January 2020

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We conducted our first virtual workshop for corporate volunteers, employees of DCB Bank on Kitchen Gardening. The session was attended by 15 participants from different parts of the country. It was an hour and 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 micro greens. It was good to see some participants doing live sessions with us.  

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 launched our new batches for the online courses on wildlife on 15 May 2020. We started the Birds, Bugs, Butterflies, Trees, Kitchen Gardening and Gardening for Wildlife batches with 18 students from around the world and India. The courses kick-started with a video conference session on course orientation with Dr. V Shubhalaxmi wherein the participants were orientated on the course structure and the different course assignments. 

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.    

We conducted our second session of the series on Grow your Greens on 17 May 2020. The employees of Pidilite enjoyed the online session where they learnt about the kitchen gardening and the basic techniques to plant a sapling and being creative by using the pet bottles or any other materials available at home not only to grow some Microgreens but also different types of vegetable and flowering plants. 

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.  

This activity was also filled with so much fun wherein Dr Shubhalaxmi explained the technique of using the light sheet method for nothing. The whole week she used to go live every night discovering the moths visiting the light sheet. She also showed the technique of using ripe banana and jaggery as bait to attract moths. Not only she but along with her many participants who had taken part in this event had set up the light sheet at their location and did mothing. 

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 have a wonderful session with Dr Geetha Iyer and Dr Pritha Dey in celebration of the mothing week 2020. They were interviewed by our host Mr Haresh Agrawal. Both of them shared their own experiences of working with the moths. They also shared some of their stories and some of the difficulties that one faces during mothing. But nothing less after all it's our passion that one must follow. They also gave a message to the younger generation on how one must be dedicated to their works with a scope of future studies and discoveries in the field of moths  

 Vertical Microgreens planters made by the participants in the vertical gardening workshop. the workshop started with the presentation on essentials of kitchen gardening wherein the participants learnt the basic kitchen gardening, making the organic compost, making the bio pests. they where also shown the demonstration on making the potting mix at home and how to make the vertical planter by reusing the pet bottles. all the participants enjoyed the workshop and the hands on activity.

Bird Survey in Taloja: Dr. Ketki Marthak conducted a Bird survey today. She recorded over 45 species of 222 bird individuals, out of this, 25 species were first records for our existing 40 species bird list. Now 65 bird species are known from our project site.The highlights being Shaheen Falcon, Red Avadavat, Booted Eagle, Jungle Bush Quail and Siberian Stone Chat. She will repeat this survey next month too, hopefully more species get added.  

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.  

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.