Osman Nagar residents on tenterhooks
The Hindu
Rain spells trouble for residents near Shukur Sagar lake
A 5-foot high earthen wall stands between the waters of the Shukur Sagar lake and Fameena Bee’s house in Osman Nagar. On nights when it rains, Fameena and her family get up and see outside their independent house before retreating inside. “We bought the house in 2020 and within 60 days of our purchase, it got flooded. It’s the will of God. But our home has been wrecked and we don’t know what will happen this monsoon,” says the matriarch sitting outside her gaily painted house.![](/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.