On the wilder side..............

Having a reserved forest close-by has it's own ups and downs. Upside is the fact that it's a good place to visit, and an especially favourite haunt of Srikanth. On the downside is that we have quite a few unwelcome visitors that are mostly nocturnal.  We have wild boars invading the farm quite often and they consistently manage to eat up most of our produce including ragi, groundnuts, maize, rice.  Though we are wired for electric fencing decided against energizing the same...as we felt uncomfortable about electric shock as a deterrent.  It's been quite a challenge to keep them off Vanashree and to be honest we have not made any headway in this regard. We would welcome some suggestions on how to discourage them from visiting our farm a little too often! Jungle cat (Kaadu bekku), Foxes are some of the other predators that manages to sneak in the night.

Elephants have come to the  neighbouring farm once but this is considered a rare event. We have canal running on 2 sides of the farm and hope that this'll keep them off our plot.

There are quite a few black naped hares around and once Shanmukha came across a small one which was tended to for couple months before it decided to be back in  the nature.  

Some of the feathered friends that we have come across in Vanashree are kites, grey hornbill, wagtail, spotted owlet, nightjar, drongo, munias, mynah, tree pie, bush chat, robins, sun birds, tailor birds, weaver birds, swallow, egrets, shrikes, larks, warblers, babblers, golden oriole, crows, bee-eaters, black winged kite etc. We now have a quite a few nests in the farm....But we have not had too many sparrows around. Detailed list of birds spotted at Vanashree is provided here.

A brahminy kite has discovered that we have poultry and regularly visits us as population control patrol! We also have rose-ringed parakeets visiting us often and they seem to know exactly when the tur dhal is ripe to be eaten and gorge themselves on it. It is treated as a major pest in the area around with people taking a lot of trouble to keep them out of their farms.  and is always more than welcome at our place.

We have planted quite a few trees that attract birds in the farm hoping that they would feel at home in Vanashree as much as we do. Most of the Ficus group of trees, have been planted just to attract birds.  

Detailed lists of butterflies are given here

Snakes and scorpions are also spotted quite often in Vanashree though thankfully Priti hasn't come across them yet.  It has been a challenge convincing  Sriram that snakes are not pets. Since his first instinct to to catch it and hold it in his hand! It's been a tough job trying to convince him that everything that he comes across in the farm is not his pet! 

On the domestic front........... 

The first additions to the farm were a kitten, a puppy and 5 chicks.....we managed to get them all together and Shanmukha & Jaya  managed to tend to them together till each of them could take care of themselves! The puppy named 'Rani' was adopted from CUPA and is an adorable dog. She's about 2 years old and already had a litter of 4 pups and finding good home for them was a daunting task. The cat named  'Billi' and she spends all her time either begging for food or sleeping. 

Then came the cows from Ramachandrapura Mutt. These are a native variety of cattle very aptly called 'Malenad Gidda' and we discovered that they make excellent pets. They are so responsive to humans and very gentle too and has been very easy for us to get adjusted to them.

Poultry has grown to 50+ in number  and have added couple of ducks too...