The Rainforest Ecology

It was around 8 in the morning when I got down at Agumbe bus stand and took an auto-rickshaw to reach the field station. As rickshaw took left turn and started running on the mud road, hundreds of thoughts were running together in my mind and I was excited for my further experience in the rainforest. Suddenly, from the woods a Malabar Grey Hornbill flew across the road just above the rickshaw. That was for the first time I ever saw a hornbill in real. I got even more exited. When I got down in front of the station it was so joyful and refreshing to see the how beautifully it is built in the midst of forest. I was then taken a cottage, which was even more fabulous. The cottage was very clean and very comfortable.

After breakfast we went for a walk on the nature trail within the campus. It was such an amazing experience to walk through the trails and knowing about various flora and fauna. We found many amphibians and reptiles on our walk. Along with some tasty food for lunch and dinner, we had interesting conversation about research and conservation with researchers. After dinner we went for a night walk, which was unique experience. We saw the endemic Malabar Slender Loris and Cat snake (Boiga spp.) As I am more interested in snakes and butterflies I loved the walks which made my dreams come true.

Heading out for the walk in the woods. Photo by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

The next morning, Dhiraj took us for birding and taught us field techniques. We went to the grassland where the Yellow-wattled Lapwings breed in summer. It was an extraordinary day with good sunlight. We saw two dozen bird species in a day out of which around half a dozen were very new to me.

In the night we went in search of Arachnids and found large tarantulas and scorpions. With rain poring heavily it was the time I went for a stream-walk. I never liked rains and getting wet earlier but visit to ARRS completely changed me. By the touch of rain my heart was pumping more curiosity and enthusiasm. During the stream walks I got to see and learn about various riparian flora and fauna. In the same night we saw Mouse Deer and Malabar Spiny Dormouse.

Next morning as sun rose next to the cottage I woke up with the call of Grey Langurs. This was the last day of workshop. We went to explore caves after breakfast. There were lots of Leaf-nosed Bats hanging to the roof of the lateritic cave and we were fortunate to observe a mating pair. Later we went to Kundadri – famous for a very old Jain Temple situated on a monolithic hill. We were not there to visit temple but to explore the biodiversity and look and enjoy the landscape view. There we saw some beautiful butterflies including one of my favourite the Common Map. Later in the noontime I got mesmerizing sighting of Western Ghat’s Flying Lizard on a betel nut tree and a Hill Keelback Snake on a trail in the plantation.

 

Enjoying the beautiful landscape from Kundadri hill. Photos by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

Then it was the time for last walk... which turned out to be the best. We saw a herd of Gaur. It was an amazing moment to observe them from close distance without being noticed as we were frizzed. It was an amazing experience to be in Agumbe.  I was really happy with the food and accommodation at the station. Within my 60 hours of stay at ARRS, my checklist got 91 species of butterflies, birds, mammals and reptiles. I thank my coordinator Dhiraj for his guidance and special thanks goes to my friend Harika Guntur for encouraging me to participate in this workshop. It was such a blessing to stay in the same cottage where Sir Romulus Whitaker lived.

One of the Gaur gave us a look before crossing the broken fence. Photo by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

Article by: Gnaneswar Chandrasekharuni, Visakhapatnam

Workshop participant: 13^th to 15^th September 2014

Agumbe Blues!

Long ago, during a conversation with a primatologist friend of mine, I discovered one of life’s simple truths. It began with him saying that he and two of his colleagues were following a troop of macaques in the forests of north east India, exploring questions for behaviour studies on these macaques. While they observed the same troop for days, each of the primatologists saw something different in the troop. One ended up observing the dominance hierarchies amongst the individuals, the other looked at their foraging behaviour while my friend looked at their conflict with humans. Each researcher ended up studying aspects of behaviour that interested him or her and at the end of the day each had a wholly different set of observations although they were all looking at the same thing.

It made me realize that for different people, the same event or phenomenon can mean different things and what we interpret out of an event or experience is up to us. Agumbe, I’m sure meant a lot of different things to all those present there; this is about what it meant to me: (I have not dwelt much on the deeply personal part and kept all that emo jazz as much out of the picture as possible.)

This trip was something my body and mind has been in need of for almost 6 months now with all that jazz about the new job and my new scary boss, missing my old job almost like missing a lover, missing my old boss and his gyan and guidance, missing my friends and colleagues, going crazy with the challenges of research work, getting used to the new routine involving so much travel, feeling utterly lost most of the time and then of course the giant break up. So a trip away from life in general was very much the need of the hour. And Agumbe was just perfect. It had everything I needed, the perfect ambiance of the rain forest and the perfect bunch of nut cases for company, and we also ended up having the perfect field co-ordinator who gelled so well with the group, which was an added bonus. But the fact that I was in Agumbe, an ecologist's paradise, put me in a dilemma. Do I treat this as one of my field excursions where the ecologist in me goes all data hungry and gathers all the information around me by walking around in the forest day and night with pen, paper and camera and takes down rigorous notes on all the new species I see and updates checklists at the end of each day or do I treat it like a “vacation” and just shut myself off and just “be”?

Just be....... or not.

So as I oscillated between being on holiday and being a professional knowledge hungry sponge, I thought the dilemma was making me go even more crazy and finally at the end of the first day, I missed the evening session and after that I ended up missing quite a few sessions, especially all the morning ones. Yes, I didn’t hear the frogmouth and I missed the Malabar whistling thrush calling out in the mornings coz I was snoring away to glory, but I got the well deserved rest and break I needed and I guess that is what counts at the end of the day.

I also ended up doing more “timepass” at the dining hall than any actual serious field trip, but perhaps that refreshed me more than anything else. It was great to be with a bunch of people whom I know in general but had never spent so much time with. There were two things that brought us together - 1. Anupamaa (coz she was the common denominator among us all) and 2. our love for nature. I was amazed and profoundly touched at the sheer amount of curiosity Jeroo showed in learning about all the plants, birds, insects, arachnids and snakes. And this from a so-called senior citizen who isn’t even professionally related to the natural world. The same goes for the Gowri-Vidyanand duo who not only relished in hearing the elusive frogmouth but also loved the super common lapwings. That I think is very important, to not only be crazy about the rarer wildlife but also the more common ones. There was that one time however, where we acted like run-of-mill tourists and begged Dhiraj to try and search for the king cobra. I think our cool-visitor-quotient must have dropped down several notches because of this!

There is however, one more thing that brought us together and helped us gel so well - our love for food. I still can’t believe all that ginormous amount of food we ate! Its incredible, our enthusiasm to first buy all that stuff; carry it all the way there and to devour it with so much zest!

A major credit for this detox-therapy-for-my-mind vacation of mine also goes to the random humour that surrounded me ALL THE TIME. Every time i think of those crazy moments, I just crack up! I mean, remember that time when….

...Jeroo walked out of the snake taxonomy class and almost instantly walked back in?

...Dhiraj's said  "I will tell you later”?

...Sam wished Dhiraj happy diwali and only Nandu and I saw that priceless expression on Sam’s face when he said it and we cracked like never before?

...Nandu did that fantastic maggi wala imitation n then everybody else did crazy imitations as if on Que?

...we walked into the stream for the first time and Jeroo thought we were going somewhere to see the King Cobra?

I will also never forget Gowri’s expression on seeing the yellow wattled lapwing, her maggi and the back massage she gave me, Vidyanand getting into his old groove and starting to bully me as if he was back in his 20s and I was 10 again, Anupamaa tying her hair like a school girl, Sam “knighting” himself with the telemetry antenna with the pink flower in his hair, Dhiraj pulling our legs countless number of times and Jeroo actually falling for it, Abhijit refusing to get into the water, Dhiraj doing the imitation of the dancing frogs...the list can go on.

Oh yes, and the profound enlightenment that girls fall for Captain Jack Sparrow coz he doesn’t have a bath for days and so we can smell his pheromones!!

And amongst all these hearty laughs and tears of joy and major bonding among us mixed nuts, at the backdrop was the forest itself. For we were not 8 in the group, we were in fact, 9. For every tree, every blade of grass, every croaking frog, every snake that slithered in the undergrowth, every mass of moss that hung from every tree, every flower that bloomed and every decaying leaf...they all came together as one entity. The forest had a mind of its own, its own moods and its own personality. Sometimes it closed itself around you and engulfed you in darkness with the dense canopy while some other times it opened up suddenly into a grassy meadow like the open arms of a dear friend. It just had to be Agumbe. My much awaited trip couldn’t have been anywhere else or it couldn’t have been with anyone else.  It just had to be Agumbe.

It is time now that I woke myself up from this Agumbe reverie and move on with life. As Robert Frost has said, I have miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep. I have my job to do, my larvae to feed, my paper to write, my train to catch, my office bitching to catch up on, my polluted air to breathe, my traffic jam to get stuck in, my boss’ quirks to endure, my......my miles to go before I sleep.

Till then, Wow Wow Beautiful Beautiful Wow!!!

Article by: Yashada Kulkarni, Mumbai

Workshop participant: 20^th to 24^th October 2014

Ah….. Rainforest!

I visited Agumbe rainforest, Karnataka to attend a 4-day workshop on Rainforest Ecology (April 12 – 15, 2014), hosted by the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. Before leaving from Mumbai, I called the coordinator, Dhiraj Bhaisare, several times to ask several questions – Are there leeches in the forest? What kind of shoes do I need? The poster said that participants will need to walk a lot, but will there be climbing as well (which I can’t really manage)? What is the nearest railhead? If I take a bus from Mumbai, should I go to Udupi or Shimoga? Dhiraj answered most questions quite patiently. He also sent an instruction sheet, which mentioned that there is no cellphone network in Agumbe, except BSNL.

On April 12, at 7.30 AM, there I was at Agumbe bus stand, looking hopelessly at my 2 cellphones (Vodafone and Tata Docomo SIM cards), which showed no signal at all. How do I go to ARRS from here? There are no auto-rickshaws in sight. I should call Dhiraj, but how? And there appeared a young man on a bike, about 5 ft. 4, unshaven, with neck-length hair. I gave him a cursory look and went back to staring at my phones. Hesitantly, he said, “Are you from Mumbai?” and then I said, “Dhiraj? What a relief!”

Anyway, he put me and my bags on the bike and we proceeded to the field station. We turned from the main road into a dirt road and I began to see tall trees everywhere, with an occasional clearing thrown in. Deep inside the forest, I saw a signpost saying ‘Entrance to ARRS 30 meters ahead’. So we had reached. I recognized the main building and meeting / dining area from photos on the website I had seen earlier. Dhiraj said I would be living in a cottage, which was to the left. And oh yes, I was the only participant. What? But the poster said there could be upto 10 participants… Yes, but the other person who had registered had to cancel last minute so now you are the only one! Well, so be it then.

The rest of this write up is a montage of moments during the workshop. And I have to write it in the present tense, because it’s still so fresh and live in my mind!

Rainforest:

It is an unforgettable experience to be inside a rainforest. Most workshop sessions involve walking through dense forest, some clearings within the forest and some water bodies. I have never visited such a dense forest before. At 3.30 in the afternoon, so little sunlight reaches inside the forest! It is quite cool inside through the day. The forest floor is covered with leaf litter. And in the areas which have more moisture or dampness, there are so many tiny frogs in the leaf litter! They jump about as I walk through.

I have learnt in the Ecology course that a good forest is ‘multi-storeyed’ – with trees of varying heights, from bushes and shrubs to small trees to tall trees to very tall trees. This forest is a really good one. While I wade through shrubs and small trees and Kewda (Pandanus spp.) plants (which poke me with their serrated edges), I am only mildly aware of the large buttressed roots of the very tall trees. Occasionally I look up and see the sunlight struggling to break through the dense canopy. There are woody climbers hanging down in loops and twists between trees. Some trees have such big trunks, it would take three people like me to stand around them with arms wide open to cover the circumference!

This forest is so alive! Cicadas, bird calls, frog calls, monkey calls, squirrel calls…. There is a variety of audio information coming in constantly. And yet it is so quiet. The crunch of the leaf litter under my feet seems too loud.

I decide that this is going to be my biggest recommendation to all my friends who are interested in Ecology – visit Agumbe just to experience the forest.

Walk in the woods:

The workshop schedule mentions a post-dinner session on each day: Night Walk in the Forest. Really? A walk at night? In the forest? In the dark?

“How else would you see nocturnal life in the forest?” says Dhiraj the Serious Face.

He hands me a powerful flashlight. He has an even more powerful one. He walks ahead and I follow close at heel. He flashes the light on the trees and a large area gets lit up. And also light up a pair of eyes in the middle of a tree. “It’s a slender loris”, he says in a hushed tone. I remember seeing a poster at the ARRS office. The smallest primate, with big eyes, endemic to Western Ghats. “It’s a shy animal. Let’s slowly move close to the tree.” I follow Dhiraj as noiselessly as possible, but the crunch of the leaf litter under my shoes is really really loud. Dhiraj can see the slender loris. But as the light flashes near the animal, it moves and hides behind the leaves. I am two steps behind. I only get to see the movement of leaves.

On another night, I get to see a flying squirrel. It is peacefully eating some fruit. It watches us as it eats. Then it climbs up to the denser part of the tree, away from our sight. I don’t get to see it flying.

And on another night, I see a kingfisher, roosting. It looks so adorable! Its beak tucked into the feathers on its chest, looking like a blue and red fur ball.

And then, a wolf snake, about 3 ft long, and about as thick as my index finger; slithering up a tree. It is a good looking one – black with yellow bands. And a vine snake, sleeping. What a sharp green colour it has! And on all nights, I see several frogs, varying in length from 1 cm to 3 inches. And spiders, tarantulas, scorpions.

Each night, as I go for the walk, I look inside my urban head and heart, and I am surprised to find that I don’t feel any fear at all. No fear of the dark, no fear of the forest, and no fear of the animals I may see. There is curiosity about what I may get to see. But there is no agenda. There is no “I want to see this animal or that”. As I walk in the forest, I am only aware of the present moment. It is a completely spiritual experience!

Reptiles… eeek!

On the first day itself, I declare to Dhiraj that I hate reptiles, that I have an aversion for them. Seeing a tiny lizard around the house can set me in a tizzy and just looking at them gives me the creeps.

I also sincerely tell him, that I hope this would change after the workshop. Because I have read about ARRS and much of their work is on herpetofauna. I can see that Dhiraj has made a mental note.

Sure enough, there is a session on learning about Draco. These are flying lizards endemic to Western Ghats. Dhiraj takes me to an abandoned arecanut plantation within the ARRS campus, where Draco are seen rather easily, unlike in the dense forest. He spots one climbing up a tree. Immediately I train my binocs on the creature. A male Draco, identified by the inch-long yellow dewlap flipping under his throat. I have just about managed to focus, and he disappears. Well, not really. He has simply flown to the next tree, and binocs are not at all useful to see the flying which is all so sudden and unpredictable. I keep watching, without binocs now, and a few minutes later it glides again. What a thrilling moment it is for me! It’s lovely to see him glide from tree to tree using his tiny wings (actually they are wing-like appendages of skin). The sun is shining from above, and the wings look orange-yellow from underneath, silhouetted by the bright light.

The reason for his jumping about becomes clear soon – there is a female on one of the trees. He is probably attempting courtship. Dhiraj tells me that the female is bigger in size, doesn’t fly as much as the male, and if she doesn’t approve of the courtship, she simply whacks him with her tail! I wait to see this show of female empowerment. However, the courtship doesn’t happen. They are both probably just too hungry and want to concentrate on finding food.

Seeing the graceful gliding motion of the Draco minimizes any misgivings I have about lizards and geckos. I learn that they are beautiful creatures. That’s not creepy, is it?!

The innocent comment:

One afternoon, Ram comes running to the dining area with a snake in his hand. The snake is alive, it is about 2 feet long, has brown patches on the skin, it was found under some tree behind a cottage. Dhiraj and Ram discuss how to do scale count on the snake. Dhiraj says that they should put it on a glass sheet, and photograph from below, so that all the ventral scales and sub-caudals can be easily counted without stressing the snake. The snake is agitated a little – it is a nocturnal animal that sleeps by day, and these humans have disturbed its sleep. They put away the snake in a bucket and go looking for a glass. Rajesh finds it in a forgotten corner in the office. This 3’ x 2’ piece of thick glass has not been used for a long while – it is covered in dust and dirt. Chandan, the young volunteer from Bangalore, who is passionate to learn about snakes, and who is also trying to learn Hindi, says, “This is so dirty – ganda…. will become… ummm how do you say ‘will become’ in Hindi?” I show off immediately – “Ganda ho jayega. But what do you mean it will become dirty? The glass is already full of dust…”

Chandan replies with an earnest face, “I wasn’t talking about the glass. If we put the snake on it, saanp ganda ho jayega”!!

How wonderfully innocent is that comment – this young chap is worried that the snake, a creature of the earth that moves through mud and undergrowth and what not, will become dirty!

Whitaker's Boa (Eryx whitakeri). Photo by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

Article by: Anupamaa Joshi, Mumbai

Workshop participant: 12^th to 15^th April 2014

Life in the mist!

Research in the rainforest had long been a tantalizing proposition for me. Rumbling down the jeep track on that first foggy morning, I was full of excitement for the days to follow, and sheer joy for being in a rainforest. As luck would have it, Paromita, a sprightly co-volunteer deftly showed me around the research station. I was awestruck by the beauty of the place, its pools and streams and dense forest. There were two resident Malabar Pit Vipers, countless little geckos and nocturnal visitors – scorpions - that warrant a thorough shoe check every morning. Large Brahminy skinks chase one another, and occasionally little snakes, on the leaf litter. A little white macaque skull sits with an old grey bovine one at the entrance.

ARRS is located on a small erstwhile plantation of betel nut and paddy field, surrounded by forest. Kalinga Mane (Kannada for King Cobra House) houses the neat and very comfortable dormitory, kitchen and open dining area. The office is one of the classiest I have seen, with traditional carved columns and doors, and a great view. The adjoining library is compact and cosy and contains a diverse collection of journals, magazines, encyclopaedias, field guides and even fiction. There are three lovely cottages on the premises at strategic locations.

Verandah next to office. Photo by: Mallika Sardeshpande

My work as a volunteer here was to collect data on dragonflies. We were observing their activity throughout the day at a little pool in the paddy field. This meant that we often heard and saw birds and even the Malabar Giant Squirrel at close quarters! Paromita and I would quietly stalk the species of our interest, swoop down on them with an insect net, gently mark their wingtips with colour codes and release them. We tracked their hunting flights and rather aggressive territorial chases and ended up basking in the sun with them all day. Some very interesting and heartening discussions would ensue during these hours.

One of the marked Trumpet Tail. Photo by: Paromita Mukherjee

Just a casual walk around the place could mean encountering at least a dozen species. Look down and you will find ants (procession ants, jumping ants, golden-backed ants, weaver ants and so on), slugs, snakes, scorpions, tracks and droppings (of boars, cattle, deer, leopards, civets to name a few). Look up in the trees and you will find birds, frogs (bush frogs, gliding frogs, etc), agamid lizards (Calotes and Draco) and mammals (giant squirrels, flying squirrels, slender loris, civets). And it is equally important to look straight ahead as there are many spiders of all sizes, shapes and colours (funnel spiders, wood spiders, giant wood spiders, jumping spiders and many more) in their elaborate webs.

Butterflies mud-puddling. Photo by: Joris Wiethase

Mornings are often begun with the enchanting song of the endemic Malabar Whistling Thrush that likes to perch on the dormitory roof. Woodpeckers are especially active in the mornings, and the reverberations of hollow tree trunks being hammered can deceive one into thinking that these birds are quite large. They are in fact flamboyant little things that deftly maintain minimum visibility despite being right before or above you or swiftly changing trees. The Greater Racket-tailed Drongos are unabashed in their playful banter, sometimes making startlingly complex combinations of screeches and whistles. Yellow-browed Bulbuls, another endemic species abound here, often flocking with different birds to make a collective effort at disturbing and thus seeking out insects. Malabar Giant Squirrels can get quite loud and White-bellied Treepies dominate the soundscape with what Joris, another co-volunteer, described as computer game sounds. The Malabar Grey Hornbill takes the cake, though. Its signature cackling calls would always crack us up and reiterate the importance of laughter.

The station is run mainly on solar power. By day, skylights in the traditional tiled roofs allow bright diffused sunlight to bathe the indoors. The bathrooms provide the luxury of hot water, a by-product of cooking. Evenings are illuminated by LED lamps, but more so by conversations over dinner. Some nights we would watch superb documentaries – not only published ones, but also some awesome footage recorded by researchers during the King Cobra Telemetry Project and an ongoing study on Yellow-wattled Lapwings.

Ajay Giri is the resident snake rescuer. He is often summoned even in distant villages when the situation is too tricky or the snake too risky for local rescuers. Witnessing four King Cobra rescues and two Spectacled Cobra rescues left me in wide-eyed wonder! The snakes are found in small tanks and wells, attics, sheds, even in living rooms, on gates, and trees. Ajay records the GPS coordinates, location and time of capture and release as well as the situation of the snake confrontation. The vital statistics of the snake are recorded too! The composed manner in which Ajay handles the snake and the situation is admirable and insightful, and so is the interaction that follows the rescue. The villagers talk to him about all kinds of wildlife, conflict, risks and habitats and he hands out informative leaflets to them.

During Human-Snake Conflict Mitigation. Photo by: Ajay Giri

Dhiraj Bhaisare, the research administrator is a treasure trove of knowledge. Walking with him around the area gave us much to appreciate. He showed us India’s smallest (Oriental Grass Jewel) and largest (Southern Birdwing) butterflies, the Hump-nosed Pit Viper we could have either missed or stepped on, and a beautiful Nilgiri Forest Lizard that we may not have otherwise identified, all on one walk. He also has detailed answers to practically all kinds of questions and casually drops thought-provoking questions and ideas around.

Ramprasad Rao is an amphibian and ichthyofauna researcher.  He was kind enough to take us to the serene Jogi Gundi falls and the spectacular Onake Abbe falls. Walking through the forest, he gave us bytes on trees, geckos, frogs, fish and scat, and very convincingly mimicked some bird calls. The Malabar Whistling Thrush began to sing with him! He also took us to the forest to extract a wild bee colony one morning. I was delighted to see him gently cup handfuls of bees out of a tree hollow and into the bee box. After much persuasion on my part and concerned hesitation on his, I finally tried it myself. It was a great feeling, fuzzy buzzing bees all over my hands! This awesome threesome is the soul of the research station. Keeping the station well-maintained is a local staff including the cook Nagaraj who never fails to please with hot nutritious and flavourful meals.

The view from Onake Abbe falls. Photo by: Mallika Sardeshpande

There is a pair of camera traps in the forest, one recording video clips and another taking pictures. Going through the records, we saw many deer, a group of ten wild boars, quite some cattle and of course humans including us captured on camera. One of the mornings, a leopard walked down the path around 11am. At 4pm that day, we went down the very same path; we returned though, and the leopard didn’t. As though that wasn’t thrill enough, we used to go out every single night with torches. Occasionally we’d carry a UV light too, to spot the fluorescent green scorpions emerging from their burrows in the pitch dark night. We spotted frogs, snakes, slugs and the Malabar Flying Squirrel a couple of times. The Slender Loris was often heard but seldom seen. We were absolutely thrilled to find Sri Lanka Frogmouths with the help of recorded calls. However we couldn’t come up with a suitable study design for them. Either way, we made the most of it by gazing at the tremendously clear star-strewn sky every night.

A monthly phenomenon, the light trap set up by Deepak CK, JRF at NCBS, is a sight to behold. A simple square cloth enclosure open to sky, it attracts moths of at least 30 different species (yes, I counted) between 9pm and 3am (those are Deepak’s work hours). The first to arrive are pearly white beauties, some with heavy gold and silver designs adorning their wings. They literally look like jewels. As the night progresses, an array of moths convene on the walls, turning them into works of living biological art. The iridescence, camouflage, patterns, and above all, the astounding variety is awe-inspiring. Naturally, it also is a feast for frogs and lizards. Hawk moths are the group of interest here, and Deepak collects specimens whenever a new species arrives to maintain record of the species present in Western Ghats. Forty two species of Hawk Moths have been documented from Agumbe till date.

Fortunate as I am, Romulus Whitaker visited along with Zai Whitaker, Nikhil Whitaker and Dr. Gowri Mallapur while I was volunteering. Cheerful, charming and very friendly, he spoke to us about our experiences and shared his own. Joris and I undertook a small survey on the habitat occupancy of the grasslands near the station. The lapwings had begun to arrive. Most birds were seen flying in pairs. We scouted for nocturnal birds too, but no nightjar, owl or frogmouth called or responded to our playback either. The environment was so charged and I learned a lot of things in my nineteen days at the station. Now I sit with my laptop, sifting through the collected data looking for trends and patterns. This was a life-building experience, and I aspire to return to ARRS and contribute some good research.

Article by: Mallika Sardeshpande, Pune

Volunteer: 7^th to 25^th January 2015

The tales from those who experienced the rainforest...

Dear all,

This blog is not something in which I write or share my thoughts. This is created to share the experiences of people who visited Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. Even though most of the things which people see and experience during their stay at ARRS are not new to me, it is very interesting to know how people's perspective differs in looking at same thing and it is amazing to read how people express the feelings and share their experiences in fantastic words. Usually the more I meet people... the more I like to live solitary. But here in this blog I will share the thoughts of those few people who adore, appreciate and respect the beauty of nature and encourage me to work towards conserving the biodiversity. Cheers!