soliloquies in the outdoors
Contrasting birds comes rather organically as one scours a landscape for their activity… and so was the case as one mused upon an Imperial eagle and a Grey francolin, diametrically opposite for the most part but then there are some similarities the more one thinks about it… while one bestrides the high skies and canopies, …
The sandpiper, like the rest of its wader brethren, is a busy disposition, tiptoeing pensively along the shore, looking for something beyond food it seems… reading passing scribes on the water or pondering over the lay of the land… there’s a melancholy in its demeanour, maybe those long migrations add up after a few years …
Kingfishers, despite their calculated gaze and stock-still demeanour broken only by flashes of short flights, seem cheerful… maybe ‘tis the kaleidoscopic plumage that bedazzles the eye or the disproportionately large beak, more often than not they tend to enamour the observer… while raptors spend hours riding thermals and weaving circle after circle in the sky …
Musings on Scaly thrush (Zoothera dauma), a secretive ground foraging bird common in the Himalayan region
Raptors, despite their preoccupation with death, are seldom disparaged… a captivation since prehistoric times, mutual respect between hunters, in awe of the acrobatics in the air, that lethal stare with a focus and intent beyond human ability… no other avifauna has been able to capture human imagination for so long… entrenched in petroglyphs and adorning …
As the sky grows overcast, ‘tis time for the shrill, raspy chatters of Baya weavers to fill up the tree tops, yet another one of those elaborate and enchanting courtship rituals of the avifaunal kingdom… the seemingly fickle constructs of grass it calls a nest swaying at the slightest of breeze yet sturdy enough to …
what does the mountain seek from a bird?… music for one, since most of the other fauna seems too preoccupied with wrapping its mortality into complex layers of camouflage… the avifauna is smug, teasing the wayfarer into rummaging through the thickets for a glimpse of the song… simply on the dint of its ability to …