Articles by Deepa Mohan

As I conducted the World Campus Bird Count (it happens throughout the world between Feb 16 and 19, 2018) the sighting of the day was seeing a line of young trees at the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). The trees did not, to a casual obsever, look very pleasing. With their crowns and branches lopped off, and wrapped around in hay and chemicals, they were not the stuff of leafy, shade-giving, bird-nesting dreams. But since I had seen these trees, growing along Bannerghatta Road, being wrapped in preservative chemicals and wrapped to keep them alive, and…

I received the following email from Indane (the cooking gas supply company of Indianoil, a Government agency) Safety Instructions For LPG Customers: Here are a few tips to use your LPG in the right and safe way: 1.Take delivery of Refill only after checking weight of the cylinder. Also check the valve or O-ring for leakage. 2.Put the Safety cap on valve if the cylinder is not in use. 3.Use Suraksha LPG hose of ISI mark. 4.Light ignition source before opening the burner. 5.Turn off regulator when not in use. 6.Don't place the cylinder in water or in a horizantal…

An initiative where everyone who is a birdwatcher, can contribute to the database of a worldwide organization that logs the birds seen during this time. The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is back and birdwatchers and enthusiasts can help in the enumeration by uploading their sightings on the eBird India website between February 16 and 19. The largest citizen-science project to enumerate bird species, organised by Bird Count India and eBird India, uses the information on birds for a better understanding of seasonal patterns of movement of birds and for monitoring changes in distribution and abundance of birds over long…

When one goes to see a play,one goes with certain constructs; one, that there will be a linear narrative, that one may be entertained while also made to think, and that one will connect to the action on the stage. But recent visits to experimental performances have made me realize that all of these may not happen at some performances, and it was in this frame of mind that I went to watch "RamaNaya", by Sandbox Collective, at Ranga Shankara, on Friday, 9 Feb '18. The play drew quite a good house for a Friday evening, especially when it had…

I first met  Prasad Natarajan in 2014, when we attended a wildlife volunteer training program together. Even then, in the beautiful environs of Kudremukh, Karnataka, I always found him with a sketchpad and a pencil in his hands. Since then, his artwork, especially on the theme of wildlife, has become quite well known. He is not afraid of using the most difficult and unforgiving of art media, such as Indian ink (lampblack collected in a container and mixed with grease, and applied carefully to paper.) He is now an artist whose work finds homes across the world. However, Prasad decided to…

We have thousands of runners but no place to just walk from A to B. I can no longer walk the less-than-a-kilometre stretch from my home to that of a friend on Bannerghatta Road. The road has been dug up for widening ( though it quickly ends in a bottleneck at an immoveable temple opposite a newly- minted mall), and leave alone the demise of several young trees, there is no footpath any more, nor is there likely to be, for the foreseeable future. Critically endangered species: the Common Pedestrian. Update: My friend Shiv Sastry tells me that there is…

At any Darshini restaurant in Bangalore, the south Indian "filter kaapi" (coffee that has been percolated through a filter, and always made with milk) is first poured into the glasses, where the colour gleams invitingly in the sunlight. Then, boiling, frothing milk (with or without sugar , as per the customer's requirement) is added. One is one, the other one waits... This was taken at Vidyarthi Grand, on Kanakapura Road, one of my favourite post-birding-outing favourites.

Winter is always a good season for an amateur naturalist like me; the cool weather suits me and I can certainly spend far longer outdoors without getting tired out by the relentless Indian sun. I like to go out as much with friends as possible, and come across interesting things...literally, from far and near. One of the "far" birds that we went to see are the bar-headed geese, which fly in from Mongolia and other parts in the far north, to our relatively warmer climes. Bar-headed Geese At Magadi lake at Gadag district, they arrive in large numbers; however, if…

I often come across the Balloon Vine (also called "Love in a puff") on my walks through the fields and forests around my city. It's a very common vine, indeed....and in fact, in New Zealand, it is identified as a prohibited pest plant! However, in Kerala, the flower of this vine  is one of the ten "sacred flowers" Seed pod and flowers: I found that the scientific name for the genus of this vine is "Cardiospermum". The name intrigued me, until a friend and avid amateur botanist, Ajit Ampalakkad, showed me the seeds inside the "balloons". Each seed was attached to the…

In 2013, the Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) and Jungle Lodges and Resorts (JLR) together started a pioneering effort in the field of wildlife and conservation: training wildlife volunteers who could bridge the gap between the Forest Department and the general public,  helping with various tasks that KFD personnel have to carry out. Here is one account of the programme as it stood in 2013. Several batches of volunteers attended the training programmes across several landscapes: Bandipur, Bhadra, Dandeli, Kudremukh and Nagarhole. About 550 people in all attended the programmes.They were called Eco-volunteers and the government organization in charge was the…