It is the winter season here in North India. The place where I live is adjoining the hills of Himachal Pradesh. During severe winters, many birds from these hill areas come down to adjoining plains which are relatively warmer.
There is a forest near my residence. These days lots of Alexandrine Parakeets and Rose Ringed Parakeets are present in this forest. Their flocks fly from one tree to another searching for the cavities in the tree branches for making nests.
Photography is my hobby. I do mostly Wild life photography. Over the time I have photographed many indian birds. I happened to see stories told through Adobe’s Spark Notes software. I made one using my own material. The story can be accessed by clicking the link below.
NASA space craft “The New Horizons” flew past it and beamed it’s clear photo back. Ultima Thule is said to be the oldest and farthest celestial body discovered via a telescope in 2014. The picture taken by telescope was a blurry one showing the body as one oblong shaped. But new picture taken by spacecraft is very clear. It shows that Thule is made up of two ice lobes gravitating towards one another making it look like a Snowman. Picture has been taken from a distance of 27000 kilometres with a resolution of 140 metres per pixel. Thule is 4 billion miles from Sun.
India has been on the name changing spree. During last 5 years names of many places, roads and monuments have been changed on the basis of the present names being reminder of colonial era or names being derogatory and names of some places being after some Moghul king who was not positively inclined towards the original inhabitants. Another argument for changing names was to replace those alien names with our own local heroes. Here is a list of some changed names during last 5 years in chronological order.
November 2014
Bangalore became Bangaluru. In all, the names of 12 places in Karnataka changed to reflect original Kannada pronunciation. Mysore became Mysuru and Mangalore became Mangaluru.
August 2015
Aurangzeb road in Delhi became APJ Abdul Kalam road.
October 2015
Rajahmundry was renamed Rajamahendravaram in the honour of 11th century king
April 2016
Gurgaon became Gurugram after Guru Dronacharya of Kauravas of Mahabharata fame. Mewat renamed to Nuh.
May 2016
Bangalore city railway station renamed KrantiviraSangoliRayanna, 19th century freedom fighter.
September 2016
Race Course road in Delhi renamed Lok Kalyan Marg, giving 7 RCR a new address.
January 2017
Ganda village in Fatehabad district of Haryana renamed AjitNagar after a petition to PM by teenager Harpreet Kaur Malkat. Kinnar village changed to Gaibi Nagar. Both previous names had derogatory shades.
July 2017
Odisha’sWheeler island, home to a missile testing range was renamed APJ Abdul Kalam Island.
September 2017
Kandla port in Gujarat was renamed Deendayal Port to mark the centenary year of JanaSangha co-founder.
February 2018
Chor Basai in Rajasthan lost Chor. Nachania in Bihar became Kashipur.
July 2018
Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road station named after British governor was renamed Prabhadevi.
August 2018
“Miyon Ka Bara” village in BarmerRajasthan got new name Mahesh Nagar as residents alleged that due to Muslim sounding name it was hard to get marriage proposals.
August 2018
Mughalsarai junction founded in 1860 and one of the busiest junctions in country renamed as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya junction.
July 2018
West Bengal assembly passed a resolution to change the state’s name to Bangla. Mamata Banerjee didi found that due to alphabetical pecking order, her bureaucrats were called last at central meetings. With changed name “Bangla” pecking order will be on top almost.
The process continues unabated. Next on the anvil are the names of trains based on the great personalities which belonged to the originating stations.
Internet has become a part of our lives. It is making exponential progress. Messages and documents can be send to any part of the world in seconds. Paperless transactions of money can be done within minutes. We can get in touch with our friends and others live through internet.
The World Wide Web or WWW as it is popularly referred was conceived in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. It was invented to share documents among the scientists across the globe using hyperlinks. At present about 4 billion people across the globe use internet.
First website went online at CERN in 1991. Since at that time Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues had browsers, few people in the world are aware. Today there are about 1.9 billion websites.
The term “Surfing the net” was coined by Jean Armour Polly a librarian in the university of Minnesota Wilson library in March 1992.
First email was sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson in 1971 from one computer to another sitting right next to it at Cambridge Massachusetts but through a network of computers.
First image was uploaded by Tim Berners-Lee on to internet in 1992. Photo was of a parody pop band “Les Horribles Cernettes“.
Internet is not WWW alone. It is much bigger and WWW, email and internet telephony are some of its parts.
Giant pandas are found only in China. 99% of their diet consists of bamboo shoots. China doesn’t sell or gift giant Pandas but loans them to desiring Zoos all over the world. All giant pandas in the world, barring two ageing animals in a Mexico zoo, are the property of the Chinese government.
China loans them to friendly countries as ‘ambassadors’ at very high rates, and on very strict terms. Each year, it gets millions of dollars for its loaned pandas. Renting a giant panda costs 1 million $ per year. When cubs are born outside the country, it charges a royalty on them. It charges roughly $400,000 per live birth in custody. Cubs born in foreign zoos have to be returned just after 2 year.
What’s more, the loaned pandas and the cubs born abroad have to be returned to China at the end of the contract period.
The length of a panda loan is 10 years after which all animals have to be returned.
Feeding the giant pandas bamboo shoots can cost
$500,000 to western countries every year.
Since 1941, China has loaned 64 giant pandas to other countries.
Thanks to Pexels.com for the picture.
Baya Weavers are small birds of house sparrow size. The scientific name is Ploceus philippinus. What separates them from other birds is the beautiful nests they weave from the grass stalks, mud blobs.
The name weaver itself justifies the mastery is weaving very elaborate and elegant nests hanging from the branches of very high palm trees, thorny acacia trees. Usually these trees are near the water pools, scrub grasses where they are safe from predators.
It is male domain entirely to make the nest. When it is in the almost halfway stage, they invite the females by flapping their wings and if the female approves the nest, it means that she will reside with the particular male, mate and raise the new chicks. If she doesn’t approve, the structure will be abandoned and weaver will feel dejected and sometimes tore away the nest. It starts making newer one.
These birds come to our area in North India, at the peak of summers and by the onset of monsoon rains, have their nests completed. They visit the fields for foraging the seeds both raw and fallen after ripening.
After monsoons, and winter coming, they migrate to slightly warmer areas like western India where food is available and weather is not harsh.
The birds are gregarious and live in flocks. They can be located from the noises they make.
