December 2020

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 Sunday Volunteering: Inspite of difficult terrain and tough tasks, our volunteers continue to do their bit, however in small numbers they turn up. Today just 4 volunteers turned up to add 40 kg mulch, make trenches around 50 add tree saplings and water them. All tasks done under blazing heat, dangerous height and snakes laden grassy slopes. We salute them and their dedication 

We conducted our first Shore Walk at Chimbai Beach post lockdown. 10 brave participants joined us on a cloudy evening. Most of them were first timers for marine walks . They enjoyed exploring the rockpools. The diversity was much lower compared to morning hours yet we sighted forked Venus clams, tubeworms, eggs of lugworms, target perch, barnacles, rock oysters and the highlight was sea anemones.  

Tree Walk at Taloja Hill: A group of 5 members joined our tree walk which is last of the series walks we held since last month. We encountered interesting trees such a Acacia, Rosewood, Pongam, Silk Cotton, Soccer Ball and Kadamba. We also sighted caterpillars of Commander Butterfly & Lappet Moth. 

We conducted our Salim Ali special birdwalk today at #talojahillforesttrail. The small group was led by Mr. Suraj Das. They encountered several forest birds such as Robin, Common crow, sparrow Black kite, Cattle egret, Red vented bulbul, Red wattled lapwing, Scaly breasted munia, Green bee eater, Jungle babblers, Blue rock thrush and Paddy field pipet. They also discovered some bird nests. This was our third walk of the series which we conducting as part of our #talojahillwatershedproject We will continue to conduct such thematic walks, post Diwali it will be tree walk.

How to care for your pets and strays during Diwali?  In conversation with Dr. Kundan K. Mane, Senior Dog Handler at Bomb Detection Squad of Mumbai Police & Founder of Dr.Petfunda 

Link: https://www.facebook.com/inaturewatch/videos/1252376285131975

In celebration of Big Butterfly Moth, we at Ladybird Environmental Consulting are sharing our business model that involves butterflies. Dr Shubhalaxmi our founder will share the trade secrets on how she went about setting up a business that took off like butterflies 

We concluded our five online courses on Kitchen Gardening, Wildlife Gardening, Bugs, Butterflies & Trees. The participants presented their project work and share their insights on their learnings.  

We conducted our virtual workshop for corporate volunteers, employees of Goodera on Kitchen Gardening. The session was attended by 195 participants from different parts of the country. It was an hour and a half session which was conducted by Dr Shubhalaxmi and Wilma D’Cunha. During the session, the participants learnt to set up their compost pits and developed planters to grown microgreens. It was good to see some participants doing live sessions with us.  

For live moth book authors of India, we interacted with great personalities like Dr Jagbir Singh Kirti, who has done vast research on moths and has written 4 books on moth winni0 national and international awards 3-lifetime achievement awards. Mr Sanjay Sondhi who has also written books on moth and is still completing a book doing continuing the research and Dr Geetha Iyer from whom we learn the journey to start her passion and heard some stories that she read from her book. 

We had a wonder interaction with the moth specialists like Dr. Roger Kendrick, Dr. Kailash Chandra. Learning from them and interacting with them was great. The sessions were very informative. It was joined by many participants. We also learned how to add the sighting on the portal, the websites that must be visited for identifications and references. Total 27 participant participated in this event

We started our first batch of Butterflies for Beginners on 1 May 2020 with 10 participants from all over India. The course started with a video conference session with the Butterfly Man of India Mr  Isaac Kehimkar and Dr V Shubhalaxmi, Course Coordinator. 

To keep our audience engaged during the boring lock-down period we conducted three free webinars on 14 May 2020 wherein the participants learned about kitchen gardening in the Learn to grow your veggies webinar conducted by Ms. Wilma D'Chuna

The butterfly lovers learned about these fascinating flying jewels during the webinar on Butterflying with Butterfly Man Mr Isaac Kehimkar. And the bug lovers learned about the secret world of bugs from the Bug Lady Dr V Shubhalaxmi.

We concluded our first batch of Young Naturalists online course for children on 15 May 2020. Our young naturalists did a presentation on their data collected during the past month and their learning. They were all excited to do the presentation and the one hour session went on till 2.5 hrs. Children were happy that they learnt good amount of natural history about their surrounding and various ICT skills. Parents too shared their feedback during the session. They said it was a good way to engage their kids in a self-learning mode and it opened their eyes on how everything is connected in nature and learning doesn't stop and goes on in the lock-down. Kids learned new skills and it gave them an opportunity to explore the local wildlife which they were not aware of.  We were happy too as the children’s assignment turn rate was 100%. Overall our first online course for children proved successful. 

We concluded our April 2020 batches for the online courses on Birds, Bugs and gardening for Wildlife on 17 May 2020. During the sessions participants presented their project work, experience and learning from the course. We were amazed to see the kind of data gathered by them in a short period of 6 weeks and their learning. Our Bird course participant Ms. Sunit a teacher from Bangalore said that I was really a beginner and it was a good start for me. Today she can identify birds in her locality. The Gardening for Wildlife course participants did a fantastic work on their garden layout and and now waiting for the lock-down to get over so that they can begin the plantation.    

The Gardening for Wildlife course started on 1 March 2020 with seven wildlife lovers who wanted to invite wildlife in their backyard. The participants belong to different professional backgrounds right from doctors, IT Sector, Architect, and housewife too. We have one participant from Dubai too. The course kick-started with a hangout session on the course overview by Dr. V Shubhalaxmi and Mr. Isaac Kehimkar. The participants are involved in online assignments, fieldwork, and DIY throughout the week with the hangout sessions with experts on Sundays. The participants are loving it and have started takings steps towards developing their own wildlife garden.

This was our first webinar in the series. it was based on Insect Architecture which was conducted by Dr.Shubhalaxmi. We had high number of registrations which we had to turn down. A batch of 15 participants attended the webinar. 

This was our first event on Central Park. Though we 25 sign ups but only small group actually dared to join us on a chilly Sunday morning. The place surprised us with myriad native and exotic trees that were planted along the pathway. Based on plantation we could assign a particular pathway to a tree e.g. Sita Ashok Lane, Peepal Lane, Tabebua Lane, Copperpod Lane, Laburnum Lane and Wild Almond Lane. The other trees who were the remanent of original forests included; Red Silk Cotton, Mahuva, Soccer Ball, Asan, Palymra, Charcoal tree, Banyan, iron tree and so on. The other highlights included hibernating stink bugs, harvester ants busy dehusking. Caterpillar of plain tiger and humming bird hawkmoth and green lacewing. There were good number of birds too such a Yellow wagtails, Black Drongo, Red Wattled lapwing, Shikha, Cattle Egret. Pond Heron and large congregation of cormorants near the water body. Overall it was well spent Sunday in nature’s lap. 

On 15th Jan 2020 Marine walk was conducted by Sathish Chennuri and Chanakya at Chimbai beach(Bandra). Somaiya college students accompanied by their professors attended the marine walk, we could observe lot of rocky shore inhabitant flora and fauna i.e pistol shrimp, rock crabs, mollusc shells, hermit crab, sponges, sea anemone and decorator worm etc. Today we also have observed lot of abandoned fishing net (ghost net) in the intertidal region which may trap lot of organisms unnecessarily. The students also spotted the gutters releasing into the ocean and marine debris.