a common man ಸಂಜಯ

Category: animals

  • dealing with unwelcome guests (insects)

    There are also many natural repellents that you can place around your home to prevent ants from coming in. If ants are coming in the cracks of doors and windows, put a cinnamon stick, coffee grinds, chili pepper, paprika, cloves, or dried peppermint leaves near the openings. You can also squeeze the juice of a lemon at the entry spot and leave the peel there. Planting mint around the foundation of the house will also keep ants away. Place cloves of garlic around indoor and outdoor ant pathways.

    ~ dealing with ants, cockroaches, wasps, and bees

  • elephant and a dog

    This is an interesting wildlife sanctuary story, where an elephant and a dog befriend each other. Its just amazing how much concern the elephant shows when the dog gets injured once. Also about how gently it acknowledges the dog’s presence.

    “Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences. … If they could do it, what’s our excuse?”

  • this should be easy to draw?

    Finally I uploaded my photo from the previous Bangalore Weekend Shoot photographer’s club meet in Lalbagh…

    the pelican brief

    pelican with a fishy catch

    (Clicking on an image above takes you to a bigger version)

    I would like to invite you dear reader – can you send me a drawing of one of the above pictures…?

    A simple pencil sketch will do, unless you are feeling more enterprising and want to add color as well. You can either draw it on paper and scan it. Or you could even draw it using Windows Paint, Gimp, or Paint.net or any other image editing tool, and then email it to the common man blog. Unless you have strong inclination otherwise, it will soon be posted here with any attribution/link you provide.

    And if you like, you needn’t even get limited to the photo but just use it as a starting point and add anything else.

    This is just for fun and not any kind of competition. Don’t be in a hurry, take your time, but give it your best shot!

    (Maybe its also a chance for me to confront any realisation that this site really have no readers at all heh heh :mrgreen: …Well, I know I’ll get atleast one from a friend who promised he’d send one, and I myself will make an attempt, so that will be a minimum of two…!)

    ———
    See also: Learn How To Draw

    Some encouragement here… Fun With A Pencil by Andrew Loomis

    Excerpt from the introduction…

    MR. WEBSTER DEFINES DRAWING
AS DELINEATION. THAT DOESN’T
TELL YOU HOW MUCH OF A REAL
"BANG" THERE IS IN IT. MAYBE
HE NEVER KNEW. MOST FOLKS
LOVE TO DRAW EVEN WHEN
THEY KNOW LITTLE ABOUT IT. IT
STARTED WITH THE CAVE MAN,
AND STILL SURVIVES ON THE
WALLS OF PUBLIC PLACES... BECAUSE
IT’S SO MUCH FUN, AND
SO EASY, IT’S A SHAME NOT TO BE
ABLE TO DO IT BETTER.
~ ANDREW LOOMIS


ALL THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, TO START
THIS BOOK, IS HOW TO DRAW A CIRCLE. . . .

Don’t start out with that old gag, "I couldn’t draw a straight
line." Neither can I, freehand. If we need a straight line, we
can use a ruler. Now please try it, just for fun.
And it can be as lopsided as the family budget, and
still work out.

  • dog crossing road

    [This is from my drafts, something that happened quite a while ago]

    While returning home in the afternoon afternoon, I was coming on the busy Tumkur Road, driving alongside a truck on the left side, when in the distance, in the distance, on the temporarily empty road, I saw a small puppy crossing the road. This guy was walking slowly and steadily and all the vehicles were just going around him and he seemed to be totally oblivious to the danger! It was a somewhat horrifying yet amazing sight. Such a small vulnerable puppy on the road full of high speed trucks and buses. 

    (Somehow stopped the car, my wife jumped out and lifted the pup and put him aside somewhere 'safe' atleast for a while hopefully.)

    (A somewhat maybe strange after thought, but I felt that though I feel secure and comfortable in general… in a way I too am as vulnerable  as that puppy at the mercy of Life and that gives me a reason to be happy just to be alive 😉 ) 

  • incredible video of buffalo and lions

    Thanks to those who shared this amazing video online, I’d bookmarked it to post it here and am making a quick post as I came across the link again today…

  • when love takes wing…

    Thanks to my brother-in-law Anand for taking these photos… These birds are nesting in the hollow of a dead coconut tree just opposite to Vijetha’s house! Quite a distance actually, but the 10X Zoom of the Olympus C-750 helped!

    There were another two parrots who were visitors…

    Just hanging out… 😉

    What I like best about these pictures are that incredibly enough in the concrete jungle of Bengalooru where humans rule making all the laws, these are pictures of birds that are wild and free and uncaged!!! 🙂

    —-

    See also: beautiful people

  • buzzzzzzzy bee

    Slight modification of a famous quote for this photo 😉

    buzzzzzzzzy bee

  • the common bird – the crow




    kaage

    Originally uploaded by common man.

    This is this particular common man’s favorite common bird – a crow. This fellow was flying around Sankey Lake. There are lots of them here, and one can see them bathing, and balancing on a narrow thin branch, etc

    Crows are really intelligent birds, capable of using tools (who dosen’t remember the story of the crow putting in pebbles to be able to reach the water!). There was a comic character in Tinkle called Kalia. Crows exhibhit collective complex social behaviour like protecting a helpless crow or getting together over a dead crow. There was a poem about this in my Kannada class but don’t remember the details. Have read that crows can learn to talk, and vaguely remember seeing some news clipping on those lines long ago.

    Crows are sometimes considered ugly, and I remember someone giving a psudo-philosophical explanation of how an ugly crow throws out a melodious cuckoo bird’s fledglings. Actually that was blatant libel, its actually the poor crow that’s the victim. A cuckoo – another almost identical black bird (but has red eyes, and a very melodious voice) – lays its eggs in an unguarded crow’s nest, too lazy to fend for its kids itself. And the unsuspecting crow parents brings up the cuckoo fledgling as if it is its own, but the cuckoo becomes stronger than its crow foster-siblings and eventually throws them out whenever it gets a chance!

    When I was a small kid, I remember we used to go for these family tours and crows were the usual sort of unwelcome visitors we inevitably had during our outdoor lunchtime. But then we kids would share our lunch with them, and I had discovered to my delight that some of the crows could actually catch pieces of food in mid-air! 8) During some point in my schooldays, I used to regularly go to my house terrace and share my breakfast with the crows. Then these things were so ordinary, but now I feel these are such a precious memories! 🙂

    These days in Bangalore, sparrows have long gone. Crows are still around… for now…

  • a little goldfish

    A short (around 30 seconds) video taken with the mobile (Motorola V3i) while waiting in a lounge a few days ago. A curious onlooker was watching me watch the fish… so later on gave him my mobile showing the video which made him smile… he showed it to another security guard as well. Sometimes it just takes so little to make people happy! 🙂

  • how many birds in this picture?




    feathered conference

    Originally uploaded by common man.

    Of course its not really possible to see them with this image resolution, or without a binoculars if you were actually at that place… but just take a guess…

    The following image has a closeup that makes it easier to count 8)

    (more…)