Silver Pheasant

The Silver Pheasant (Lophura nycthemera) is a species of pheasant found in forests, mainly in mountains, of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern and southern China, with introduced populations in Hawaii and various locations in the US mainland. It is also very closely related to the Kaliji Pheasant with which it can easily  hybridize. The male is black and white, while the female is mainly brown.There are fifteen subspecies of Silver Pheasant, distributed from east Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, China to the island of Hainan. Widespread and common in most of its ranges, the Silver Pheasant is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 

The Male Silver Pheasant is a striking bird. It is a beautiful large, up to 125cm, white pheasant with the bottom half being glossy black while the top half being white laced in black with long patterned tail.  Has got bare red facial skin and also has a long bushy black crest  adorning his crown which lies backwards across the head rather than vertical.  It needs at  least two years  to attain full male plumage.

The Female happens to be olive brown with black-tipped crest although this is not as big as the one on the male and is brown with black at the tip. The Hen has some black & white streaking on her underparts. The True Silvers are larger than the other subspecies and the tail is longer. The male weighs 3 - 4 lbs (approx. 1.3 - 1.8kg) and the hen around 2.5 lbs (1-1.2kg).

The Silver Pheasant is worthy of being promoted as a great bird for rearing and breading. A beginner will find it good and to a more experienced breeder is not certainly dull.
Silver pheasants enjoy a mixed diet similar to other birds. They like fruit and enjoy a variety of live food. They will tuck into crickets, spiders, locusts and waxworms as well as the usual mealworms.Silver Pheasants are polygynous in the wild and are sometimes kept with a few hens to one cock in captivity. Silver pheasants should be kept in an aviary at least 200 square feet. This will need to be larger for more than three birds.

It will breed from two years old and are also in full colour by this time. The hen will lay a clutch of 6 - 12 eggs but can continue laying up to as many as 30 - 40 eggs if they are removed from her nest which is a hollow scraped in the ground. 

Chicks are easy to raise. They feed well, only occasionally needing encouragement to start eating their crumb. They have also been quite amicable with other chicks and easily become tame. This is indeed a beautiful bird.

*** Diana Raj Kumari ***

Diana Raj Kumari Photography: Face of Innocence

Diana Raj Kumari Photography: Face of Innocence: Face of Innocence - The smiling face of a baby girl who is unaware about everything that goes around her. *** Diana Ra...

An elephant injuring a lady and her child

Media and crowd beginning to gather at the hospital gate.

Earlier today,  an elephant injured a lady by the name of Kalpana Thakuria and her 1yr old son Jyotishmall Thakuria. The child suffered minor injuries and first aid has been given while the lady is operated upon.

I was going around with my camera in the locality clicking photos of flowers and plants when I saw people and media persons gathering around the Hospital situated in the locality. Mom who was with me asked a small boy what was happening but as if too tensed, he ran away without answering. Then upon asking other persons around, we found out that an elepha-nt have injured someone. I then approached a young guy who turned out to be the brother of the injured person. He told me that her sister is hurt and her stitches were opened up but fine now. He too was too worried to give me a proper answer. 

Injured one year old boy Jyotishmall Thakuria

So, I went to the place where the incident happened. The people around there told me that the lady holding her child in her arms  was trying to feed the elephant along with some of her family members and something went wrong with the elephant. He carried her for a distance and then struck her with his tusks several times injuring her on her neck, face and both sides of her tummy. The stitches from her not too long cesarean operation opened up and she is critically injured. 

As the media and crowd were diverted towards the police and mahout's friend, I slipped inside the hospital and talked to the close family members. Saw the injured boy too who was resting his head on his grand-

Worried family members with the injured child.

mother's shoulder and sleeping after first aid was given to him. I talked to Hareshwari, Kalpana's sister-in-law who asked me to talk to her brother Jitumoni as he was with Kalpana and the child when the incident occurred.

Jitumoni, the brother-in-law who escaped unhurt.

Jitumoni told me that today, around 10.30am in the morning, he and his bhabi were offering money to the elephant. It is a daily routine for the family to offer either food or money  and worship the 2/3 elephants (owned by a person who stays close by) as they happen to pass along the road in front of their house everyday. According to him, it was a shock as the elephant pushed him away with his trunk as he offered him the money and bowed before him. The elephant than caught hold of the lady and her child with his trunk and hit her left and right pushing her forward as he moved on. The child fell at the center in between his four legs and luckily escaped being crushed. As for Kalpana, when the trunk swayed and hit her left and right, the long tusks kept piercing her face, neck and tummy injuring her critically. Her abdominal stitches from the Cesarean operation too opened up. Somehow she and the child were brought to the hospital which is a few meters away and taken care of by the doctors and the hospital staff there. Kalpana is still in a critical condition and is being operated upon while the child is being sent for a CT scan to a different hospital to check out any internal injuries. We all are praying for the safety and speedy recovery of the mother and child.

Police taking away a friend of the Mahout for questioning.

As for the elephant, he is said to being kept at his owners place while the police picked 

up the Mahout's friend for questioning. While I was inside the hospital with some of 

the family members, the media talked to him and rest of the family members and as I came out, I saw the guy being made to sit inside the police vehicle and then they drove away.  

It is a wonder for all the people as to why the elephant suddenly got wild...pushed the young guy away and then struck the lady. Its being thought that the elephant might be very hungry and got irritated that he is being offered money instead of food. According to some, the elephants might not be properly fed by the owner. Besides, the mahout is a new one and could not control the elephant. He just turned wild and is said to be still wild and angry. It is being tried in all possible ways to calm down the angered elephant. 

I have been planning to go for a ride on one of these elephants but relieved now that I did not go and sit on his back. Going to give up the idea of riding this particular elephant but I will definitely try going for a ride on one of the other elephants......provided the wild life protecting people does not take away the elephants from here. They are indeed magnificent creatures and I love having them around in the locality and its always a pleasure watching them go by with full elegance, grace and grandeur.

                         

*** Diana Raj Kumari ***

                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The Green thing.....

We all know that we need to  conserving the environment to save our planet Earth. I myself am into organic farming, organic farming awareness and its promotion in North East India. Everywhere all across the globe, the move is on...Younger generation are conscious and its great that everywhere we hear the the words 'Go Green' 'Be Green' 'Stay Green' and save your environment. They are doing a great job. But what about the older generation? What is their contribution in saving our planet when there was no Green thing back in their days? Or did they have it without being conscious and without the term Green? 

An ironic write up shared by a good friend of mine, Julian Niemiec who in turn was sharing it from a friend of his gave me the answer. I would like to share it with you all as it would unfold before you some surprising facts about environment conservation in the past and present. So here it is.........

Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." She was right about one thing -- our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day.

So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have.... Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please share this for another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smarty-pants young person.

....The Earth need to stay green but how green can we keep it, its for one and all, old and young to be aware of the facts and do our part in whatever way we can. - DRK

New year Count down!!!

2011 is coming to an end and 2012 is fast approaching. The countdown has begun ...Each second ticking away in full gaiety is leaving space for the Grand New Year coming in. Lets bid Adieu to the wonderful year going past having put us through many memorable moments and let it slip comfortably in our memory lane leaving us on the new path of a new year full of promises and opportunities to look forward to.....

Thank you 2011 for seeing us through thick and thin...

Welcome 2012!!... Bring us all the best things in Life...

Take us all to new heights and achievements....

Give us all, success, happiness and prosperity... 

Leave no room for tears and sadness.......

Make each being on Earth happy.........

*** Diana Raj Kumari ***

A clock to tell you the Time(IST).

Here is a clock for you to tell you the time...Indian Standard Time(IST). Indian Standard Time is the time observed throughout India and Sri Lanka, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time (DST) or other seasonal adjustments, although DST was used briefly during the Sino–Indian War of 1962 and the Indo–Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971. In military and aviation time, IST is designated E* ("Echo-Star"). Indian Standard Time is calculated on the basis of 82.5° E longitude, from a clock tower in Mirzapur (25.15°N 82.58°E) (near Allahabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh) which is nearly on the corresponding longitude reference line. In the tz database it is represented by Asia/Kolkata.

IST is taken as the standard time as it passes through almost the centre of India. To communicate the exact time to the people, the exact time is broadcast over the state–owned All India Radio and Doordarshan television network. Telephone companies have dedicated phone numbers connected to mirror timeservers that also relay the precise time. Another increasingly popular means of obtaining the time is through Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers.



*** It is said that Time and Tide waits for none..but it is a fact that after every 24 hours, a new days begins giving us the next 24 hours to start afresh with new hopes and desires. ***  - Diana Raj Kumari

                                                 

Madira & Menaka

Once in a while when I happen to be in Guwahati, I often go on a walk along the river beach. And  when I do so, I am being accompanied by  a pair of adorable Rescue dogs who also happen to come out for walks from their station. Madira and Menaka....both are very friendly and I have a lot of fun with them. They are from amongst the 15 trained dogs of the 1BN National Disaster Response Force stationed by the Brahmaputra River.

Menaka and Madira walking beside two officials of the 

National Disaster Response Force.

           Madira posing for a photograph......

  Menaka's turn to pose for a photograph.

A happy and friendly Menaka smiling away...:)

     

             Sitting down and relaxing while me, mom and the officials 

were talking about them...

          Menaka giving a far look as to what is happening in 

the distance...

Madira watches one direction while Menaka scans 

the other directions with alertness......

          Madira Sings for us while Menaka is not in the mood 

to sing but yes, she did sing a little later...

End of song.....time to sit still.

Obedient girls they are..lifting their paws on the order 

of their officials...

 One can see scars on Menaka's belly. It is surgery scars for

they took her to Jaipur and tried breeding but unluckily 

her babies dies inside her womb and had to be 

surgically removed.

 Two intelligent, adorable, friendly, females whose purpose 

in life is to save lives of we human beings...

         *** Diana Raj Kumari ***