S.Karthikeyan, Chief Naturalist, Jungle Lodges and Resorts Ltd, is a keen observer of all things in Nature, and he has been alerting many of us, each year, to the arrival of glow-worms in the park adjoining the beautiful, and we-don’t-know-how-long-it-will-last, parks adjoining Nanda Road (the correct name for this road is Rashtriya Vidyalaya Road, but it is more generally known as Nanda Road, or Rose Garden Road…there once was a real rose garden here!)
They usually make an appearance around Sivaratri time (mid-February), but this year, we received Karthik’s alert only last week, and some of us trooped off to take a look.
There were just four of the glow-worms, giving off their cool green phosphorescent bio-luminscence in the dark of the edges of the park, close to the fence. I took this picture with the help of the camera flash, and Karthik’s excellent macro lens:
The light-yellow bit on top is what glows in the dark.
More about glow-worms at the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glowworm
I wonder how long these tiny creatures will keep coming to light up amateur naturalists’ lives, when the juggernaut of the Metro comes chugging in, destroying all the trees, the parks, and the dependent creatures, large and small….
Such beautiful instances of what I call, "Life Under Foot"..where life-forms are under a foot, or even an inch in size, and are, literally, underfoot and often unnoticed by people less alert than experienced naturalists like Karthik!
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