Birds, the fidgety kind, anyone who likes to stalk them in lush, dense forests is well acquainted with the acoustic delights and visual disappointments… the chirps and rustles spark hope… the human crouches and crawls in a misconception of stealth, the avifauna revels in the foliage… both parties trying to avoid a startle, one looking for a clear glimpse and the other aloof to such pastimes…

For the novice who hasn’t yet attained the zen of being content with just the sights and sounds, the proof of the pudding lies in the photograph… hours are spent trudging back and forth in the endeavour, searching for the bird and then waiting patiently for a frame… in dark canopies a moment of stillness must suffice, for ‘tis nigh impossible to capture action… for all the innovation and technology, the camera can barely register a fraction of what the eye can absorb, one broods…

There are those that perch and pose with a poise, think birds of prey and a few others… the gripe is against the tiny workhorses that reject statis, and open spaces, most of the time… their pauses are perfunctory and the calls shrill, the dances are twitchy jerks and dispositions aggressive, flitting through the branches in a constant state of chagrin, or so it seems whenever they look at you… the species may change, the pains of the working class remain the same, one muses, trying hard to keep the camera steady, a naïve soldier misfiring a bazooka in all directions…

Why should these birds care anyhow… they fly free, subsisting without style but with a purpose, sans the distractions of philosophy, subsumed within the seasons… one may become wise, or woke, or both, once the exasperation of chasing these tiny shadows subsides… ‘tis a lesson in temperance, these saunters that steer clear from instant gratification but nudge one towards biophilic meditations…

Musings on birds, wandering the woods, Uttarakhand…