soliloquies in the outdoors…
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 …
Woodpeckers underline the echoes of winter… their tap-taps breaking the silence of the otherwise brooding woods… as the chirps of other avifauna punctuate their own little surrounds, woodpeckers fill the whole forest with their drumming… rhythm and bass section, one muses, watching these birds bristling about the oaks and pines in a no-nonsense manner… for …
Musings on backyard birds in the monsoons…
Housekeepers is what comes to mind when one looks at the smaller birds prancing about the terra firma or waiting pensively at the waterside… while the raptors and mammals go about their mauling, impaling, tearing and digging like teenagers, leaving a seeming mess in their wake, the little ones tend to go about their business …
Musings on Scaly thrush (Zoothera dauma), a secretive ground foraging bird common in the Himalayan region
Musings on an Indian roller (Coracias benghalensis) with a broken beak, Tal Chappar, Rajasthan, India
Falcons are little assassins that operate rather discreetly as the larger birds of prey hog the (higher perches and the) limelight… eagles and their kin carry an air of regalia, hunting with a pomp that comes with a bulky, imposing gait… hawks prefer to lay an ambush, letting the prey do a bit of the …
Birds are one in the faunal realm that share the joie de vivre of running, meandering (out of breath) just for the sake of it (and some foraging, maybe), a seeming purposelessness that is whimsical and resolute at the same time… while other animals chase you, or recede into the thicket at the sound of …
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 …