Posts by: Kalyan Varma

I got a call this evening from the folks at BR hills (The place where I worked as a naturalist for big part of last year). In the evening safari, four young tigers were spotted together playing in the rain. They could not spot the mother it seems, but these four tigers were about 2 feet in height and were surely more then a year old. A tiger’s litter is usually 2 – 4 cubs and half of them die before they complete the 1st year. It’s very rare 4 cubs can survive together till they are more then a…

After living off my suitcase for the last 2 weeks, I’m finally back in Bangalore. Travels have been for work, pleasure and sometimes both. Got to visit Bharatpur (The best bird sanctuary in north India) and Thattekad (The best bird sanctuary in the south) in these travels. I’m sitting on 10GB worth of photographs and in these two forests, I got to see 30+ bird species for the first time ever in my life. Anyway I think I’m done with travel for a bit and will process these pics over the next few days. There have been lot of ups…

Got back last week from a shot trip to Dandali, Anshi and Ganeshgudi in north Karnataka region. I’ve uploaded bunch of pics as usual in the recent section of my website. The hornbills and lot of small rare birds were the highlight of the trip. Hornbill Habitat Ganeshgudi, Katnataka, 15 Feb 2006 Hornbills are the lifeblood of the rainforests. These birds largely feed of fruits and play a dynamic role in seed dispersal of numerous trees and are critically important to the regeneration and survival of the rainforest ecosystems. These are the major seed dispersers, which carry the seeds many…

Does anyone know any good NGO/School which could use old tech hardware ? I have printer, cd-drives, LOT of cables, networking gear, PC (PII 266Mhz, 14″ monitor) and bunch of misc other stuff. I’m just curious, what have all of you done with your 4 to 8 year old computer equipment? (The working ones ofcourse)

The World in Our Hands I just love this picture. The pattern on the tyre makes a lovely backdrop and this insect stretched its leg, just in the right way to make it look very attractive. This picture of course tells a story too. The story conveys our relationship with the environment, and how delicate the nature and wildlife around us is and how easily we can destroy it all. I’ve uploaded bunch of new pictures from my old Kanha and Bannerghatta collection.

Got back this morning from a trip to Cochin, Kerala. Cherian, Deepak, Akhil and Suneef thanks a lot for the ensuring a wonderful time guys. The place was amazing. Yesterday, went out to Fort Kochi to see the Chinese fishing nets and tried out the most tastiest fish I’ve ever had in my life. The concept is pretty simple: The fishermen catch the fish using the nets and they display them fresh right there. You buy the fish you want and walk over to the other side of the road, where a small restaurant will cook it for you. I…

Palm Civet Droppings Two months ago when when I was at BR Hills, Narayana, the local tribal showed me these civet droppings just off the road. Normally coffee planters do not have issues with any animals, as none of them touch the coffee beans, except the common palm civet. The civet loves coffee berries and when it eats them, the civet only digests the fruit and the actually coffee bean, comes out in its droppings. Civet Cat Now follow this closely People believe that these civets know how ripe these berries are and they always pick the berries which are…

Except for sleep, I’ve basically been partying the last two days non-stop , thanks a ton for everything, you made sure I’ve had the best birthday of my life and pampered my like king the last 2 days 😀 and thanks everyone else too who turned up at coffee world and herbs and spices and everyone and all the folks who flooded me with sms, lj comments and emails 🙂 Carrots and lemons will never be the same again.

Last month, after the Wildlife Award, I’ve seen a big spike in users coming to my site via search engines, looking for my photographs. Except for the photographs on my blog, I really did not have anything more. So I tried to play around with few open-source gallery systems. Almost all the OSS gallery’s are geared for travel photography, in the sense all of them have a directory style hierarchy and you are suppose to categorize your pics accordingly and place them in their respective folders. Since my pictures are wildlife ones, I wanted feature where, people can browse pictures…