deponti

While in St.Louis, I


walked for ALS


...and later just before leaving, I took part in the

Walk for Autism

on October 10th.





The turnout for this walk was phenomenally large compared to any of the other fund-raising walks I have been participating over the years. Obviously, the problem of

autism in children

strikes a very responsive chord amongst people.

Here's the official tee for the walk:





You can see just how crowded the walk was!





Another worthy cause which I could not join (I had already done an hour and a half of walking in the Park, and was meeting people for breakfast) was on Oct 17, the very next week.

This was the

Second Wing Lung Walk


Second Wind Lung Foundation






This walk is to benefit those who need a "second wind" that a lung transplant can give them.

Here are the details of the walk:



The slogan is, "Every breath counts"...and indeed it does...it's up to us to make each breath count, not only for ourselves, but for those less fortunate than ourselves, in so many different ways.

Such walks help me realize the extreme good fortune that I have in my good health...

Walking for a cause is such a great way of combining exercise, meeting people, and contributing your litte mite to research.

A quick trip to the Bannerghatta National Park (around the Zoo area) with anushsh yielded such a variety of birds, starting from the tiny

LOTEN'S SUNBIRD





(thanks for the correction,

Garima !



to the

SHIKRA

that we were really thrilled!

Here the Shikra is, perched upon a eucalyptus tree:




( Read more... )

The only sad part was, I had not charged the battery of the 20D properly...so all pics are by MLC2 (SX10)!


This rock pool made a lovely picture....





More pics later....we are off to

Cauvery Wildlife
Sanctuary


area early tomorrow!

Having not had much success with hiking the previous day, we decided that we would make a more concerted effort to find a trail that would accomodate a perambulator (or a stroller, as it is called here.)

Now,KM is famous for getting names wrong, so we fell about laughing when he started calling it the Fig Leaf Lake. We corrected him and told him it was Fallen Leaf Lake. So....when his elder brother called up, he said, "We are at Fallen Fig Leaf Lake".....!


We went to

Fallen Leaf Lake , which is quite as stunning as the larger Lake Tahoe near it:




( lots of pics of Fallen Leaf Lake and the Glen Alpine Trail )


Well, it was a long day, but one spent outdoors, amidst great natural beauty....so it was most enjoyable!

First, you look at the scenery.




Then you see the bird.

Can you see the bird in the first picture? I assure you, it's there....

( where the bird is )


You take a quick foozly shot and run to catch up with whoever you are with, whether it's family or fellow-birders, wondering which part of the innocuous-looking landscape is hiding more birds now!

PS. the bird in this lot of foozles is a TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE....funny name for a bird that I saw two of! :)

GD took the two flights (St.Louis to Phoenix, and Phoenix to Reno) very well, and was, in fact, quite playful on the plane:




As usual the view from the window was just fantastic, as we flew over the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, and saw parts of the Grand Canyon once again. Here's a lovely blue river in the sandy wastes:



( more about the trip to Lake Tahoe )

I came back, hoping that we had some plans of hiking, and found KM in the sunshine, framed in the window, cooing away with GD:



We did go to Emerald Bay and a short hike up to Eagle Falls....but that's the next post!

Here I go again.

"
You have been approved for a lump sum payment of £750.000.00 GBP, in this
Year Toyota Global Award.Send us the required information as stated below to
file for claims.
Payment Department Email: (james_bryan@9.cn)

1.Full Name:..............
2.Full Address:..........
3.Occupation:..........
4.Country...............
5.Tel:..........."


KM, from behind me, sniffs in disgust. "You are so NOT there," he says disdainfully. "Now, me....I never get less than GBP Ten Million."

Nuff said. Here are two views of the water at Eagle Falls in Lake Tahoe, that we went hiking to....

These are the rocks under the still part of the water; I was about fifty feet away.





And this is the reflection in the water....





More pics will follow, as I upload them....

Today we hiked up the Glen Falls trail....and I just have the time to post these three images:


Apparently the

THISTLE

is a "noxious weed" here, but it still has beautiful flowers, and I caught one bee coming in for a landing to meet another bee....look at the wings buzzing at some umpteen beats a second!





Then, to make a change, I got a bee with a moth (or a butterfly, I don't know the id!)





And then I got the moth by itself, feeding off another wildflower....




I would never have got these if I had a DSLR and had to change to a macro lens (as obviously, KM would have had the landscape wide-angle lens on it!)...everything would have flown away by then! I do *love* the handiness of MLC2....

A more detailed post about the incredibly beautiful Lake Tahoe area in California will need more time than I have right now...but here are a few photographs of the

STELLER'S JAY (thank you, yathin!





It's a very common bird around this area....




and we saw them at both Emerald Bay, and then at Eagle Falls Trail...





They would come and go in flashes of beautiful blue....





Don't feel "Jay" of me....I'm trying my level best to share all of it with you!


...and don't you agree these are good birding pics for the MLC2 (SX10)?

Update: here's a video of the Jay hopping over the bridge across Eagle Falls, taken on 190809...alas, what a harsh call the bird has!

On Sunday, DnA decided to treat me to a short (short because of GD) hike in Castlewood State Park....and the Park reminded me SO much of the Bannerghatta area that I go to with Geetanjali and co, that I was quite homesick for a bit! One great plus was that there was NO plastic, and one great minus was that there were NO little chai-stalls giving hot little thimble-chais, so delicious and giving us that hot-mouthful boost...

Here's the scenery; that's the Meramec River (we went to see the

Meramec caverns

once, and

very beautiful they are, too! )




( some more images from Sunday )


A rolling stone gathers no....





but I did gather a lot of lovely mental images of that short outing!

Folks..meet Karen of Crane Creek, El Portal, Yosemite National Park.




In fact, given that the population of El Portal is....wait for it...635, I was wondering, why not rename Crane Creek as Karen Creek? :)

I had met Karen when Uma , a fellow NTP member, introduced me to her when we went birding in Nandi Hills


Here's more info about them .


On Saturday May 30th, yathin decided that we would see as much of Yosemite as we could before coming back to roost for the night, so by the time I reached the Amstutz home, it was past 10.30pm! Things were not helped by our mistaking another house for that of the Amstutzes and having that homeowner (Karen says he is quite grouchy...trust us to pick the only grouchy neighbour, possibly, in El Portal!) tell us he didn't know where the Amstutzes lived (they lived some houses away!)....so I just went in and crashed, and decided to have all the interaction in the morning...but even in my tired state, the beauty of the guest room (they have enclosed a patio to make this) was stunning:





( More about the Amstutz home, and the wonderful morning I spent there )

You'll agree, that's a very beautiful home, in tune with the surroundings of El Portal! I also enjoyed myself hugely, watching Lupin riding a horse...





Eliza is so responsible, that Karen left the other two in her care and came away to spend Sunday with us; and the little neighbourhood is so known and safe, that the children could wander around for the day! Can one imagine such a quality of life in larger towns in any country?

I loved your home, and the warmth of your family, Karen...thank you for making a memorable visit to Yosemite possible!


I'm off to a guided tour of Forest Park this evening..pity it's on a day when the temperature is 36 deg C!...but I don't want to miss the opportunity!

These images truly took my breath away;
I do love the mountains and the streams,
The springs and the snow.
With all the trappings of men,
These scenes are yet pristine and clear.
It takes me to when the rivers' flow
Was not dammed and broken.
In my dreams
I take the unfrequented ways
Filled with flowers, Nature's token
Of benison for creatures here.
It was not a time when
Man had left his mark on the lands,
Or wandered over the country in large despoiling bands.
These images make me sleep...
And dream of Paradise that's still ours to keep.
Nature's not kind, but always fair;
Those who are the fittest can survive...
Breathe the free, pure air,
Flourish, and thrive.




Storm gathering beyond Olmsted Point






Tree growing on granite at Olmsted Point



( More scenes from Yosemite )







Yosemite sunset


No photographs can do justice to Nature's majesty....

Thanks to Karen, I was able to id some of the wildflowers that grow in the Yosemite Park; they were so varied in colour, shape and size!

On Tenaya Lake, I loved the pattern this fallen tree-trunk made:





( some flowers, one VERY large tree, and so on... )


I liked this tree very much; someone has painted a picture of a cat sharpening its claws on it! It's as if the cat is inside the wood, clawing it!

The creatures of Yosemite are varied in size and appearance, and we got to see very few of them; but what we did see was fascinating!

Let this squirrel welcome you to this post...





( if you want to see other critters, click here )

We saw several BLUE-BELLIED LIZARDS. I got a closeup of this one where you can actually see the blue belly, but some predator seems to have got its tail!





Field trip accounts are hard work, sorting out the pictures and videos and uploading the least awful of them, and then getting the narrative together....will be doing the plants soon!

I wondered if I should do a day-by-day account of the trip, but then decided that it won't be easy...I would probably mix up everything and give wrong information as usual...so here are some of the creatures of Yosemite...

The birds, of course, were far more in number than the mammals; and the only butterfly I could actually look at and photograph was the California Tortoiseshell; there was a perfect wave of them across the road and the banks of the Merced River, across from Karen's home in Crane Creek. We were not lucky enough to sight a Coyote (we never stopped complaining to Yathin about that) but we did see the Pica, and I think Yathin got some good pics of it, too.

If this was the rate at which one feels like taking photographs ( and in my case, at least 60% of the photographs should be, and are, deleted!), I can only imagine how many photographs Yathin must have taken over his eight trips to Yosemite so far, at various times of year. (I think to myself that Yathin only posts his best photographs and all the DM-quality photographs must be there, somewhere on his hard disk. I don't want to face the fact that photographers like Yathin won't HAVE DM-quality photographs.)

One of the very common birds that we saw was the AMERICAN RAVEN; Karen's email id has the raven in it. Here's one against the beautiful Yosemite sky:





And another view:




( lots more under here; look only if you have the time and the inclination )

Here's another juvenile Scrub Jay, turning over its shoulder to say bye to the visitor from far away:






Next up, other creatures of Yosemite...

and






Will have to organize my pics a LOT and then will come my dream-come-true 3Y trip....

Today we went as an all-woman group to the Bannerghatta area beyond the large quarry, and later to the Zoo area...and the sightings were amazing, including an Egyptian Vulture, a Short-Toed Snake Eagle, a rufous male Paradise Flycatcher, White-Browed Fantail Flycatcher, the Tickell's Blue, a Blue-Capped Rock Thrush and so on and on and on.....

But there is some problem with my Gmail, and I am not able to upload pictures to my Photobucket...will have to sort it out...

I went, as usual, to meet all the people who took the NTP....this time, there has been a full contingent (the accomodation at the Bannerghatta property of JLR is 8 X 2, and 17 people had registered, which meant that three of the young women have had to share one tent!

I realized that I knew several members beforehand, but it was nice to meet others for the first time, too!

The group was a very nice one, including a mother-daughter duo, and another young couple who had brought their delightful five-year-old, Arohi, along with them. Arohi and I had a great time swinging on the suspended tyre in the campus, and trailing around the place while the others were getting edified!



Here's the very intelligent, articulate little girl (sorry, young female person):




( more about the NTP Nature Trail )


Well, here's most of the NTP group as they came up the forest trail, with Karthik in their midst; they are so earnest about learning as much as they can, that weekend!




I do hope they enjoyed the program as much as I enjoyed meeting all of them (though I really had to chase up some of them to get their email ids and details!) and I hope they will be active members of the egroup, too!

Update: the minute I left, the group apparently sighted the Eurasian Eagle Owls, the only debate being whether there were two or three of them...*&^% Owls!! this is the first time I have gone on the Nature Trail with the NTP and not seen them!

I suddenly decided to take Madhusmita, a friend whom I met on the JLRNTP egroup, and who has become quite close, to the Bannerghatta Zoo area this morning.....

Here's a very expensive fruit from a very valuable tree....





Those are cashew nuts.....

Here's more info about them, at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew

Aren't they beautiful, as well as being tasty? There are quite a few trees, here and there, near the tourist area....

Though the birds kept us occupied, our mission (Ramesh, Geetanjai, Anush and I...all NTP members) was to try and identify a village to develop homestays in, and to try and develop bird trails and train some of the village youth to act as bird guides, giving them both revenue and a reason to protect the birds and the environment. We have been somewhat successful...

But so many beautiful scenes took my eye....

The stream that runs through the area we visited makes patterns of light and shadow as it runs tinkling over the rocks:



( more sights )

Here's one man, whom we found building a mud structure in the village. He was skilled at his work, and very dignified indeed:



We are hoping to make headway with our work in the area, but meanwhile, the trips are very enjoyable, too!

Off to the Bannerghatta Zoo area tomorrow with Madhusmita (NTP)....what will the day be like?..I wonder (the first line of a very famous song from the Sound of Music!)

Off to sleep now...g'night folks, haven't caught up with my friends' lists, either...!

Every time I visit the Bannerghatta Forest area (as distinct from the Bannerghatta Zoo/Butterfly Park area), I see so many birds; last time the raptor sighting that had me in raptors raptures was the Marsh Harrier; this time it was this beautiful SHORT-TOED SNAKE EAGLE soaring overhead:




( see the birds.... )


Several COMMON IORAS came and sat on the trees of the mango orchard....



Several WHITE-BROWED FANTAIL FLYCATCHERS, an ASIAN PARADISE FLYCATCHER, and some TICKELL'S BLUE FLYCATCHER played hide and seek with us in the mango orchard, but I could not get a photograph!

Other stuff in the next post....