Art, animals, and the earth

This 4 July 2016 video shows a tawny pipit in the Murcia region in Spain.

Related articles

• New species of spider discovered ‘next door’ at the borders of cereal fields in Spain
• Cows, plants and rain in Spain
• International team of scientists discovers tiny glassy snails in caves of Northern Spain
• Birds in Spain, last day
• Rare pea blue butterflies in the Netherlands

According to news reports Over 30 people have been killed following heavy rains that lashed Uttarakhand  resulting in landslides and road blockages. Death toll due to cloudburst & incessant rains in Chamoli and Pithoragarh could likely rise further.

Due to the heavy rain  in cloudburst, river Alaknanda was flowing above the danger level. The  flash floods is causing heavy casualties.

Flash floods are slightly different from normal floods. Normal floods involve water rising and overflowing from its normal path. However, flash floods appear quickly and move swiftly across land with little warning. Flash floods occur for a variety of reasons including concentrated rainfall during a slow moving thunderstorm, hurricanes, and tropical storms.

A cloudburst is sudden copious rainfall. It is a sudden aggressive rainstorm falling for a short period of time limited to a small geographical area.They are called ‘bursts’ probably because it was believed earlier that clouds were solid…

Spawning Arctic Grayling at Green Hollow Genetic Brood Reserve. Photo © Emily Cayer FWP

Graylings sound like wild beings out of a fantasy series, but in fact they’re a type of fish found all over the world in different species, some threatened with population decline, and some stable. The Arctic grayling, found in Russia and Canada but also some areas in Alaska, Montana and Wyoming, has suffered extirpation from certain spots in the latter two states during the last hundred years or so, due to anthropogenic effects. Ted Williams reports for The Nature Conservancy:

The Arctic grayling’s spotted, orange-trimmed dorsal fin looks as if it had been photoshopped. It’s half as long as the body and just as wide; and it glows with impossible shades of violet, green and turquoise. This gaudy trout cousin was deposited by the retreating glacier in the coldest, clearest waters of the contiguous states.

So common…

One of India’s rarest birds.

One of the pillars at Gobekli Tepe.

By Sharon St Joan

In his remarkable book, Gobekli Tepe, Genesis of the Gods, Andrew Collins paints a portrayal of the possible cosmic significance of these great mysterious circles of stone pillars, in southeastern Turkey, whose origins go back nearly 12,000 years into the past, to the time of the ending of the last great Ice Age. They are believed to be the oldest megalithic structures in the world.

Obviously, no one today can know for sure what the builders of Gobekli Tepe intended or what they were thinking.

On some of the stone circles, imaginative depictions of animals are carved on the right sides of each of the great pillars – only on the right side, with no carvings on the left. Andrew Collins makes the point that these seemed to be designed for circumambulation – as devotees would have walked clockwise…

Life thrives
whether we care for it
or not.

This video shows an avocet couple in the Karrevelden nature reserve in Zeeland province in the Netherlands.

You who are the wisdom

And the treasure – on the hill where bells peal

Life and death,

Death and life,

Birth, rebirth,

Or freedom

From the ever-grinding wheel

Of strife.

Gentle,

Brave,

It is you who stay,

Who live deep in the dens of the earth,

In the rain-dark soil,

Breath

Of all being,

You who stay

When all has left

Fled far on the crane-white wings that shimmer,

And you too who encircle the stars and the moon,

You who glimmer

Like the lily,

Soul bereft

That hisses of the ending soon.

You flow

Coil upon blue-hued coil,

Your hooded heads sway,

You know all

And yet nothing,

You sing the call

Of the lakes of eternity

On the silver wave

In the night of falling snow

And the peace of the dawn-pale petal.

Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.

© Sharon St Joan, 2016

 

Photo: © Mgkuijpers | Dreamstime.com /…