I made friends with Kiran Srivastava at INW (I’ve still not met him face to face..the one time he visited Bangalore, I was out in Nandi Hills or somewhere.) He has a great sense of humour, liked this piece very much!

Cheers, Deepa.

The lighter side of some wildlife equipment you can buy today:

Bat detectors: There are Heterodyne Detectors and Frequency Division Detectors and Time Expansion Detectors and Full Spectrum Bat Detectors. There is also a Batbox, and if this doesn’t make you crazy you could always go in for a Batscan.

Flir Scout PS24 Thermal Imaging System: used for scanning heat signatures. Not to be used for any other purpose other than detecting bats.

Endoscope camera: used for footage in difficult situations such as nesting burrows and crevices. Certainly not to be confused with a medical device of the same name. Ditto SeeSnake Inspection Camera. Not to mention that the long cable at night itself looks like a snake…

Real Estate Deals

Hogitat Hedgehog Home, Hibernation Box, Dormouse Box, Ceramic Frog & Toad House. These are presumably, 1BHK, ground floor flats. And if you cannot afford this then the broker can show you a Bug Box, Bee Hut or a Bee and Bug Biome. That’s the current low down on housing in this issue!

Night Vision Goggles & Scopes: Hands free with a padded head mount and a built-in infrared illuminator. Something akin what US marines wear in Iraq on night patrol. Scope of getting arrested by over-zealous law-n-order authorities is rather high…

Sound Recording equipment: Everyone’s heard about Short Gun and Long Gun Microphones but the one expense that will set you back a couple of hundred dollars is a ‘dead cat’ windshield. Here I would instantly apologise to Garfield.

Entomology Kit would include a Beating Tray, a Barrel Pooter,a couple of Pot Pooters, maybe even a Malaise Trap, Berlese Funnel. Note: pooters are not for poo-poo collection.

Fisheries department

Buy an Aquascope for viewing the underwater world. It looks like a narrow-bottom bucket held upside down. A funny picture you’ll make peering underwater in the midst of stream! Buy yourself some Mudders (easier walking in sticky mud) and carry your Invertebrate Colonisation Sampler to impress the PYT who tagged along thinking it’s a Discovery Channel adventure

I won’t even enter the realm of wildlife photographers but I can tell you that it’s all hush, hush work with Stealth Gear Chair Hide, Leaf-cut Scrim Net and needless to mention, camouflage clothing that would fool leaves off a tree.

Words to use in the field:

‘Drats, I forgot to bring my THERMOHYGROMETER’ or ‘has anyone seen my PORTABLE LUX METER?’

[with sincere apologies to equipment manufacturers whose name may have inadvertently crept into the text]