Author: nirjesh gautam
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Small Parks, Big Stories: Tracking Birds in Parks
During my internship, I worked in Delhi’s urban parks, places I hadn’t initially considered ecologically significant. Though the city’s lakes caught my attention first, it was the birds that truly transformed my viewing of urban nature. What began as a routine two-credit assignment turned into a deeper exploration of biodiversity in seemingly ordinary green spaces,…
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His songs at 2 a.m.
At 2 a.m., when the city seems finally at rest, a sudden drawn-out whistle pierces the silence—sweeeeeeeeeee. It is the Oriental Magpie Robin (Copsychus saularis), a bird many may never have noticed in flight, yet one whose voice is etched into the urban soundscape. By day, it is a striking figure in black and white,…
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The First Engineers Weren’t Human
Human beings have been engineering for a long time. Imhotep, who built the Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah, Egypt, around 2550 BCE, is considered one of the first engineers of humankind. In Rome, around the 1st century CE, Vitruvius’s De architectura, a 10-volume work, was published covering extensive engineering knowledge, including building materials, construction methods, hydraulics,…
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Beautiful Dragonflies of the Not-so-Beautiful City
This article investigates dragonflies in the city. While they are specialists in flight, very little is known about their pre-metamorphosis aquatic life. Since urban areas create niches where multi-habitat creatures like dragonflies can flourish, should cities be chastised as unwise, unsustainable endeavours or can they be reimagined as housing nature in changed forms?