Hahaha yeah they just don't stop!

To be honest, I didn't get bird watching. Thought it was too slow. Not exciting. It is indeed slow, but once you slow down and learn to listen and see, there is so much happening!

Saw the black headed jay and its beautiful blue tail. Tried to distinguish between kites and eagles. Got tired of listening to the red whattled lapwing. Saw drongos and parakeets. All in all, had a lot of fun and have discovered a new hobby, maybe.

The app inded made the last week I spent in the Kangra valley a very fun and joyous experience. I can now tell the Great barbet from the blue throated barbet. Learnt and saw that the Himalayan bulbul is indeed quite friendly and will just come and sit on a pole next to you.

We kept seeing this beautiful black bird with red streaks on its face and crest on its head. Didn't know what it was and downloaded the app in our attempts to identify this bird. Turns out it was the red whiskered Bulbul.

I downloaded it a couple of months back, soon after we moved into a new place where we'd hear a lot of chirps that we weren't familiar with. To be fair, the only sounds I was really familiar with were those of crows, pigeons, sparrows and parrots.

sunnyclimatestormyclimate.substack.com

I am sharing this today in spirit of the Earth day theme ‘Our power our planet’. I started writing because that felt like something I could do. Talking to people about climate change is a powerful climate action. You can start with this. Or you can choose to do something else. The choice is yours.

I didn't think it would go anywhere. I wasn't even sure how long I'd keep writing.
2 years later, I still write the newsletter. It's seen almost 100 posts and 1200 subscribers. I've gotten identified as 'the sunny stormy girl'. It's sparked many conversations.

A lot of people feel anxious when they see the state of the planet and there are broadly two ways to cope - to disengage completely OR to find their sense of agency and do what they think is in their control. I chose the latter and my coping mechanism was to write a newsletter.

We talk about this in our latest video: The price we are paying for our car obsession: youtu.be/pL0iuPncF7g?...

We can't end our obsession with cars unless we stop putting cars at the center of how our cities are designed. It will need more investment in buses, metros and trains. It will mean lesser investment in flyovers and coastal roads. (4/5)

Mumbai gets even better. The number of BEST buses has actually reduced from ~4000 to ~2900 over the last decade.

And there's a similar story playing out in most cities. (3/5)

But often it's not a choice. It's the only way to commute when public transport infra is so grossly inadequate.

How inadequate? Bangalore had 6400 buses for 9 mn people in 2012. It still has 6400 buses, now for almost 1.5X the population!
That's < 0.5 buses per 1000 ppl (2/5)