Walking along the beach is so relaxing and peaceful. The tides come and go, watching the crabs digging holes, birds flying around and the cool breeze is something I keep looking forward to when I am in a land of beaches.


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This was the most sighted bird during our pelagic trip in the Arabian Sea in April this year. It was lovely to see them in large numbers and also see them fishing. They would just hover a little above the water and fish. At time, they cam quite close to the boat. Actually fishing boats are an important source of food for these birds in the sea. ( Read more... )

To get to the estuary, we had to pass by a house. We thought it might be a good idea to actually dump our bags and get into the water. I had never done that before but was looking forward to it. We had to walk along the beautiful mangrove habitat which was thrilling. But we really had to watch out while walking so that we don’t place our legs on ( Read more... )

During my last pelagic birding trip in the Arabian Sea (April first week), we had some great sightings of the Arctic Skua (Parasitic Skua). We did birding in the Mulki Coast of Karnataka and the Kannur Coast of Kerala. The sighting in Mulki was a very brief one just to be able to confirm the sighting but we had some amazing sightings at Kannur. At ( Read more... )

The Sankey Road tree cutting by BBMP was the most awful news to start my day. The BBMP had auctioned the trees in the midnight for a 4-digit number and had begun chopping trees immediately. The residents had actually waited on the road until midnight seeing to it that the auction didn’t happen. But when the people retired for the night, the BBMP ( Read more... )

A lot of travel has been taking me to NH17 more regularly. What was once a 2-lane highway is getting converted into a 4-lane highway. What was once one of the best highways is a nightmare today. The speeding private buses were always scary in that part of the state. The highway was once lined with trees all the way from Mangalore to Kundapur and ( Read more... )

We (Ashwini & I) confirmed our landing in Udupi with a “Present sir” message to the organiser. It was going to be a Pelagic trip, i,e hiring a boat and going into the sea looking for the returning migrants. I was suffering from dry cough, but couldn’t resist the temptation of birding from a boat. Shivashankar had done all the research and had ( Read more... )

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I am kinda thrilled that I could finish the half marathon at the Kaveri Trail Marathon this year. Sometime last year in September, I had decided to give 10K a shot at the same marathon. I trained for more than a month to finally do a 10K. That seemed like an achievement. New shoes and new gear. After that, I stopped training due to lack of ( Read more... )

I was just hiking up the hill when I noticed something strange structure on a plant. It seemed like some sort of a bundle made of sticks. I wondered if somebody had tied something which was very unlikely but still it doesn’t stop you from. A friend said “Bagworm” but I conveniently ignored it for the first time thinking she was referring to ( Read more... )