Tag: morning walk discoveries

Morning greetings from spotted owlets

In Mysore, there’s a tree I pass on my morning walks, and it is a tired-looking gnarled tree with a rather dark and big tree hollow. I have found a pair of spotted owlets on the dried branches. They stare down at me with their wise eyes. It’s a great way to start a day.

I first spotted them some days ago. I stopped and watched them for a while, and they looked back solemnly. Fellow morning walkers saw I was staring at a tree and they stopped too, and peered and spotted the owlets. For some time after that, everyone was just watching them, either silently or discussing owls and other birds they had seen, and the presence of the owlets united us all in our admiration. Then others walked away, and so did I.

But I stop near that tree often now, hoping to see the owls. If I am carrying my camera, I sometimes try to capture the moment to savor it later. The owlets don’t fly away if I try to take a picture, but their colors match the surrounding branches and twigs so well that the picture I get is often more like a “spot the spotted owlet” puzzle contest rather than a clear, identifiable mugshot. I haven’t yet managed to get both of them in a single frame because once I zoom the camera forclarity, one owlet gets zoomed out ЁЯЩВ

Here’s the tree:

tree where spotted owlets liveis this the home of the spotted owlets

And the owlet (difficult to spot in some of them ЁЯЩВ :

spotted owletspotted owletowlet difficult to spot because of the treeowlet difficult to spot because of the treeback view of owl

(If you are interested in birds, here’s the wikipedia page on spotted owlets.

Tree nests

A few days ago, I spotted some tree nests during my morning walk. They looked unusual, so I stood around for a while, hoping to see some birds descend and start feeding their young ones. No luck. I peered at the nest, hoping to see the opening through which the bird inside would be fed by a hard-working parent, but I couldn’t spot any opening either. I finally did what anyone with a mobile does nowadays–snapped a few pictures.

tree nest of weaver anttree nest of weaver ant

Back at home, I wondered how to figure out which bird makes such nests. I tried surfing for bird nests; again, no luck. Finally, I posted the pictures on Facebook and was told that they were the nests of ants ЁЯЩБ

I must admit to an initial disbelief. These nests were big, and on trees, and I’d never thought ants would climb up trees and make such (as a proportion of their size) huge nests. But then I checked up some more, and found pictures of trees nests made by weaver ants and a page on them in Wikipedia. Check out the Wikipedia page on weaver ants, and also one image available in Wikipedia commons. Because the images are released under creative commons, I am also linking to two such images below:

ants collaborating to make nestant nest in tree

I’m so glad I didn’t go closer to check assuming these were bird nests ЁЯЩВ But I’m very intrigued now and I’ll be on the look-out for nests that may have fallen down; if I spot one, I will (very, very carefully) examine it to see the workmanship of ants.