Joy of Birding

Perhaps, like me, you started birding recently; perhaps you have to check your field guide to remind yourself how to tell a brahminy kite from a green bee eater. If you too are among the roughly 10 percent of males who are colour blind, you find it impossible to identify a bird on the basis of descriptions like “in a green bee-eater the entire plumage is bright green and tinged with blue especially on the chin and throat. The crown and upper back are tinged with golden rufous. The flight feathers are rufous washed with green and tipped with blackish. A fine black line runs in front of and behind the eye. The iris is crimson and the bill is black while the legs are dark grey.” If ,like me ,you find it nearly impossible to stay silent even for few seconds, then you probably are vaguely embarrassed going out birding with pros who can stay still and silent as thuralli rocks for hours together.

If so this column is dedicated to you. Often when I bird with Poorna Chandra, “birding” consists mostly of saying”where, where? Yello sisya kansthane ilvallo” as he patiently guide my line of sight to a small tiny bird. Sigh!!! “Just look up in the left tree in back, below the two dark green leaves [there are some thousand leaves to the left of the tree]. No, no, just follow the thin branch up to where it converges and the warbler is sitting there” [at last I spot it].just the same I’ve a hell of a good time birding-and so will you, even if we both never become experts.

First of all I bird for myself, not against the experts. My ambition is to see almost all Indian birds alive in the field. This self set goal is achievable because I travel a lot and trekking is my passion. But if I don’t reach them, I’ll have no regrets-the joy is in trying. It’s very similar to the old art of flirting; you never stop flirting after one good flirting spree or a bad one...

Just watching mynas outside of my classroom has increased my understanding of how nature works. One day I was wondering how funny was the little hair growth on a myna’s bill. After some time poorna Chandra told me that this little growth of hair helps in pollination was amazed by how well everything is designed in nature. But the point is that all action isn’t in the television [NGC], or along the western ghats.Birding at home can be an adventure too.

In this post, I concentrated on how to have fun watching birds-even if you ,too, have trouble remembering where barn owls are and how sharp is the bulbul’ s call . I assume all birds are telling something about the state of our planet. Many rare and distinctive species of birds have become extinct,

I suppose the loud and evocative call of the birds is “man, ma timz ova, nextz ur turn”

Meanwhile, the next time you can’t tell whether the bird you are watching is a oriental magpie robin or a white browed wag-tail (aren’t scientific names such as Motacilla maderaspatensis fun???) relax!!!

Imagine that it is 1988, before the species were “split” and both were called Indian robins .besides, if you‘re as bad a bird identifier as I am, it’s probably a robin anyway. Just remember that most birders are non experts, and enjoy watching little flycatcher hunt for insects.

Both kind of birds [the real ones and girls] come into your backyard and stay for some time and fly off.

This is philosophy of birding…happy birding!!!!!!!!

An elusive birder and an innocent flirt.

Shrikantha.hs