Today I was told that the sighting of the Black Stork, that I posted about

here

was a first for Bangalore! What a thrill that was!

This is not a thrill that the experienced birder will understand. S/he is probably used to making rare sightings and first records all the time...but for an L-board, the thrill of having made a record sighting is quite high....

It's the same in our monthly family quiz group. When, at my most ignorant, I stumble upon the right answer, my happiness in doing so (and gaining all of 2 or 5 points for my team) is far greater than the greatest Mastermind champion could experience, sitting in that black chair answering questions on, say, "The Use of the Semicolon in Shakespeare" or some such chosen subject!

So let me savour the moment, all too soon, it will be gone....

And a word of gratitude here to Karthik, who is a great guide..he points out the direction and lets one arrive at the destination by oneself.

Since I was able to go birding to Bheemannakuppe kere on Saturday, and to the Ragihalli sheet rock/pond area on Sunday, I'd better combine the two for my field report...


My trip to Bheemannakuppe kerE (kerE means, lake or pond in Kannada) on Saturday was with Abhisheka Gopal, Anjali Anantharam, S R Gopalan, Girish Mayachari, Harsha Joshi, Sangeetha Kadur, and Suma.... and the group on Sunday, to Ragihalli, consisted of a member of the Madras Naturalists' Society, Padmanabhan, and his friends Sandhya, visiting from New York, and Kavita and Rajesh from Bangalore. The last three were coming out birding for the very first time!

One raptor that we saw on both days was the

ORIENTAL HONEY BUZZARD :



( birds at both locations )

I leave you with this colourful scene of the

WHITE-BREASTED KINGFISHER

at Ragihalli kere, adding its dash of blue to the greenery, and the white and pink of the lantanas and waterlilies:

On the way to visit the Jayamangali Blackbuck Sanctuary, we were negotating a badly dug-up stretch of highway, and I found this notice:





Now,


this link

tells me that Pune is 835km (about 519 miles) from Bangalore....

I wonder if the guy who put up the notice HAD to give the way to Pune, but doesn't WANT us to go there....?

I wish I had a Chennai magazine like Citizen Matters to post to...but I don't, so my blog will have to do.

Motorists, though the privileged lot in terms of affordability, can also get royally harassed at times...and by people who consider the public road somehow their own domain....I am talking about the security personnel of the various buildings on the road.

Today, after dropping my sister in law at Apollo Hospital, I went looking for a space to park the car, and came to 1st Street, Cenotaph Road, where the


Japanese Consulate

is:



( the incident )


The minute we get into a uniform, we LOVE to harass our fellow-citizens in any way we can. It's a mindset...a way of life. I am sure the Consul does not know what is going on outside his building.

People like me, who know our rights, try to fight back...often unsuccessfully. Others are cowed down by the uniform and meekly obey. Others...powerful people themselves...ignoore all the rules. If I had been a politcal person, the same guard would have, obsequiously, have allowed me to park.


It's disgusting....and it's not restricted to Chennai alone.

We went, after Karthik's alert, to see the glow-worms again this year:

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/blogs/show_entry/942-the-glow-worms


Here's my post about it last year ...



Where do they come from? Where do they go?
Why are they so tiny? Why do they glow?
Why do just some of them have wings?
What, exactly, is "bioluminicence"?
Is it a word that even makes sense?
Have you wondered about all these things?


If so..

click

here

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/838-intach-heritage-walk-avenue-road

For more pics, look at




http://s297.photobucket.com/albums/mm205/depontis/?start=120



http://s297.photobucket.com/albums/mm205/depontis/?start=100




and


http://s297.photobucket.com/albums/mm205/depontis/?start=80

One sample:

Yesterday we went to an excellent theatre evening...but driving a distance less than 15 kms. took us nearly and hour and a half...both ways.....and I was really ashamed to be sitting in a car, burning petrol at idling, and being part of the problem instead of at least trying to be part of the solution.

But the reality is that Chowdiah is terribly poorly connected by buses, and we were going for a relaxed evening of leisure, and that is not, in my book, equal to travelling on crowded buses and walking in your glad rags for ages to reach the venue, and then reach the bus terminus after the show.

So I compromised, and I am not feeling very good about it now.

Should I not have gone at all? I would have missed some really superb acting (it was Ismat Apa Ke Nam, by Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah and Heeba Shah)....we have lived a life where we have earned our money by honest means, so why is it that the only way we can have a nice evening is to do something that my conscience bothers me about?


Oh well...would like to share this feat of engineering with you all....




The dexterity with which the leaves of the ants' nest have been sewn/pasted together is incredible, isn't it!

But such ants' nests are not great news for the trees on which they appear,because often, the ants have aphids, as well, which suck the living sap out of the tree and its twigs.

Though we took an overnight train, the visit really started with the sunrise after we got out of the train and were speeding towards Valparai from Coimbatore after a quick breakfast at Annapoorna....




The chill dawn, the pilgrims on their way (most pilgrims would finish their pilgrimage by January 14th, when the sun begins its "uttarAyanam" or northward path, and the festival of Sankranti or Pongal, the harvest festival, happens), and the little lighted shrine in the gloaming, made me feel peaceful...




( read on IF you have leisure )


The lovely trip ended with this beautiful sunset:



Then came the largest full moon (also the first full moon) of 2009:







Valparai is beautiful (even if Hotel Treat is not)...do visit when you can!

I am off to Daroji Bear Sanctuary in an hour or two...everyone, don't be good, until I get back!

I am putting up the pictures from the Valparai trip, and am overwhelmed by the amount of sightings we seem to have had!

But meanwhile...






The sunlight lies
In a narrow band, across the road.
The water pots speak of the need to conserve
A precious resource.
But in the middle of want, there is plenty..
Plenty of colour in our pots
To hold the colourless water
That will bring colour to our life.
The road winds on...
Hopefully, to a better future....

With regard to the tree-felling and road-widening that is happening now.....we are against *indiscriminate* use of this facility, that's all. The point is, that cutting down trees is irreversible, so what we are saying is, involve the citizens in this decision-making process, and let us cut down trees ONLY when there is no other solution.

The High Court of Karnataka has given a decision that the BBMP authorities must include the citizens' forum, Hasiru Usiru, in its deliberations and only take decisions on tree-felling and road-widening that complies with the Town and Rural Planning Act. Right now, this is not being done. So we are fighting a legal battle here.

The other point is that widening the roads is actually adding to the problem, by allowing more vehicles to drive through the roads. And at the rate of 1500 vehicles being registered every day, the widened road will become choked up in no time. (This has already happened at several places.)

Other cities have addressed this problem without getting rid of their green cover, so we also would like to look at similar solutions.

We can learn from both the successes of other cities...and some spectacular failures, such as the 16-lane roads in Los Angeles which are still choked with traffic, and the Elevated railway in Boston which had to be broken down and re-constructed underground after the neighbourhoods degraded, the crime rates soared, and pollution hit all-time highs.

Replantation is not a simple issue. In the first place, saplings cannot, in the short term, take care of oxygen and carbon di oxide, support plant and animal life, and bring down the ambient temperature the way a fully-grown tree can.

Also, these saplings are planted far away from the sites where the trees are cut, so they cannot be beneficial to the microclimate of central Bangalore.

Neither does there seem any guarantee that these saplings will grow to the majestic proportions of the trees that are being felled. 20 to 40 years may not seem much...but a few of the trees that have been felled are a 100 years old!

Bangalore comes with beautiful avenues and boulevards that have been planted in the past by wise administrators. We may not have added a single such boulevard to our urban landscape, but surely we should at least protect, not what we had, but at the very least, what remains now, after several years of losing our green cover steadily, during which the inner city temperatures have risen by 3 to 4 degrees Celsius.

All these are the reasons why we are asking to be included in the BBMP decision-making process, and want to give alternative solutions where possible.

We are also concerned about the livelihoods of the vendors and small businessmen; they have as much right to be a part of Bangalore as the motorists, and they are not the people who can come to the BBMP and voice their concerns. Removing our rich street life can only impoverish our city and rob it of its vibrant character.


Wider roads are also being built without any provision for footpaths, making it very difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, the elderly, children, and disabled people. These people, too, have as much rights as the motorists of Bangalore.


The short-sighted siting of the new airport, and the desperate hurry to cut through the city to gain access to it, seems to be killing our city.

Let's not squander, thoughtlessly, the treasures that we have, and repent it later.

Two birding trips, one to Ramnagara and one to Ragihalli in the Bannerghatta Forest area....an evening with old film music and great friends....catching up with old friendships...what could be better? I am a very lucky person.

Four of the most common things one can see on a trip to the outdoors:


The MORNING GLORY (Convolvulus):



The GARDEN LIZARD (Calotes versicolor)



The dragonfly (Dontask methisname)




And a PALM SQUIRREL (Onceagain noname), straying from the tree for which he is named, and enjoying the fruit of the CASUARINA tree:





Lots of pics to follow...once I get done with my backlog of work!

Time was, when a 60-foot wide road had at least 10 feet of pavements on either side, planted wih lovely shade-giving trees, which flowered serially through the year...

Now there is the more than 100-feet-wide Inner Ring Road near my home. The pavement, at the point at which I have photographed it, is not even as wide as I am tall...and I am SHORT!


http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/blogs/show_entry/409-civic-urban-planning-environment-infrastructure-city-life-the-width-of-the-footpath


We are doing a great job of killing off bird life, insect life and pedestrian life, all at one go.... or rather, gone!

When I wrote my entry about spinach , I mentioned the young woman who came to my door several times a week to sell it.....

Here she is.

She is unfailingly cheerful. She has two children to support, and has a tough life. But that never affects her smile.

She asked me to take another photo of her when she would "dress up" and come! She's been coming to our apartment building for several years now. She says she sells all her vegetables in the complex and doesn't have to do the rounds of houses in this hot weather. All of us also give her something to eat or drink once in a while, or old clothes and books for her children.

Here's a picture I like against all the rules.


The rules are:

1. Don't have a tree in the middle of the photograph.

2. Do not have a distracting element (like the gate-post) at one side of the photograph.

...and some others, too.









But...

I love that tree, and the steady stride those sadhus (religious mendicants) are keeping up, the casual curiosity of one, and the open road that lies beyond the gate of the JLR property; the gate and the wall stand for what is enclosed,known, secure; the road stands for what is open, unknown, a mystery... and those mendicants, with no worldly possessions, are off on that road...a road, hopefully, to the discovery of the universe within themselves.

On the way back, we also saw several Buddhists monks travelling. But these are Jain monks, I think, or Hindu ones...I don't know.

Bandipur...always something to intrigue one, and make one think.

I do wish *I* could shed my worldly possessions and stride off towards the forests like these monks are doing....!

Here's the cropped photo; no gate, only the tree, the monks, and the song of the open road:

This may not be a "distracting" photograph, but to me the unworldliness of the road and the monks lacks a counterpoint.

That's the difference between the content of a photograph and its artistic composition!

I don't like posting about current events and politics and such, because there are plenty of others who do that much better than I do.

So, not a word about the Twenty20 match, the CET exams tomorrow and the day after, and the earthquake that my daughter felt....

So here's Sri Circle Goddess....

Here's the pretty temple:





and here's the sign :






The name is given because the temple is situated on Sir C V Raman Circle. And it's interesting that the Indian Institute of Science is referred to in the sign as Rashtriya Vigyana Mandira...which also translates to National Temple for Science.


And here's the goddess, preparing to pierce the evil hide of the demon. His face is hidden behind the foliage of the tree (I could not enter further without removing my footwear) but I like the fairly polite way she is just sort of poking his epidermis with that spear, and he looks as if he would kill her with just his underarm B.O.





There are plenty of such beautiful temples dotting this lovely city of mine....

As part of the ongoing struggle to prevent our esteemed government from razing trees to make broader roads, four of us went down Kasturba Road, that abuts Cubbon Park, today. It was a wonderful walk in one sense, because starting from the Karunashraya at the corner,








( for some more pictures of Kasturba Road, click here )




Tomorrow we take our huntin'-shootin'-fishin' guest to Galibore, to show him a forest and a river where huntin', shootin' and fishin' (except for catch-and-release) are NOT permitted!

However, because of his interests, our guest is excellent at spotting birds...so he's going to be a great help in whatever photography KM and I do tomorrow!

Have a great Sunday, everyone...I love my life and I wish everyone were as happy as I am...

too tired to think...but must jot down points about fluorescent paint, divided highway, toll gates, excellent road, no trees, no lane discipline, wrong way traffic,

just got back, off at 5 am tomrrow for plastic clean up with clean and green..

Twice a year, I enjoy this "free gift"...udhay, who is very interested in fragrance, would probably enjoy this very much, too.


http://bangalore.metblogs.com/archives/2007/09/a_fragrant_gift.phtml