sriharsha444's Favorites

Delhi Landfill Sludge Semal (Bombax ceiba) :With its feet in Delhi's sewage, a small semal tree grows beneath the bulky heights of Delhi's landfill- the destination for much of the city's waste stream.

I get it, gory death is a part of nature, and by all means I love to see the degrading corpse of a large beast, but only if it’s natural. If it was, say, flattened by a 16 year old girl in a Ford F150 at 2 AM while she was returning home from her boyfriends house that her parents let her go to because they don’t actually care about what she does, that ain’t natural no more. I just don’t like seeing car-squished animals, and I’m sure there are others who feel the same. I moved it out of the road too. I didn’t want any animals getting hit trying to eat it.

This is the first time i've ever seen an Mongoose in my life, and i certainly didnt expect it here. This is in Vellore Fort, center of an bustling busy town. So many tourists come to this place, yet, Mongooses casually co-exist with humans. At first, we were observing babblers while walking down, i saw a large large group of the birds all alarming on the same vegetation/area. I got a weird feeling. Then, we walked further down an bridge, Where we saw an individual which ran inside an extremely tiny hole which looked back at us, we sadly couldnt take pics of that individual, a few more seconds later, i spotted another individual near the vegetation patch/area, which, is the one photographed here. It tried hunting the warblers a bit, it then went under some scrub wood, we spent a few more minutes trying to find it, and we couldnt find it but not only that we ran of time ( as in, the fort walk was closing, its only open till 5), so we left the spot. I never thought i would see a mongoose in the center of my home town, and one hunting babblers.

And thank you @chayantgonsalves for the tip of the bird alarm call for herping, While i didnt explicitly use your tip for finding this, it did make my mind curious that something else was on the spot.

Babbler observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/215923936
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/215924727
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/215925237

A relatively small warbler was sighted during our birding on sunday at ezhome. The warbler was seen on small scrubs growing in the paddyfield near the road side. The bird was active and was moving fastly around the reeds relatively faster and was actively feeding near the water surface. Noticable features include prominant eyebrow with dark crown. Underpart was(Belly) Pale and the upperparts are darker compared to underparts. The streaks in the wings and upperparts were not that clear. The sighting lasted only a few minutes and the bird was not making any calls or sounds. The bird disappeared in the reeds after a short time interval. https://ebird.org/checklist/S126095411

The only confusing id was of a sedge/moustached warbler. Comments from discussion points towards sedge as a perfect candidate for the specimen in discussion.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AskidsofIndianBirds/?multi_permalinks=2560558290749528