An airport for feathery flyers
We heard about birds hitting the aircraft, occupy the runway even there are drones to divert them but having an airport for them is beyond our imagination. However, it seems to be true in other sense in
China. Tianjin city council along with Asian Development Bank (ADB) and McGregor Coxall (Designer and Landscape Architects) is planning to develop a giant natural reserve (Lingang Bird Airport) near the port city Tianjin. The reserve is planned on an internationally acclaimed bird migration route, East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF). This route expands through 22 countries and nearly ~ 50 million migratory birds use this pathway for their annual 
journey. The EAAF is also one of the threatened route due to increasing urbanisation in coastal areas, thus rapidly destroying critical bird habitats/shelters. For some birds, the journey sometimes extends upto 11,000 km. and a maximum of 10 days, therefore, resource gets exhausted. The proposed reserve is for rejuvenating those exhausted birds, and a temporary shelter/resting place on their way to different directions. Spanning across 61 hectares the landscape will have three different habitats, bird hides, and forest catering the need for more than 50 different species of birds. There will be a visitor and research centre for human guests too. So, please, ready for bird take off, and transit passage without passport-visa related complexity.
Source: McGregor Coxall (2017) Bird airport – Tianjin Lingang bird sanctuary wetland park design. Landscape architecture frontiers/thematic practices. 5(4): 80-95. DOI: 10.15302/J-LAF-20170409
Image: McGregor Coxall
Collector: Rajasri Ray
Floating Guavas of Bhimruli
Local markets often showcase many unique goodies autochthonously sourced, be it an offbeat landrace of a crop, artifacts, tools or a popular local delicacy that is not available outside. And they offer easy selling point for farmers or craftsmen among a variety of consumers.
Well, now imagine if such things can be found afloat….! You need not to go far; but, let us turn our face
to the Orient, in search of floating markets and canals. From waving shikaras of Dal lake or the well-known Thai delight – the floating market of Bangkok, there are remarkable markets modest in their presence and hidden in the backwaters of Barisal, Bangladesh. Barisal not only stands for Balam rice, betel leaf, rivers and canals, the region is also famous for several floating markets. However, the place Bhimruli, a village with crisscrossing water tracts located in the 
Jhalokathi district, is distinct in its repertoire because its produce is dominated by unwavering presence of guavas. Quiet understandably, it is also known as Bhimruli Peyaarabazar (Bhimruli guava-market).
Every day, Bhimruli market sets up during afternoon at the confluence of three canals, and people from nearby villages flock in the market to buy and sell various products. Though many different kinds of items are traded, the market earned its fame mostly for its guava (Psidium guajava) which is sold in great numbers in season. During peak hours, small boats laden with ripe and unripe guava is a common scene. And if you are curious and wish to track a collecting boat, you may catch up many such boats wading through smaller water channels which, like labyrinth, moves through guava gardens. Boatman and collector used to engage in picking guavas from the trees and dump in the boat. Apart from Guava, the market is also known for hog plum or Spondias mombin (Amra in Bengali). And many others, rice, vegetables, fruits are also sold fresh from the field.
Photo courtesy: from top: https://www.daily-sun.com/post/257169/2017/09/25/Floating-markets-in-Barisal-abuzz-as-guava-season-sets-in; Lonely Explorer [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Collector: Avik Ray
Mysterious Manna – The super food of ancient Israel
What did Israelites eat during their great exodus from Egypt to Mount Sinai? How did they survive? Leaving behind the chains of slavery and breathing the air of freedom was not too sweat for them since
there was every chance of starving to death in the new wilderness. But they got going. What was the underlying secret? How did they manage to obtain their required energy? What could be their food, gathered or grown?
Historical texts may have an answer but clouded by myths. Many such texts suggest the God-sent bread showered from the heaven survived them for forty years. And that is the so-called alluring and mythical food of Israelites, Biblical Manna or Mana.
The obvious next question is: what was this Manna? Literature is abounding with debates among commentators. Now, keeping away from the supernatural origin hypothesis, there are stories with real flesh and bones. Some say, it may not be a single food but a suite of various types of food. One of these, is a swift-growing algae (Nostoc spp) known to grow in the Mountain Sinai. The other candidates are a number of native lichen species (Lecanora affinus, L. esculenta, and L. fruticulosa) that curl up and move in a tumbleweed-like manner. These lichens are a raw material for bread widely used among nomadic pastoralists and L. esculenta is also used by Arabs for its medicinal value. There are other propositions as well. Manna could be, according to recent studies, a sticky exudes from the desert plants. It is formed when certain species of scale insects and plant lice rest on the bark of certain shrubs and leave a substance that solidifies into sweet honeydew. So, more such uncertainties surround the identity of Manna; some scholars attempted to bust the myth, saying manna of commerce collected from saccharine sap from flowering-ash trees (Fraxinus ornus) whereas Jewish manna came from the soft twigs of the of tamarisk (Tamarix gallica) on the Sinaitic peninsula.
Thus, the mystery around superfood Manna lingers….
Photo courtesy: Top right: By James Tissot – Jewish Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8849141; Top left: Novalis at English Wikipedia. Later versions by Consequencefree at en.wikipedia. – [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1468665; Central left: By Jacopo188 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24106930; bottom: Diomidis Spinellis at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2443664
Collector: Avik Ray
The dark phase of biodiversity
‘Biodiversity’, one of the most searched words across the globe, tells us about the diverse life forms and their relations with each other. There are different ways to measure, evaluate and monitor biodiversity in a place. These measurements inform us about the organisms present in a place (be it plants, animals or microbes), how do they survive against different adverse conditions and how beneficial they are.
In recent years, the term ‘dark diversity’ is raising interest among researchers, which actually sheds light on invisible but integral part of diversity in any place. What does invisible mean here? How the term ‘dark diversity’ is associated with that? Let’s get some idea. Suppose, a particular habitat is under biodiversity investigation (eg. forest, wetland, grassland or mountain) and a careful inventory of the study area produces a check list of species. However, apart from these visible entities, there is a probability of having other members in the system which are not available at the time of study due to many reasons. The existence of these apparently invisible members can be ascertained by studying the species co-occurrence pattern in other area, species ecological requirements, and historical data. Therefore, both visible and invisible spectra of species constitute the ‘complete species pool’ of that particular habitat. The name ‘Dark Diversity’ is associated with cosmological concept of Dark matter, which is invisible but an integral part of planetary system and without which the system cannot be conceptualised. Dark diversity is important for practical purpose too, the concept is particularly useful for change detection in biodiversity and restoration planning for certain habitat. So, dark is meaningful, at least for biodiversity.
Source: Partel et al. (2011) Dark diversity: shedding light on absent species. Trends in ecology and evolution, 26(3):124-28.
Figure: Rajasri Ray
Collector: Rajasri Ray
Yesteryears’ wild confectionary
Most of the present generations’ after-school eatery is generally fast-food. Ever wondered what the
yesteryears’ children ate?? Lots and lots of wild fruits, rarely washed but with mandatory addition of salt-chilli powder! The most common fruits around Bengaluru were Bikke-hannu (Gardenia gummifera L. F. )(appears like a very young coconut where only the pulp could be scraped and consumed), Bellada-hannu (Acacia leucophloea (Roxb.) Willd.) (a berry, supposedly tasted ‘as sweet as honey’), Elache-hannu (Ziziphus mauritiana) (small reddish brown berry that was sour-sweet to taste), Karibev-hannu (Murraya koenigii) (fruit of the Curry tree, dark purple/black coloured berry, sweet taste), Eechala-hannu (Phoenix pusilla Gaertn.) (orangish-red elongated berries), Kaare-hannu (Canthium coromandelicum (Burm. f.) Alston) (black berries that grew on wild bushes, sour-sweet taste), Majjige-hannu (whitish berries that tasted sour-sweet), Hippnerale/Kambli-hannu (Morus nigra)(fruit of the Mulberry plant), Gerr-hannu (Anacardium occidentale L.)(fleshy part of cashew, could be sour or sweet) and, Paneer-hannu (Syzygium jambos) (yellow fruit, enclosing a large seed; sweet to taste), to name a few. In addition to these were Nerale (Syzygium cumini), Gooseberries (Phyllanthus embelica), Guavas (Psidium guajava), Raw mangoes (Mangifera indica) Jackfruit (Artocarpus hirsutus and Artocarpus gomezianus) and Figs. There were confections available too, such as the Kamar-kattu, (a mixture of coconut and palm jaggery rolled into a small sphere and would take a long time, often a whole day to melt!) and chikki (a mixture of peanuts and jaggery, either in the form of a sphere or slabs). These foods were not only nutritional, but also ensured conservation of local biodiversity, adhering to the simple philosophy of ‘eat to conserve’. These fruits were collected from the wild vegetation that grew around the village/town. This not only created an opportunity for the unemployed without an investment but also came at a low energy cost. In the present day, unfortunately, urban sprawl has taken away those spaces. It is a pity that candies and toffees today come with an extra burden of a weighted carbon footprint.
Photo: Madhupreeta Muralidhar
Source: Madhupreeta Muralidhar