birds and rains… a brief interlude between the scorch of summer and erstwhile autumn, a time of resplendence interspersed with territorial fights… every bit of flora and fauna out to maximize, the avifauna more visibly so than the others… ‘tis a Darwinian opera playing vigorously, this sudden spurt of life emanating despite the reluctance its urban surrounds…
thus obliged, one heads out for a tryst with humid afternoons, amused by the buffaloes wallowing in water pools guffawing at the no trespassing boards… the scene is representative of an amalgamation that is unavoidable in spite of myriad socio-economic divides… an unkempt patch of land lying next to a well-manicured golf course… all efforts to separate the two – wire meshes, thorny bushes, a rather lame attempt at a trench – no barrier whatsoever for the biodiversity, making hay of both the sludge and the fairway…
there isn’t much canopy save for Prosopis juliflora, that insuppressible invasive, so there’s more stalking the birds than patiently waiting for them… tiptoeing, crouching and crawling, mostly to no avail save for a shot or two to show for a sweaty excursion on a sultry afternoon…
the bee-eater feels rather chagrined at the unpalatable critter right in front of it, as if taunting the bird… reminds one of Coleridge… water, water everywhere… the prinia does what a prinia does, hopping about in its quintessential fidgety skulking manner… a wedge of ibises also venture this area frequently, one of the lot staring intently at a dung pile before taking the plunge…
the ground foragers are the toughest of the lot, seldom perching and never still… the pipit with its distinct gait frolicking across the open field, pausing to stand upright and give me an annoyed glance time and again… mister and missus sparrow-lark are grumpy as usual, not amused by my shenanigans, busy digging up the ground and surprising unsuspecting insects… the crested lark seems the least annoyed of the lot, despite scrounging the dirt, the least fertile grounds perhaps, for a meal…
there are others too, and too many, the darned lapwings giving one away at every second step, although in all fairness he does intend to do it… the drongoes and kingfishers prefer the easy pickings of the golf course… exhausted by the heat, one moves to smaller lenses, and smaller beings, another tapestry of nature weaved by the vicissitude of seasons…
musings on birds, Noida, Uttar Pradesh…
