Parks and swimming pools to stay shut till Sept. 19 in Tiruvannamalai
The Hindu
High rate of daily infections forces district administration to continue restrictions
The rising number of COVID-19 cases has forced the Tiruvannamalai district administration to extend the closure of parks, swimming pools and dams up to September 19. District Collector B. Murugesh on Monday announced the extension of the strict lockdown norms. Among major restrictions in force is that hotels, bakeries and tea shops can function only between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. on all days and parcels in these outlets can be served up to 10 p.m. every day. All shops, including roadside eateries, hawkers and petty traders, can operate between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. in the town. Only 50% occupancy should be maintained in hotels and tea shops with owners and staff of these outlets and establishments should be fully vaccinated. Imposition of fines for not wearing masks and for not maintaining social distancing in public places will be intensified. Only 50% occupancy allowed in government buses.![](/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.