Life At Mitthi

Green Lynx Spider Here is one slender and beautiful Lynx Spider found while watering my sweet potato creeper. It was unusually big and colourful. Rather I have never seen a spider as colourful as this. The green seemed fluorescent but unless I spot it in the dark, it is difficult to conclude. This specie of spider is easily identifiable due to the presence of large erect spikes on the legs, its darting movement and sudden leaps. Unlike  commonly known spiders, Lynx Spiders do not weave a web for preying. They hide under leaves of plants and trees and wait patiently for their prey. They have keen eyesight and good jumping ability which helps them leap and hunt within fraction of a second of prey coming within their vicinity. Sometimes they jump as high as 2 cm to catch a prey!! Green Lynx Spider on a sweet potato creeper They are diurnal hunters that is they hunt only in the daytime. They prefer to live in tall grass, low shrubs or other wild vegetation on la...

    When our house was designed with 3 water bodies, we had imagined it to be home to our mollies and few water lilies. Little did we know that very soon it would form its own eco system and sustain itself. Frogs , toads, dragonflies, water snakes and many other insects we know not as yet, moved in too. Could nature exists undisturbed at this micro level? How naïve of us to think so!! To maintain the balance, soon we had these daily visitors- Indian Pond Herons. They are generally found near lakes, mangroves, swamps, reservoirs, rivers and even at sewer streams(unfortunately). I have seen egrets and herons roosting on wild shrubs and trees at the periphery of the lake near our house. But I guess, easy availability of food with almost no competition has made them our daily visitors. Many a times we have tried to protect our mollies from falling prey to them, but we soon realised it was a futile attempt. We feel very protective of our colorful mollies since they have been with...

Greater Coucal Deep resonant calls , ‘coop, coop, coop’ often heard in the warm morning hours in our garden. The call is loud with good bass, enough to make one feel it emanating from some musical instrument. And just as a peacock scream is repeated by its fellow mates at different locations within the vicinity, similarly this sound is also carried forward to distant birds until the sound fades away. Acting on a childish instinct, I had tried imitating the call and it responded. This continued for a while till I saw the gardener from the neighboring  house prying to see the new kid in the area. This shy bird remained hidden from my view for many days before I spotted it hopping cautiously from the branches of a mango tree to Shirish. A fairly large bird with black head, purple black upper mantle and undersides, dark copper brown wings , ruby red eyes, short thick black beak and long black feathery tail. It is a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent and is an inhabitant of a...

 કૂંજમાં કોયલ બોલતી    કૂંજમાં કોયલ બોલતી, એનો શેરીએ આવે સાદ!  અરે હાલને આંબાવાડિયે, હજી પો’રની તાજી યાદ!  પાંદડું યે નહિ પેખીયે, એવો ઝૂલતો એનો મો’ર,  કોઈને મોટા મરવા, અને કોઈને છે અંકોર;  ડોલતી ડાળે બેસીએ આપણ, ગજવી ઘેરો નાદ,  અરે હાલને આંબાવાડિયે, હજી પો’રની તાજી યાદ!  કૂંજમાં કોયલ બોલતી, એનો ...  ઘરનું નાનું આંગણું ગમે, મોકળું મોટું વન,  કોઈનો યે રંજાડ નહિ ને ખેલવા મળે દન;  હાલને ભેરુ, કાયર જે કોઈ હોય તે રહે બાદ,  અરે હાલને આંબાવાડિયે, હજી પો’રની તાજી યાદ!  કૂંજમાં કોયલ બોલતી, એનો શેરીએ આવે સાદ!  હાલને રે ભાઈ હાલને, આવે પો’રની ઘણી યાદ!  કૂંજમાં કોયલ બોલતી, એનો ...   - રાજેન્દ્ર શાહ  

The Bird Sanctuary  Feeding on millet In your quiet garden wakes a magic tumult   Of winged choristers that keep the Festival of Dawn,   Blithely rise the carols in richly cadenced rapture,   From lyric throats of amber, of ebony and fawn. The bulbul and the oriol, the honey-bird and shama Flit among high boughs that drip with nectar and with dew, Upon the grass the wandering gull parades its sea-washed silver, The hoopoe and the kingfisher their bronze and sapphire blue. Wild gray pigeons dreaming of a home amid the tree-tops, Fill their beaks with silken down and slender banyan twigs, But the jade-green gypsy parrots are only gay marauders, And pause upon their sun-ward flight to plunder red ripe figs. In your gracious garden there is joy and fostering freedom, Nesting place and singing space for every feathered thing, O Master of the Birds, grant sanctuary and shelter Also to a homing bird that bears a broken wing.   -Sarojini Naidu   Sarojini Naidu, a f...

  Perched 20 mts away from the pond near our kitchen. How many predatory birds trumpet their presence?  How many of them are brightly colored and not camouflaged in dull brown or grey color?  Not many I know of. That is precisely the reason I think this one is called what it is- KINGFISHER!  Kingfisher equally inquisitive of me taking the picture. Gifted with bright blue wings and back, an ochre body, sharp long orange beak , this medium sized bird   can never go unnoticed in any of its visits to my backyard. For it annunciates its arrival with a loud – Kil…kil…kil..kil. The call is so loud and clear, that it is easy to know which part of the garden it has flown to. No wonder it is called ‘kilkila’ in hindi. An onomatopoeic name. On our mango tree next to the lily pond. Unlike most of the birds, this one is not so shy. Even in presence of humans, they prefer to continue with their business. Hence, I have been fortunate to observ...