In Otter Disbelief

They come in a shout, a brief cry of astonishment.

maybe my heart is full of sky

so maybe the only thing separating loving and living is an oh of amazement – the breathless sound the sky makes when falling the final gradient from dusk to twilight and back again, the way your eyes keep searching for stars only an evenmist away, how your fingertips keep feeling for worlds closeted within atoms,… Continue reading maybe my heart is full of sky

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The World of Wagtails

In Bangalore a pair of wagtails lives on the patch of grass by the basketball hoop. They are a sheer pleasure to watch: they hop, daintily, about the grass, occasionally inclining their head to inspect a blade before jabbing it down, sword-like, to extract some hapless creature. Then they will turn, look up and contemplate… Continue reading The World of Wagtails

Painted Bush-Quail

Some meditations on photography and what it means to capture something.

Hawk-Eagle of the Hills

A Legge's Hawk-Eagle looks over the hills of the Western Ghats. Formerly a subspecies of the Mountain Hawk-Eagle, its split allowed birders worldwide to add one more species to their lists.

Oh, Shrikes! (pt. 2)

The long-tailed shrike is known alternatively as the rufous-backed shrike - for reasons that highlight the confused world of bird taxonomy better than anything. The problem is that there's this thing called subspecies - which means that, for example, to take collared kingfishers, you can get two birds that are technically the same species but… Continue reading Oh, Shrikes! (pt. 2)