Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Flame of the forest

Repost
I'm terribly sorry I haven't really been posting much, there's been a lot to do. With some luck we should be back on schedule shortly.
These trees are blooming all over right now, so I thought it was a good time to resurrect the post.

Flame of the forest

This tree deserves it's name in more ways than one. The flowers look like flames individually. A tree in flower does really look like it's on fire. And every bird within a mile's radius is in love with it. And off course squirrels and insects.

Two days of waiting paid off! Ta dah here they go. The last one, a Spangled drongo, is a western ghats species. If you look at its distribution in the GI and I its painted along the western ghats. Well, it's here and it picked this tree to feast upon.

Flame of the forest
You know sometimes I feel like one of those sad homeless people you see on the streets, clutching at their treasures. Things no one else would find even remotely interesting. I'll be raving about some bird no ones even ever heard of before. Well, fortunately there are a few people who are a bit like that in CES and I'm not considered stark raving, but only moderately mad. Well, the slightly deranged vocabulary that apparently accompanies this enterprise does make up!

5 comments:

badjoby said...

Is that a crow billed in IISc?

Anonymous said...

its a spangled drongo....

Amtrips said...

hey this is a great post... i didnt know thats drongo..

Anonymous said...

I always thought this was the tiger-claw tree. Guess I am wrong as usual.

Natasha Mhatre said...

Common names are often confusing. The Tiger claw tree is an Erythrina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrina