Tag: Urban Wildlife
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Bats: The Night Workers
Shiwani As the sun goes down, the nightwalker, or rather, I would say, night fliers come out, one can see colonies of bats flying in the sky and sometimes wandering near a tree or plant. On one such night, as I stood on the balcony, sipping a cup of tea, I observed some bats visiting…
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Out of Place and Out of Space – Translocation and the Urban Monkey
Aditi Dhillon This year, in June 2021, the Karnataka High Court passed a judgement according to which monkeys entering residential spaces were to be translocated and moved to their natural habitat by the state. This judgement, however, was not one of its kind. It was, in fact, along the lines of a judgement passed by…
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Disciplining Non-human Bodies in the City
Aditi Dhillon & Ajay Immanuel Gonji In his seminal essay Why Look at Animals? John Berger (2009) talks about how, in the past, people kept domestic animals because they were useful to them – as guard dogs, hunting dogs, mice-killing cats, and so on. Later, people began to keep animals regardless of their usefulness, a…
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Life in the Fastlane: Roadkill in the Anthropocene
Ajay Immanuel Gonji My first close encounter with roadkill was during fieldwork for my Master’s internship, way back in 2013. I remember seeing the bloated body of a large male nilgai, fully intact, on the footpath of the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg – a 6-lane highway bifurcating the Sanjay Van city forest and the Jawaharlal…
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Exploring the Behaviour of Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji For many of us, our first encounter with animals was probably at home with cats and dogs, or on the streets with cows, chickens and so on. These creatures may be called ‘domestic’ because their lifeworlds almost entirely revolve around human beings. On the other hand are creatures that are collectively referred…
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Entangled Spaces: Lime Swallowtail in my Urban Garden
Kartik Chugh Spending almost all the time at home in the past month and a half, I’ve learned to appreciate my surroundings better. I’m finding little joys in watching birds landing on my terrace to quench their thirst, a troop of macaques negotiating the urban infrastructure, and occasional butterflies that stop by my urban garden.…
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Birding from my Balcony
Ajay Immanuel Gonji Growing up as a child, I loved animals and birds. One of my first experiences watching animals was when my dad would take me around our neighbourhood on the scooter showing me cows and buffaloes. At home, the pets I grew up with included fishes, ducks, chickens, rabbits, dogs, mynas, pigeons, parakeets…
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Reclaiming Lost Ground
Divya Mehra On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 or Coronavirus Disease 2019 outbreak as a ‘Pandemic’. As the number of COVID-19 cases increased manifold outside China, where it first originated, soon the enormity and seriousness of the COVID-19 threat dawned on most human beings on the planet. According to…
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Animal Movement and Human Response Amidst the Lockdown
Shashank Bhardwaj As most people around the globe sit at home to fight the global pandemic (COVID-19), the hustle and bustle of most city streets are missing. To curb this pandemic, many countries have adopted social distancing measures, including partial and complete nationwide lockdowns. While such drastic measures may be important, there’s no denying the…
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Monkey Business: Gaining Access and Rights to the City
Rashmi Singh* & Ajay Immanuel Gonji Introduction In a previous blog article, we had talked about some of our daily interactions with the monkeys (Rhesus Macaque, Macaca mulatta) in Ambedkar University Delhi, Kashmere Gate (AUDKG). We also narrated an incident where we observed, for the first time, certain societal aspects of monkey life. In this…
Centre for Urban Ecology and Sustainability 