|
|
|
|
April 1999 Whilst overseeing the house repairs, I noticed an amazing blue and orange bird. I identified it as the blue-headed rock thrush. Saw a shyama, and confused it with a tree-pie. The
babblers are of various types – jungle, rufous, common, and Ceylon. Plenty of koels live around here. The females are far more aggressive than the males, and sit on the trees along the cliff. They are not shy and are larger. The males flit across the garden occasionally. I finally identified the darkish woodpecker that had
been eluding me. It used to fly frequently across the garden in the classic
woodpecker dipping style. Then I found it was nesting in the tree in front. It
was a rufous woodpecker – a very distinct rufous colour all over. It lays its
eggs in the nests of the tree ants, and the fledglings feed on the ants! This month
we had a monitor lizard in the garden and he kept walking along the drain on the verandah
roof. He is slow and hard skinned and ugly. I also saw a civet cat along the
fence. It took me a long time to identify it – then Dileep saw it as he was
going for his walk. We saw porcupines too – large ones. This month I saw a Tickell’s blue flycatcher. April
2001
The heat has set in and
often the sky is overcast so the
weather is muggy. The koels have
obviously laid their eggs, so they are silent now.
They fly about and sit on the casuarina tree.
There has been a coppersmith in the garden, and it stayed for a good
while looking for a nesting place, I think.
There has also been a brown fly-catcher.
It is tiny and has large white-rimmed eyes.
The sunbirds built
their nest inside an abandoned nest of red tree ants.
They kept pecking away at the cellulose fluff and laid the eggs.
They cut the opening away from the verandah.
I saw the babies stick their heads out for their feed. They were fairly quiet.
They flew away within the week.
The peacocks are about.
I see them on my morning walk � there are ten of them now and their
tail feathers are growing. I saw a
crested eagle once.
Easter � the bulbuls
have begun building their cup-nest in the same flower pot on my verandah.
They began yesterday, and it is complete today.
They laid an egg and sat on it. The
next day the egg was gone � perhaps they got scared.
But where did the egg go?
It rained just before
Easter � exactly like last year. And the sea and sky have changed dramatically.
The horizon is clear, and sea is a deep colour.
The sky gets inky at sunset time.
It is warm again.
The rufous woodpecker and the golden backed woodpecker are back once
more. I
went to Carambolim. The marsh has
almost dried up. There are clusters
of egrets and lots of bronze-winged jacanas. The were a few purple herons, and
two brahminy kites actually walking on the mud-flats. I saw two crocs resting in the middle of the egrets! April 2002
The
cobra shed its skin � it was 7�4� long. 1st
week - A pair of ashy wren-warblers are here.
Dileep�s �give me
chocolate� bird finally arrived.
He had mentioned two days ago that he hadn�t heard it for a while.
I have to still figure out which one it is.
One of the chats, or maybe the fire-breasted sunbird.
The garden is full of sounds. And new small birds.
Two new kinds of babblers are here � the white-throated babbler, and
the streaked babbler. There are a couple of fantails that I still have to identify.
The tailor bird, the plain flowerpecker, the sunbirds (the crimson sunbird has
just come in) are regular. So are
the orioles, the tree-pies, the magpie robins, the red-whishered, red-vented and
black-headed bulbuls. The crow
pheasants come in once in a while. The
sparrow-hawk seems to have gone. A
shikra came in one day. The koels
fly around. So far the males are
more visible than the females. Saw
two new birds � the Malabar whistling thrush
and the White-headed orange rock thrush. This
has very distinctive black diagonal stripes on its cheeks.
They sat quite a while in the garden. Mid
April � the garden is a most interesting place. The golden backed woodpecker is here. And the Tickell�s blue fly-catcher is around too!
What a treat. Have found out that the �give me chocolate� birds are the
ioras!. On the 16th, the
cobra glided its way along the lawn just under my nose. End
April � the female koels are now in full form.
The males are squabbling over the berries in the Mast trees so I can see
them in detail. The Loten�s
sunbird is very visible. The
Carambolim marsh is almost dry and pretty sad. We
had a red-whiskered bulbul with a broken wing with us for 4 days.
It had lacerations, a broken wing and a twisted leg.
It ate berries and drank water and we kept it in a basket.
The vet said the bird was too small for the wing to be spliced.
We tried putting a sheer stocking on it to keep the wing immobile.
Didn�t work. It was a
really gentle bird. On
the last day of April, a really large kite descended upon the garden.
I could hear the call of the noisy koels quietly petering out.
The other birds left the garden! The
eagle sat for a while so I culd observe the single white stripe on its tail
bounded by a black one on either side. And
the yellow beak and legs. It had a
darkish crest, and a brown spotten chest. It
was a crested serpent eagle. April
2003 The
birds are busy building homes. There
are all the bulbuls and the yellow-cheeked tit as regulars.
The koels are pretty loud now and the crow pheasant is around in the
mornings. The female flycatcher and
the blue-headed rock thrush are around too.
There is a bird at the bottom of the garden and I think it is a
white-eye. A
brown shrike has taken to visiting every evening and spends a lot of time
sitting on the fence. I
saw three different birds at Mahabaleshwar.
One was a rusty-tailed flycatcher that was nesting in the storm-water
pipe. There were trees full of black-lored tits (almost like the yellow-cheeked
ones we have here), and many Oriental white-eyes. I saw those the last time too. The new bird was the
chestnut-shouldered petronia. Someone
has seen those in Goa too.
|