After the Thunderstorm and Squall

May 12, 2023

Finally the coastal Karnataka is receiving summer rains. It rained with all big bangs yesterday night clocking 50mm nearly. The rains were accompanied with massive thunder, lightening and horrendous squall. We felt as if the arrears fell on single day :-). Obviously, the rain scenes could not be captured due to risk associated with thunderstorm. A huge tree fell on transit auto which unfortunately took two lives :-(. The second session of thunderstorm appeared around 4AM and lasted for an hour. Looks like there were couple of ground strikes too! The power went down and eventually restored around 5PM.

Morning scenes described the volume of furor created by overnight storm. The plantation leaves were uprooted and strewed all along despite being green. Plenty of coconuts fell over the ground which saved our money :-). My morning routine was busy clearing them. Here are aftermath of storm.

Mostly sticky clouds which hints no rains further for the day. If Sun, had come out, we could have had one more spell!

The puddles are positive sign of healthy rains. The ground water level is slowly picking up but far away from saturation point

The droplets aligned neatly over the well enclosure which provided opportunity for macro photography.

Photo Blog - Masale Dosae from The Great Home Cafe!

This is not a new restaurant but Masale Dosae prepared at home! Entire set of food is prepared at home! Be it chutney pudi, naturally fermented dose batter, alugedde palya or butter. Every part of it is home made. The melting butter over palya with smeared chutney pudi on dose was drool worthy! The crisp and soft dose was heaven to eat.

The home made dosae is not comparable to texture or thickness of restaurants primarily because restaurants do not disclose ingredients. The dosae of restaurants could be artificially fermented, beset with soda, artificial butter and many more. You can eat 4 masala dosaes at home but restaurant doses bloat your stomach when you eat one. That's effect of artificial agents used in restaurants. Anyway this post is not for comparison but to honor the hard-work, skills & zest of our Home Minister

Great NeighBird!

A birder in twitter gave the title when I posted picture of Malabar pied hornbill which is dwelling in our village from couple of years. The reply was clear that I have a great neighbor (idiomatically neighbird!). I like the comment and thought of putting into a tiny blog to honor the benign birds. This pair makes visit daily in our backyard inside the forest but hard to photograph due to shyness. In one of the lucky day, I took the picture of female clearly.

The bird later flew to casuarina tree which enabled me to capture clear pictures. The bird spotted me and flew from location

There she goes after spotting the human!

But male, I could only capture the "HornBill"

Check out my Bird Series blogs here : NKBirdSeries

Monsoon-ish weather

May 03, 2023

Core summer seeing unprecedented weather throughout India. The north is seeing unusual cold weather, the south is seeing high volume of rains and unfortunately west coast is reeling under prolonged dry weather. The water scarcity along west coast has aggravated, river beds have gone dry and water table in wells has sunk beyond reach.

Meanwhile, the interiors of Karnataka are enjoying huge rains thanks to prolonged wind convergence. I had written about volume of pre-monsoon rains in Kunigal here in tiny blog! The ground soil is saturated and lakes are already filled to maximum. This was the scene during our drive from Bengaluru to Udupi near Kunigal.

The low clouds streaming from west to east reminded us of monsoon-ish weather during June. There were heavy showers at some places. The Sun hardly came out and breeze was cool. Unfortunately, the cloud cover did not last long. The clouds magically faded away once we moved further towards west

Here is a short video of rain en-route

Photo Blog - Where are clouds?

The peacock perched high atop the coconut tree scans the surroundings for any activity. I felt as if it desperately looking out for rain. The mourning was like "North and South, see only clear skies. Where are the clouds?!". Coastal Karnataka is reeling under dry weather from past 5 months without a drop of rain. Hope the table turns soon and region experiences summer rains.

North or South, I see no clouds!

Perched on top, The Peacock mourns 

Photo Blog - Smoldered!

It has been nearly 5 months since we did not have drop of rain in native. The atmosphere look parched with intense Sun beating down on the exhausted farmlands. When I went for a stroll along fields, the vegetation looked smoldered as if the Sun burnt the land without flames. Hope it rains soon!

People here are desperately waiting for rains. Treading on this field is turning vegetation to crumbles. That is the height of moisture deprivation on this farmland. I did not edit the pictures because they are not scenes to flaunt about. The unedited pictures show the gravity of situation

Photo Blog - Volume of Pre-Monsoon rains (Summer rains)

Nowadays, my doubt is increasing every day if coastal regions are loosing rains to other parts of Karnataka. The interiors of Karnataka are seeing massive rainfall amounting to 150mm+ in 24hrs. This is the trend from past 4 years. The pre-monsoon rains of 2023 is no different. The rains which started around last week of April is still falling unabated and that too with huge numbers. Below is picture from Kunigal Bypass which I captured en-route to native. The fields are fresh with ruddy water, the artificial ponds are now fishing ground. The streams are gushing with speed. That is the impact of summer rains this year in this region.

The lush greenery in core summer season, the fields brimming with ruddy water, the saturated ground speaks about of volume of rains pelting in this region!

The relatively lesser traffic during mid-week helped me to freely photograph along the Kunigal Bypass

Summer Rains make landfall finally!

May 05, 2023

Today morning a large cloud mass showed up in western direction of our village. This has been recurring every day as per father and hence we ignored them.

The large cloud mass in western horizon turned stronger and started streaming towards our region. We heard distant rains pouring which increased our hope of healthy precipitation

Moisture laden clouds did not disappoint us. Moments later, drizzle turned to heavy rains for nearly 30mins. That was big relief for the baked village where rains were a dream. I was engrossed in bird photography and took shelter nearby my uncle's house. I chatted with him for a while before departing.

The rains did not subside which made me to borrow umbrella from uncle to reach home as it was getting late for work. Here is a picture while holding umbrella. The ground marginally soaked in rainwater but plenty more needed to reach saturation level! Prolonged dry weather is thankfully broken. A temporary respite from sizzling summer. Hope to see more rains at least for 3 more days.

The finally video sums up everything that happened in morning! Needless to mention, the Sun is up after brief rains along with humidity. The fans continue to throttle at maximum pace :-). The nearby station scored 21mm which is classified as moderate rains. This moderate was enough to boost our confidence.

Chestnut Headed Bee-Eater

Our plan was to visit Hemavathi Ugama Sthana (Birth Place) but ended up with disappointment. The place is under renovation and hardly can find the spot of river spring. The old look is lost. Do not understand why natural things need modern look. The 10kms additional drive went futile. For interested people, May 28th is festival day and one can celebrate the revived place with grandeur.

Nothing goes wasted. While walking through the debris of construction materials, heard call similar to green bee-eaters. I was surprised as how green bee eater choose such dense forest. When I looked upwards, they were none other than chestnut headed bee eaters. This is perk of travelling to deep jungles of Western Ghats! These birds usually dwell in deep forest and exhibit similar behavior as green bee eaters i.e. fly high, catch the prey and savor it! I saw them happy to be around human population than being shy beings. Here are the pictures I shot during that graceful day! The cloud cover was negative for a crisp shot but happy with maiden spotting!

Check out my Bird Series blogs here : NKBirdSeries