ranges of the Western Ghats about 40 kilometers from Periyar Tiger Reserve. From Calveri Mount one can experience a spectacular panoramic view of Idukki reservoir – the biggest arch dam in India. The location also offers great trekking and the scenic beauty of Idukki’s valleys and high-altitude hills. Continue reading
A view of the village of El Pardal, Sierra de Cazorla, Spain, 2013.
A composting toilet, Sierra Nevada, Spain, 2013.
Many contributors to our platform here, and its readers, have probably considered life off-grid. Most will experiment during their travels, but stop short of the full monty, which would mean divestiture or most/all possessions and hitting the road. Thanks to this photographer (and the New Yorker‘s far-reaching sampling) for giving us both candid and portrait-like views into some examples of “self-sufficient” lives:
In 2006, while he was backpacking in Australia, the French photographer Antoine Bruy signed up with an international exchange program for volunteers who want to work on organic farms.
An egg mistakenly cracked by Charles Darwin is among the items in The Wonder of Birds exhibit. Photograph: Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
Thanks to the Guardian for pointing us to an exhibition that will be of interest to ornithologically-inclined readers of this blog:
It is an unassuming object, a smallish, strangely glossy brown egg, and it is broken because of the carelessness of the last person you would expect – Charles Darwin.
“He squashed it into too small a box and it cracked, unfortunately,” said curator Francesca Vanke, explaining the state of the spotted tinamou egg going on display at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.
The object is the only known surviving egg from Darwin’s HMS Beagle voyage during the 1830s. Probably drawn to its glossy sheen, Darwin signed it C. Darwin and brought it back to Britain after collecting it in Uruguay. Continue reading
Tadao Ando’s Monterrey house, by Edmund Sumner
Thanks to Phaidon for this story on the relationship between architecture and photography, or rather architects and photographers:
By the time Edmund Sumner was given his first camera, at the age of eight, he was already surrounded by, and wholly obsessed with, design. Edmund’s father was an interior designer whose clients included the likes of The Rolling Stones; his sister took up the paternal profession, while his brother became an architect.
Sumner, for his part, decided to photograph buildings for a living, and working with his wife, the architectural journalist Yuki Sumner, has specialised in architectural photography, with particular emphasis placed on contemporary Japanese design.
Organikos 