Chirping of Gubbi (sparrow)

In childhood, I had heard many stories of close encounters and narrow escapes from fights with sloth bears. As I grew up, I saw many such encounters with lions, elephants, etc. , on Discovery and National Geographic Channel. After I started wandering in the wild, I heard many such stories. Today, I will be narrating one such encounter of mine with one of the surviving mammoths on earth, the Rhinoceros . November 2012; to check the progress of preparations for Wildlife Day celebrations, I went to Falakata from Madarihat. After the progress was checked, instead of taking the direct road to Madarihat, I chose the jungle road. I decided to drive the vehicle. On the way back, two of my Range Officers, Buddhadeb and Ranjan Talukdar, were narrating the story of a rhino attacking the vehicle of an Assistant Wildlife Warden long back. Listening to the stories, I drove into the tall, dense grasslands of Moyurdanga. Moyurdanga, as the name suggests, derives its name from Mayur (peacock). The f...

          With shrinking forest cover, planting a seedling has become popular slogan everywhere. Lot of money is spent on afforestation. How many of the seedlings planted grows to become fruit bearing trees? Many die naturally, some are cut by villagers for the firewood or will get damaged for one or the other reason. It would have wonderful if fully grown trees are planted directly in the field. Many trials have been done in this direction. But it's not possible on a mass scale.          As part of IFS training, during our field visit to Bandipur, I remember Dr. A.J.T. Jonhsingh saying that the forest department should take up planting of fig plants and other fodder species in wildlife areas. But raising nursery of fig plants is very difficult. If small fig plants are planted in forest, they will immediately be browsed by herbivores and will not be allowed to come up. The fact is that fig trees are abode for wildlife. One will ...

As sun sinks, the darkness swallows the earth slowing the down the activities of most of the living creatures, indicating that its time for us to sleep and give rest to our body. There are exceptions to it. Some animals gets activated with the fall of sun. One creature that comes to everyone mind is OWL. In most of the areas tigers start there hunting from dusk. Bats, Loris, Nigh jars, Leopard etc., are have adapted nocturnal lifestyle. There vision is good in the darkness. Some use ultra sounds to detect there food like Bats and some organisms like Pit vipers use heat sensitive infrared waves. Humans are naturally afraid of darkness. We depend on artificial light. Our eyes may find it difficult to see the things in nigh, but we can see them with cameras. To capture photos in the night what we need to do is to make camera blink its eye slowly. The means its shutter speed needs to be lowered. Finding proper place, framing the picture and proper base not to allow the shaking of camera a...

Paltan Bazar in Monsoon rain through camera eye For years rain has been described by many writers. Still words are not enough. Many movies and songs have been pictured in rain. Unlike in west, rainy season is very distinct in Indian condition. All creatures from animals to humans wait for first rain. Once rain gets heavier we start gazing at sky ‘oh god! When will it stop? For farmers rain is life. For auto and taxi walas, umbrella sellers and other related business people more rain means more money. For first one day rain may temporarily stop the life, later we get adjusted to it. Everyone prepare themselves for rainy season in advance. Animals like squirrel stores food grains, farmers get ready to plough their land, villagers need to consolidate their muddy house, firewood needs to be stocked, new umbrella needs to be purchased, older umbrella need to purchased and the list preparation goes on. When rain starts all dust will settle down, temperature cools down, green will flourish ...