Morning digest | Amid COVID-19 surge, lakhs take holy dip in the Ganga; Mamata barred from campaigning for 24 hours, and more
The Hindu
A select list of stories to read before you start your day.
As of 11.55 p.m. on Monday, India reported 1,60,695 COVID-19 cases. As many as 864 deaths were also recorded on the day. The figures do not include cases and deaths from Ladakh U.T. and Manipur.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.