The bulbul diaries - 20110325

Much to the amusement of all of us at home, a red whiskered bulbul has made a nest on one of our plants. The nest building seems have started on  March 10th or 11th (by 11th evening it was more or less ready for occupation). Within a few days (14 or 15th), there were two eggs in the nest. Wikipedia says that it takes about 14 days for them to hatch and so we should expect the chicken to appear by end of this month (in about 4-5 days!!). Here are some pics!

20100317, ~6:45AM: The mehandi plant in which the bulbul has made a nest. The nest was prepared in practically a day or two. Here, the incubation is on.

20100317, ~6:45AM: Look, what a nice place she has picked to build her nest. It is supported by at least four main branches of the plant and several smaller twigs. Extremely stable.

20100317, ~6:45AM:  A close-up of the nest and the two eggs. Look at how nicely the tiny bird has woven the little straws and twigs together!

Sunita had warned me about how paranoid these birds get if they keep encountering humans often. Till now the bulbul has been too generous to allow me audience till as close as 2 feet or so. She of course lies frozen as she incubates; she probably assumes that I did not notice her!

Now, Peeyush has provided me with another reason to keep fingers crossed - cats! It seems that at their place, a bulbul had built her nest on a very small palm at very low level. They became an easy meal to a cat. In our case too this bulbul has built her nest at quite low a height (well, she has many other birds to hide her nest from) and there are cats on prowl in the nights near our house too! I wish and hope that they remain safe and the whole process goes off smoothly!

Will keep posting as and when there are more episodes!

Ravi   (Fri Mar 25 22:24:28 IST 2011)

Sree Ramasevamandali Concert 2011

The scanned copy of the schedule of Sree Ramasevamandali Concert, 2011. Thanks to Atreya for the flyer.

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Write to me for a PDF of these - these sites do not like hosting PDF files :-)

Ravi (Tue Mar 15 23:09:00 IST 2011)

praying mantises and other little bugs

After we moved to our new house, we took quite a bit of time to accept it! One striking thing about this new place is that there are not as many crows as in our old area. Someone should develop a crow-index to indicate how urbanised an area has become! BUT there are several other birds and animals which we had never seen in/near our old house (and this is just 4-5 km away!)
There are coucals (ಕೆಂಭೂತ - kembhoota) calling out early in the morning, followed by bulbuls (ಪಿಕಳಾರ - pikaLaara) and then come visiting several tiny birds (tits or flower-peckers; just keep hearing them all the time). One fine day I was surprised to see a big black scorpion, not very far away - it was unfortunately dead, someone had stamped on it :-(  People keep telling about seeing snakes (they all claim that they are cobras!); I have not been lucky to see even one till now!!


Well, this post is about the bugs just around our house! There are several shrubs, small and big plants and all these invite a lot of insects (and caterpillars). They in turn bring in many carnivorous insects. Just yesterday saw a millipede kind of worm searching underneath the decaying leaves - it was probably a carnivorous worm! Have not seen any birds yet, attracted by the availability of this large population of insects in our plants. Hope that day also comes!


Last Sunday and yesterday I took my camera out and took some snaps. Here are some of them. I dont know the names of many of the insects!

These white insects are quite abundant and look very lovely!

this is how flowers of henna (ಗೋರಂಟಿ: gOranTi) look like. They are quite tiny. 



 

 The most surprising revelation for me were these black little bugs. They all had congregated underneath the leaves of periwinkle (ಕಾಶಿ ಕಣಿಗಿಲೆ: kaashi kaNigile'), very nearby to the apex. Even more interesting thing was that under one of the leaves seemed to be present some twenty eggs.  I presumed that the eggs belonged to these insects - either they hatched out of them OR they are the eggs which belong to this nomad-colony.  The eggs had not hatched, so it had to be the latter.

These were extremely shy insects - when I first noticed them, a few of them were resting near the stalk of the leaves; no sooner that I bent down to take a closer look, that they all quickly assembled themselves under the leaves!! I had to bend the stem to take snaps!

 Only two or three of the group seemed to be near the eggs. May be they were on sentry then, or they are some kind of specialised nurses, or may be the queen!? (I am thinking too much!)

BTW the shining leaves behind are of the young pongamia (honge')

 Here is a close-up with a newly learnt photography technique (of focusing elsewhere before taking this otherwise completely shadowed snap!)


Yesterday (after 6 days), when I visited the kaashi kaNagile' plant again to check the status, neither were these insects present, nor were the eggs.  There was only some indication of these eggs having remained stuck there! Should have watched every day :-(

 A closeup of the red coloured leucas (ತುಂಬೆ: tumbe'). The angle of shoot is carefully chosen to give an impression as though those two holes appear like eyes!!

 Another new insect for me was this. Wonderfully striped and coloured!

 He/she was extremely uneasy to pose and that gave a chance to shoot him/her in different angles!

I hope you can spot the green insect! Sitting very conspicuously!

And moving around was this little greenish-yellow bug.  Look right at the centre.

 And new to me was this green spider!

Check carefully - there is a juvenile(?) grasshopper (ಮಿಡತೆ: miDate') perching over the banyan's young leaf's dried casing to-be-shed!

a shield kind of shape!

Various stages of the toor daal (ತೊಗರಿ ಕಾಯಿ: togari kaayi) bud-flower-pod!

The toor daal plant invites a large number of insects! Here are the eggs of one such, underneath a leaf.

And here is the egg-laying in action. She lays them in a very definite fashion!

 Also perched on the toor daal branches was this golden coloured praying mantis. He/she had stationed himself/herself near a flower and was wondefully camouflaged! He/she was quite sick of me and tried to hide. Such an elegant turning around the leaves and branches!
Zoom in and check the sharp bristles in its claws!

 After a couple of hours, happened to see this! He/she had devoured the head of a butterfly (who would obviously have come to lay her eggs). How could I miss such a wonderful background and pose! :-) The yellow petal and the hunter sitting on it! And his/her nice shadow on the petal!!

 Unfortunately he/she mistook that I have come for a share in his/her kill and started hopping away!! You should see it to believe the praying mantis' acrobatic skills - jumping while holding that large butterfly is not an easy task!

 And as he/she was fleeing away with the kill, happened to get to see this wonderful fluorescence from the butterfly's wings!

 Took this close-up and left the winner to lick his/her trophy, even as he/she was looking towards me with lot of suspicion! :-)

Very soon happened to see this wonderful butterfly, actually laying her eggs at the bottom of a just-emerging pod. By the time I rushed to get the camera she was done laying the eggs and was probably resting. There is one very interesting thing about her: her rear end of the wings mimick eyes and false antennae (which actually flutter-around!)

And yesterday, saw the same kind of butterfly, unfortunately her rear is obscured by that little branch! She swiftly flew away!!

 And attached to our curry leaves (ಕರಿ ಬೇವು: kari be'wu) was this pupa which had remained green for several days and last Sunday when I saw it, had turned brown!
The architecture is wonderful. This sticks to the leaf's root at one small place and to keep it straight (mimicking a leaf!) the centre part of this structure is held by a thin string (as thin as a cob-web silk), but obviously pretty strong one! (not noticeable in this pic).

 The other side of the pupa seemed to leak some liquid. I was wondering if the insect had died!

Yesterday, was happy to note that the pupa-structure was broke open! There was no abortion after all (unless some hornet or wasp did the opening ceremony!!)
And here one can see very clearly that thin string holding the rear half of this structure to the leaf!

 And then I almost heard this fellow munching away. As I turned the hibiscus leaf around to take a look, oh so sad - he/she stopped eating. I had disturbed his/her lunch! He/she actually moved away - was probably afraid of becoming somebody else's lunch!

 Many would have seen or heard of the caterpillar which destroys the Crape Jasmine (ನಂದಿ ಬಟ್ಟಲು: nandi baTTalu) plant. This is how it looks like! Weaves a silky cage around itself, folds the leaf - makes a temporary home and starts eating the home from inside out!

 This is what it leaves of the plant!

 Initially this looked like an aphid. Upon closer look, found out that this is a ball of several orangish juveniles!! Wonder which insect they will turn out to be (can be a spider as well!!)

A hopping spider. She just posed for me, while taking a stroll!

 No, I dont intend to talk about how that muddy lump happened to appear on this leaf, but notice there is a tiny insect next to it!! This one has white stripes across the top - all along the length.

 There are ants of course! A whole variety of them. These are larger black ones!

 I was pretty surprised to get to see this unusual guest! Forgot its name; but Shyamal had also told the meaning of its name - the one which measures the distance! It moves like a leech (well - almost)! Again had to use the special shooting technique to take a snap of this one hanging down in the shadow.

 And very common are these golden flies! They love the cow-dung!












How many have dug into a dung!? do it in the afternoon - a surprise awaits you! There is a saying in Kannada (source - mother): 'madhyahna-da hottu sagaNi-li saavira huLa' (which means: in the afternoons, there will be thousand insects/worms in cow-dung). Apparently, this is used for one community of people - I never understood the meaning!

 I  am yet to master taking snaps of cobwebs! This one shows only a few silk-strings shining. What is shown is the zoomed-in central part - note how different are these central silk-strings -- thicker and probably brighter! The 'extension' kind of thing below (in 6'o clock position) is the spider! She has gathered some leaf-litter and decorated the centre of the web. She does this to save herself from her predators!

And of course the ants cultivate these aphids! their favourite is hibiscus (ದಾಸವಾಳ: daasawaaLa) plants! If left unchecked, the plant gets killed in a matter of weeks! :-( I dont know what aphids do to the plants - probably they suck her dry!

 

 a flower of a bittergourd!

and here is the first one of this season (which we already devoured along wiht our own toor daal last week!)

 Yesterday happened to see this special guest. He/she had held another insect in mouth. The shape was almost like that of a dragonfly, but am not very sure! The unusually shaped abdomen was golden in colour, the head and thorax were greenish.

 This fellow is probably other gender or juvenile of the same praying mantis I saw last week. It can also be the same one! For I saw the white (!!) exo-skeleton stuck to one of the branches! (just like cockroaches, these fellows also need to shed their old outer-coat in order to grow in size!)

Ah yes, honey bee. So what, you may ask. Zoom in and study its shadow!!

 I had initially thought that this is a ladybird. She is probably different beetle or something - look at the different kind of pattern on her!
Oh, BTW, she is moving down the lonely periwinkle-bud's stalk; hope it is not too difficult to find her!

 The prize yesterday for me was this special spider. If I am right, this is Crab Spider! Hiding in between these buds, she had caught and held her prey in hands!!

 Slightly different angle to be able to see the prey too!!

 There are at least three kinds of praying mantises already this season. This one, from a distance looks like a black ant! Or, who knows if this is a different insect mimicking a mantis as well as an ant! Not sure!!

And the photo session ended with this extremely shy and agile, but relatively large, striped spider!! This still-not-properly-focussed snap is the best one I could manage!

Ravi BT (Mon Oct 25 00:02 IST 2010)