Ghats Road, Idukki District
From Behind the Wheel: Rickshaw-Wala Moxie
Ghats Road, Idukki District
Solanum Laxum
Solanum Laxum is a climbing vine native to central Asia, commonly found in the high ranges of Kerala above 1000 meters. The fragrant, star-shaped flowers are white with tiny yellow centers. Continue reading
If You Happen To Be In London
Much as we love birds, and Mr Audubon’s illustrations, little did we know their value in book form, or that we might have this opportunity to see them on display under one roof (click the museum’s banner to the left or any of the bird images to go to the source):
John James Audubon’s hand-engraved The Birds of America (1827-1838), is the world’s most valuable book. But which page illustration from the book should be shown first in our new Treasures gallery?
Vote for your favourite page from the 4 below and see it in the Treasures gallery when it opens on 30 November 2012.
Anti-gambling though we are, we encourage you to cast a vote on the Natural History Museum’s website for your favorite Audubon illustration, with the chance to win a complete edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Dunlin
Barnegat Bay, NJ
Naturalist Inmates
Click the image above to go to the website for this unusual linking mechanism and here in particular for the history of the program:
We connect prisons with nature.
Our mission is to bring science and nature into prisons. We conduct ecological research and conserve biodiversity by forging collaborations with scientists, inmates, prison staff, students, and community partners. Equally important, we help reduce the environmental, economic, and human costs of prisons by inspiring and informing sustainable practices.
Top Station, Munnar
Top Station valley view
Top Station, one of the highest and most popular excursion points in Munnar, is the uphill climb through tea estates to Top Station, a tiny hamlet on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. This idyllic spot has superb views over the Tamil Nadu plains and the edge of the Western Ghats. Top Station takes its name from a ropeway that once connected it via middle station to lower station in the valley.
The “What’s Different?” Series: An Exploration of Green Hotels in Western North America
With links to so many globally impactful human activities, such as transportation, lodging, foodservice and agriculture, the tourism industry is uniquely positioned to effect a paradigm shift toward this thing called sustainability. Buzzword though it is, sustainability has perhaps too many potential concrete applications to be easily defined in abstract terms. With a certain root sense of lasting or enduring, and more current denotations that are important in a global way, sustainability can be manifested in many real ways through business.
Finding myself motivated by applications of this concept in hospitality businesses, I set upon a mini-quest during the summer, making a series of five visits to hotels that do it well.
In the What’s Different Series, I will recount site visits and room-nights in hotels that have incorporated a commitment to sustainability into their communications and business identities, with the goal of identifying just what’s different? In hotels where I stayed a night, I’ll evaluate what sets the guest experience apart, if anything, from the experience at an “ordinary” hotel. Are there sacrifices? Perks? For the hotels that granted me a conversation and site visit, I’ll cover more about what they actually do differently in operations. What are the policies? How are the employees involved?
With its so many facets, hospitality has the opportunity to set a wide variety of examples of sustainable business. Looking forward and working forward, the questions I’m asked (mostly by myself in rumination), boil down to: what consists of sustainability in hospitality, and how do we get more companies to do it? Continue reading
Silent Spring At 50, Rachel Carson At 105
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photo
The book is as important as ever. Its author, whom we pantheistically canonized once already in advance of this anniversary for the book, is worthy of some background reading. Click the image to the left to go to a post by the New Yorker‘s Archive Editor, which will link you to other pieces in the New Yorker by and about Rachel Carson:
“Silent Spring” has proved to be so important that Carson herself has been a bit overshadowed by it. When she finished “Silent Spring,” Carson was fifty-five. She’d had a lengthy, but nowadays easily overlooked, career as an award-winning, best-selling writer of natural histories—the sorts of books that are written, nowadays, by Richard Dawkins or Bill Bryson.
Bird of the Day: White-browed Fantail
Uda Walawe, Sri Lanka
Oliver Sacks, Come To India!
A letter that touches on a theme close to our hearts. Any of us could have written a letter with this sentiment (click the banner above for the letter and the link below to Zadie Smith’s article that inspired it) but his way with words is simply more powerful:
IN RESPONSE TO:
North West London Blues from the July 12, 2012 issue
To the Editors:
Seeing the photograph of Willesden Library in Zadie Smith’s powerful article [“North West London Blues,” NYR, July 12] gave me a sudden start, and a rush of intense memories and emotions, for it was here that I spent many of the happiest hours of my growing-up years—our house was a five-minute walk from the library—and where I received my real education. Continue reading
Common Nawab (Polyura athamas)
Nawab Butterflies are frequently found inside the forest, in damp patches as well as open areas such as pathways and fields. The butterflies have yellow and green patches on both side of the wings. Continue reading
Conservation Measures With Serious Teeth
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING ON THE CONSERVATION OF MIGRATORY SHARKS
After three meetings – the first in Mahé, Seychelles in December 2007, the second in Rome in 2008 and a third in Manila in February 2010 – the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks was negotiated and signed. It commenced on 1 March 2010, the requisite number of signatures (ten) having been achieved in Manila at the end of the negotiations. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Cassin’s Auklet
Monterey, CA
Trout Threads
Hanging by a thread? A study offers new insights on the greenback cutthroat trout. Image: Fish and Wildlife Service
From the Green Blog in the New York Times, a story about this beautiful creature:
The rare greenback cutthroat trout, Colorado’s state fish, is even more imperiled than scientists thought, a new study suggests. Continue reading
Euphorbia
Native to Central Europe, Euphoria are now widely growing in the High ranges of Kerala.Their highly unusual, sculptural structure makes these plants look somehow rather bizarre. In Kerala these plants are grown as ornamentals in home and public gardens.
Cats Guarding Treasure
Vaska the cat, one of the Hermitage Museum mice hunters, seen in the museums yard, with an antic statue on the background, in St. Petersburg, in this April 25, 2004 photo. Cats have been part of the Hermitage’s security system since its founding days. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
Winding beneath the magnificent halls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, with its Da Vincis, diamonds, Greek statuary, Egyptian parchments, enormous number of paintings, mechanical peacock clock, and other treasures, there is a catacomb of cellars. It was into this windowless nether region—far below the Winter Palace’s expansive view of the waters of the Neva—that Maria Haltunen and I had cautiously descended. As I followed her through a narrow, imperfectly-lit corridor, full of large pipes and jutting wires, Haltunen gasped. “Look!” she said.
In the semi-darkness, a little being had appeared. He perched, a foot-tall shadow, on a water pipe.
“Oh, you are a fat one!” said Haltunen, jangling the chain of her I.D. pass like a talisman as she approached the pointy-eared creature. “How nice you are!”
The cat sat, perfectly still. Then he vanished.
Bird of the Day: Sri Lanka Woodshrike
Uda Walawe, Sri Lanka
From Behind the Wheel: Mass Transit for Ordinary People
Vandaperiyar, Idukki District
Writers Should Write
Thanks to one of Atlantic Monthly’s most talented writers, who mostly writes on topics unrelated to our site, we came across the above. For many of us it is the first time hearing Hemingway’s spoken voice–we know only his written voice(s). The last line says it all.
Bi-Coloured Frog
Bi-Coloured Frogs are endemic to the Western Ghats, especially in Periyar Tiger Reserve. The tropical climate and abundant rain combine to create rich and varied niches that offer safe haven for these amphibians. The leaf litter–the most nutrient and species rich strata–is a favourite hunting ground for these frogs.
Organikos 