The Golden Dartlet, or Iscnura aurora, is a small species of damselfly that resides in the general vicinity of small streams and ponds. The above photograph was taken several hundred meters from any sizable body of water – a testament to the creature’s rugged and functional, yet beautiful design. Continue reading
Mr. Roshan & family from the U.S.A were staying with us at Cardamom County and shared their Sightings at Periyar yesterday from their Nature Walk.
As they avid hikers, today they trekked on another route in our Periyar Tiger Reserve.
Elusive, elemental, and extremely beautiful – this natural phenomenon is breathtaking and actually quite simple to explain. Commonly known as light beams, crepuscular rays are caused by an effect similar to Rayleigh scattering, and are rare to see in a natural environment save near the twilight peripheries – hence the name. Steam, smoke, and dust during the rest of the day makes these beams visible to us from all angles, but short of these mediums, angle and hour are the most significant factors for seeing them.
Kerala is dry. The places I’m used to seeing so green and vibrant that they practically drip are now dry, brown and crackly. What are normally torrential waterfalls are reduced to sunbaked rock faces. Clouds occasionally float through the sky, mostly in early morning, but they haven’t shed tears throughout the season. The native plants are geared to survive this climate, as the year seesaws between dryness and enormous moisture. In the forest, untold thousands of dead leaves cover the ground, crackling with glee as trekkers pass under the trees. Continue reading
The dangers of coming between a mother and her child are well known. Bears are infamous for their maternal aggression. Lionesses delegate to other lionesses their maternal duties in order to hunt, but if anything gets too close, it’s “out with their bowels”! What about herbivores? Continue reading
People come to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in hopes of seeing tigers. Few do, but with a dwindling population and excursions limited to the fringes of the reserve, it’s no surprise. However, the tigers that do venture on the edges of the forest, mere kilometers away from Thekkady, leave ample evidence of their lifestyle. Paw prints are a common sight, and less frequently, carcasses of their prey. Simply being in their habitat is an experience worth having. (Warning: slightly graphic images below) Continue reading
A Primeval Jungle
Imagine, for a moment, that you are stalking the primeval jungles Continue reading
A few days ago while walking around Kumily, I saw one of Kerala’s more common species of dragonfly, Neurothemis tullia. Having written about the species before, I didn’t photograph it as usual, until I realized I had a new accessory on my person. The reverse lens adapter is a brilliant money saver, and while not quite as powerful or versatile as a macro lens, costs close to 50 times less than a new lens. Using the final technique described here, the adapter basically replaces the duct tape and allows for much steadier hands. Focusing is still very difficult, and the focal plane is usually limited to under a centimeter, but this often allows for very unusual and abstract images. Such as this young female Pied Paddy Skimmer:
The first time I saw this species, I was dumbfounded, to say the least. We live in a 10th floor apartment in urban Cochin, which admittedly is on the banks of the backwaters. Nonetheless, I was quite surprised to see a dull-colored damselfly float through a window and over our dining room table, and out the door onto the balcony on the opposite side of the room. Fortunately, I gathered my wits quickly enough to rush back with my camera, and corralled the enigma into a corner in the balcony (non-violently, of course), and was able to get a few shots before it breezed off in the lethargic float I’ve come to associate with damselflies. The only time I’ve seen any damselfly zooming the way most dragonflies do is when they’re swooping in on their prey, at which point even the laziest, slowest, and smallest of them can put on quite a turn of speed.
A few months ago while staying at Cardamom County, I spent a morning with a wonderful character named Jain – a tribal man with an avid interest in insects and arachnids, working as a guide in the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, and incidentally, a friend and student of Mr. Vijaykumar Thondaman‘s. Both armed with cameras, Jain and I entered the reserve just after dawn, and spent the best part of the morning hunting dragonflies and damselflies across streams and fields, ponds and gullies. Continue reading
It doesn’t take a gardener or horticulturalist to appreciate the beauty of an angiosperm’s blossom – whether a flower felled from dozens of meters above splayed on the ground; a gorgeous splash of color on the forest floor, or purple puffs of perfectly formed pollination mechanisms overlooking the steep slopes of the Western Ghats – Kerala is a bouquet of stunning wildflowers. Continue reading
As mentioned before, most organisms a link or two down on the food chain rely on at least one defense mechanism to survive. Remaining unseen, looking toxic, and tooth-shattering carapaces are all relatively common on all fronts. The crab pictured above, photographed on Aswem Beach in Goa, relies on the first option – besides measuring under an inch across, it camouflages exceptionally well into the sand it scuttles across – and when feels threatened, dashes into hastily excavated boltholes. Continue reading
As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been developing my techniques for improved macro photography without a macro lens. Tough work, but highly rewarding. Besides areas I will soon explore thanks to a new array of equipment (extension tubes, magnification filters, etc.), I have currently enjoyed a great deal of success with the relatively unknown backward-lens trick. Although you lose the ability to focus and meter light, the technique is excellent for artistic photographs of small things. And if it hasn’t been made clear from my dozens of posts on the subject – I love small things. Continue reading
One of my uncles was visiting Kerala for a few days, and we did what we always do with VIP visitors: trekking together in the Periyar Reserve. 48 hours ago we were in the Gavi sector, and as always my attention was drawn as much to the charismatic micro-fauna as to their mega- counterparts. In all the places where my family has lived and worked–North, Central and South America, Western and Eastern Europe, and now India–we have always been most impressed by interpretive naturalist guides that can make insects as interesting as primates, pachyderms or felines.
It is not easy, but it is possible. So I am focusing alot of attention lately on small creatures like the one in the photograph above, hoping to unlock visually what these great guides do with words crafted into stories. Continue reading
In my previous post about this species, I gave a very brief description of its physiological features. Urothemis signata is indeed called the Scarlet Basker because of the mature male’s coloration, although the young male and female are quite similar, and therefore difficult to differentiate. The difference (prior to maturity) between the two, as far as I can tell, is that the female’s abdomen has somewhat more extensive black markings, becoming almost ringlike, whereas the male’s markings are more like patches.
Although it is very possible that there were mature males flying about the area in which I photographed this specimen (there were probably 6 or 7 immature ones about), it would be almost impossible to tell because Continue reading
The Pygmy Dartlet is a very widespread species of damselfly, surprisingly enough. Measuring about 16 millimeters, Agriocnemis pygmaea is undoubtedly the smallest damselfly or dragonfly I’ve seen. The species is known to have many different appearances, with both male and female displaying up to three or four different color combinations. The male is pictured above, and the female below. Continue reading
Rainforests have dense canopies. The plants in the undergrowth struggle to survive using the limited sunlight that reaches the lower levels of the jungle, and many plants don’t make it. When the weak plants die, their lifeforce nourishes the survivors. It has been this way for millions of years, and walking through the forest, the evidence crunches and crackles underfoot, or in more moist areas, decomposes rapidly into a soft, nutritious humus. Easing oneself out of the forest and into a clearing can be soothing – only upon emerging into the vivid sunlight and open air does one realize how resonant the forest can be. Continue reading
Not to be confused with sand sculpture, sand scripture is the graceful story a million grains of sand tell of the passing of time. Sand isn’t only found on the beach – riverbanks, empty fields, and desert dunes host the legion grains, akin in countlessness to the untold billions of stars in the universe. The ocean’s tides tell stories, however, with the pliable mass of silica as the medium.
More than once I have failed to successfully (by my standards) photograph a butterfly’s larva due to insufficiently sophisticated equipment. However, those days are coming to an end, inching forward step by baby step, in odd undulating motions eerily akin to a caterpillar’s rolling gait.
These are the first good shots I’ve gotten of any glories before. I have seen Stream Glories (Neurobasis chinensis) in Gavi, but they were far too shy to be able to photograph them. Walking through the forest the other day, however, a single Forest Glory (Vestalis gracilis) flew past me into the undergrowth. Careful not to lose sight, I followed it, only to discover a total of five damselflies lounging about in the shade. Continue reading
Organikos 