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July 1999

            Lots of barbets flit around – large green, small green, and lineated.   They are in singles – and not too many of them.  My favourite birds are the kingfisher – white-breasted, and the lapwings.  One can see the Indian roller all over the countryside while driving, and sometimes in the colony.  There are many bee-eaters, but not in our garden so far – mostly along the colony road.  The peacocks are gone now – I have seen four of them – two peahens.

            There has been a coucal and a lesser coucal in the garden, and also a blue rock-pigeon.  Saw the cuckoo!   This month I also identified the common iora and the Marshall’s iora.  It is a treat to see so many coloured birds.  They spend a lot of time in the trees along the waterfront.

            This month  a lot of munias appeared in the garden.  They came especially when the grass was long and the grass flowers had begun to grow.  The white-backed munias came first, but the black-headed munias came in groups of forty to fifty.  They sat along the fence, or foraged off the lawn.

            The streaked weaver bird also came – both the male and the female.   But that was just once.  

July 2000

              At Carambolim, I saw the most beautiful birds – purple moorhens.   Apparently they have been coming since the last year just at this time.  They nest in the long grass in the marshy field.  There are plenty of them.  Along with them were the bronze winged jacanas.  The next time I saw the pheasant tailed jacanas as well.

            Saw a pair of white-headed babblers – just once – on the casuarina tree.  They were about the garden the whole day, but I did not see them again.

            The peacocks came to the garden – all four of them.  They created a din, and then they climbed onto the tree in front of the verandah, and roosted there for a while.  They are clumsy.  They still had their plumage and I was amazed at how noisy they could be.  After a while they flew down the cliff face into the forest.  The mongoose got into the garden one Sunday morning and had a good walk around.  It is as though they know that there are no gardeners around on Sundays.

July 2001

            The rains have begun in earnest now.  The peacocks are out in full plumage.  The occasional golden woodpecker comes to the garden.  A very wet shikra comes onto the juniper and dries itself after the showers.

            The sea is all sorts of colours of green and grey.  The rain clouds burst into the sea and then travel inland.  In the morning there are rainbows.  They are different because they appear to end into the sea!

            Papa is here and it is raining almost all the time.  I see a few sunbirds and the occasional sparrow-hawk drying its feathers.  I have alsos been very busy with my books so the outdoors doesn�t get to see too much of me.

July 2002

The rains continue.  Lots of magpie robins on the lawn and some of them come onto the verandah sill while I am sitting there!  The purple sunbird male is beautiful and spends time on the bottlebrush tree,  His colours are amazxing.  The Loten�s sunbird also comes every evening.

2^nd week August has been a good bird week.  We have had in the garden, the rufous woodpecker, the golden backed woodpecker, the blue flycatcher once again, a new bird � the yellow bulbul! � the munias, the malokha.  The brain fever bird is back � the plaintive cuckoo.  It called the first time on the 10^th of July!  It has a funny call before its standard �brain fever� call.

I saw a cormorant flying past.  Ther are pairs of birds chasing each other.  Many pairs of tree-pies and an interesting lapwing pair.  The female is distinctily smaller than the male.  They wander around and stand with their backs to each other.

July 2003

It has been pouring this year.  Not many birds around.  The coucal got very wet, and spent half a day on the casuarina tree drying out its feathers.  The monitor lizard has had babies and they are pretty big.  I haven�t been able to photograph them as they are in the garden next door.

There are a lot of white backed munias in the garden every morning.  They are foraging for grass seeds.  There is also a Tickell�s blue flycatcher in the garden now.  It has a lovely russet underside.  Other than the munias and the flycatcher, the kingfisher has started coming to the garden again and the babblers are here too.  The koels do not call much, but they fly across the garden.  I have seen the barbets just once, and just the occasional bulbul.