The Green Ogre

18/07/2026

No one in their sane mind refuses the chance to pile on for a trip to Yellowstone. While camping outdoors and enjoying the sights, Shruti Kalyankar keeps one eye open for the birds, keeping her life list ticking.
Excerpt: “Everyone had had a restless night’s sleep — for most, because of the cold; for me, because there was a White-crowned Sparrow right above us that didn’t stop calling all night. I woke up and, as an addict would, checked Merlin’s Sound ID Merlin Bird ID first thing. The White-crowned Sparrow seemed to have finally tired itself out, but the Northern Yellow Warbler was active again — mocking my bird-spotting skills, once again escaping me. Calling incessantly, but not quite willing to make it easy for me.”

Read the travelogue on The Green Ogre. Link in bio and story.

02/07/2026

Watch this female Fiery Emperor/ Blue Darner dragonfly (Anax immaculifrons) at work. She isn’t washing her tail or even dropping her eggs into the water. Instead, she is carefully placing each egg inside the stem of an aquatic plant. The eggs remain protected there until they hatch into aquatic nymphs, each one beginning a hidden life underwater. Within a matter of weeks, they will turn into magnificent large dragonflies flying above the stream.

01/07/2026

Look at this tiny bird. And look at the fruit it’s eating. You might think they’ve always belonged together. But they haven’t. The Singapore Cherry isn’t from India (in fact, it isn’t even from Singapore!). It was brought here from tropical America. The Pale-billed Flowerpecker didn’t evolve alongside the tree. It simply found another small, sweet fruit worth eating. After feeding, the bird moves from tree to tree and disperses the seeds in its droppings, helping the introduced tree take root in new places.
A native bird. An introduced tree. Together, they form an unlikely partnership that has helped the Singapore Cherry spread far beyond where people first planted it.


Early Bird SeasonWatch Bird Count India

Have you seen a Pale-billed Flowerpecker eating the fruits of any other exotic trees? Take the poll and drop your answer in a comment.

01/07/2026

The day before the monsoon returned to Cotigao, Bijoy Venugopal visited Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary in the south of Goa. Read the post at The Green Ogre. Link in bio and story highlights.

29/06/2026

There’s a Goa far from the beaches where the rain comes home to roost. This year, the appointment has been much delayed. But the resilience of the jungle is remarkable, and life still finds a way to go on. Bijoy Venugopal was there to witness it

Monsoon or no monsoon, life goes on in Goa’s Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary. The jungle learns to adapt to scarcity.

12/06/2026

On a visit to Sajjangarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Udaipur, Bihar, Aarav Sikaria observed a Sarus Crane that was tame and unafraid of people. Asking around, he learned that the bird had been brought here from another part of Bihar as a ‘tourist attraction.’ A student of Rishi Valley School and an avid birdwatcher, Aarav found this disturbing. The majestic Sarus Crane (Antigone antigone), the world’s largest flying bird, is a protected species, and the sanctuary he was visiting is a Ramsar Site, he argues. Troubled by the precedent set by the administrators of a protected area, he asks: Why should wildlife not have the right to be wild? Why should wild animals be used for entertainment?

Read his post on The Green Ogre. Link in the bio.

05/06/2026

In Bengaluru, there has been a recent outcry over lakes drying up. But a drying lake is not a dying lake.
Most urban lakes in India are designed to be seasonally rain-fed, not perennial.
Bengaluru’s civic administration, recently organised into the Greater Bengaluru Authority with seven new corporations, is beset with teething troubles. Meanwhile, the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), which answers to different masters, has been undertaking a plan to fill the city’s lakes with treated water output from sewage treatment plants (STPs). STPs are expensive to maintain and the treated water often contains microbes that alter the natural lake biome. Filling up lakes might fulfil some aesthetic objectives, but ignores the core issues. In recent years, Bengaluru’s lakes have been blamed for flooding the city. The real reason is the encroachment of rajakaluves, the system of overflow weirs and channels connecting these lakes. They have been built over, often with covert official sanction, and mandated lake boundaries have been encroached by construction projects with the backing of powerful and influential builders. Many of our city lakes are biodiversity hotspots. At Saul Kere, birders have recorded over 215 species of birds — a staggering number for an urban wetland habitat. However, all of that may soon be a thing of the past, because a massive new STP is coming up at this lake, threatening to flood it with treated water. This will alter the lake’s biodiversity while increasing the risk of flooding. During the harsh summer, the lake dried up. This set off alarm bells among the uninitiated public, who have been led to believe that a dry lake is a dead lake. This is an eyewash. In fact, seasonal drying and rain-fed regeneration are part of the natural cycle of wetland ecology. However, the BWSSB is milking the public hysteria to push the project through, along with many players who stand to benefit from the allocated budget.
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21/04/2026

Unseasonal March rain at Elopa plateau, deep in Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley. A log house on stilts. A fireplace that became the centre of everything — food, conversations, reflections, learning. Red rice wrapped in leaves, served in bamboo baskets woven on the spot. And Iho and Eja — lead guides, community members, and storytellers — who knew every tree, every legend, and exactly when not to follow a Bengal Florican into the grass.

The Idu Mishmi community of the Lower Dibang Valley has done something rare and wonderful. In 2022, they declared their ancestral lands — abandoned after the Dibang river changed course in 1980 — a Community Conserved Area. Today, the Elopa-Etugu Community Eco-Cultural Preserve (EECEP) protects 76 sq km of forest, grassland, wetland and river. Camera traps have recorded over 40 species of mammals here, including clouded leopard, tiger, Malayan sun bear, dhole and binturong. The tigers, incidentally, are not hunted. According to Idu legend, they are brothers.
Travelling with Arun Menon spent four rain-soaked days at EECEP — birding through the mist, watching Sultan T**s hunt caterpillars on a rain-dark trunk, listening for Grey Peacock-Pheasants, and standing at the bank of the Dibang as the shadow of a proposed 2,800 MW dam lay across the water.
It is the kind of place that follows you home.

Freshly pressed on The Green Ogre — link in bio.
etugu .shivaprakash

21/04/2026

Deep in the Lower Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh, the Idu Mishmi community has done something rare — reclaimed their ancestral land and turned it into one of India’s most remarkable community conservation stories — the Elopa-Etugu Community Eco-Cultural Preserve (EECEP).
AArun Menonhas the story:

Deep in the Lower Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh, the Idu Mishmi community has done something rare — reclaimed their ancestral land and turned it into one of India’s most remarkable community conservation stories. The Elopa-Etugu Community Eco-Cultural Preserve (EECEP) is a 76-square-kilomet...

14/03/2026

Hoskote Lake – an Important Bird Area in peril https://buff.ly/BF0MR3U