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Sunday, 13 March 2011

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It's good to be alive!

These days are glorious. The rains are no more, and everywhere is a freshness that inspires all living creatures. It is wonderful to be out in the morning when the air is just chilly enough to make you feel that it's good to be alive.

There is dew on the grass, on the leaves of bushes and trees, and thousands of brilliant droplets bedeck the giant cobwebs spanning the tracts through the scrub.

The prinias, flycatchers and bulbuls are up earlier than usual and singing lustily, in pleasant anticipation of a new nesting season, now that there is no threat of rains. The sunbirds are already carrying beak-full of gossamer to decorate their nests, being built. In the thick foliage of trees orioles are calling incessantly. May be, they are calling to their mates or to calm down broods of nestlings, back in nests.

Hops

The Brown-capped Babbler hops about in the undergrowth, all the while chanting its pri-tee-dear call, over and over again. Its greeting, does indeed, find answer in your heart as you walk past, observing things you would not have seen if you started your morning stroll after breakfast at 8 o'clock. Yes, these early hours are certainly the best and eventful to the average nature lover.

A hare springs out from behind a bush, sits on its haunches a-while before scampering off to another place of safety. A mongoose crosses your path, turns its beady eyes on you for a moment, and then vanishes back into the shades.

Crest

Like a ball of red-hot iron the sun comes up over the crest of the hill, changing the pink of the sky to golden tints. The mist that lingered in open spaces now begins to rise like smoke from myriad cigarettes. Soon, the moisture on the carpet of green grass dries up and the brilliance melt away.

You hear a rustle of wings and looking up see a flight or two of cormorants overhead, flying in formation towards the reservoir, beyond. The line of birds swings in the air to clear a belt of tees and sweeps down again to disappear behind a screen of branches.

Once crossing the bridge over the overflow channel, you quicken your steps and climb up the bank covered with tall grass, listening to bird-calls as you go.

A solitary Indian Darter sits on a snag in the margin dripping water from its wings after an early morning swim for fish in the channel. You come abreast of a noisy colony of Striated Weaverbird in a patch of bulrush, where hens are busy at work in several nests, being built. In the tops of leafless bushed close by you observe Green Bee-Eaters, a single Chestnut-headed Bee-Eater and a few Spotted Munias. A couple of Red-vented Bulbuls and a White-browed Bulbul are also there preening themselves on a leafy branch below.

You spot a Brahminy Kite circling in the air above the water, while you attempt to climb the bund at a run and reach the top panting for breath. The scenery from the bund is breathtaking, and it gives you an uninterrupted view of the water-spread and the surrounding jungle. Your binoculars pick out a line of Whiskered Terns in the hazy distance, skimming the water like a silver ribbon trailing in the breeze.

Descend

On impulse you descend the incline to the water's edge, walk along the margin for two hundred metres and stop at an expanse of scrub jutting into the reservation, alive with the songs of birds.

Two Gold-fronted Chloropses involved in a duet of singing from trees far-apart, are shattering the stillness of the morning, while a White-bellied Drongo perches in a branch in between in silence, while intently watching the ground below for insect prey. A smallish bird flying up the path some distance ahead settles on a twig giving you split-second gaze to identify it as a Brown Flycatcher, a Himalayan migrant.

You hear a quaint warbling, which the bird books describe as the jingling of a bunch of keys, and presently looking up see an Orange-breasted Blue Flycatcher, It dives at a passing fly, thereby flushing a Blythe's Reed-Warbler out of its hideout. Not long after, a Brown Shrike in the vicinity announces its presence by a chattering note.

You are now in heavy jungle, where all is still buried in gloom under the tall trees, as old as time. A long-tailed Jungle Robin or Shama gives out a trill and follows it up with a whole set of bars of its loud singing. This is promptly answered by another of the species, deep inside the jungle, which in turn animates a Stock-billed Kingfisher vocalize with its loud, chattering laugh ke-ke-ke-ke-ke. Meanwhile, from far away, the whi-whip, whi whip call of a Bay-banded Cuckoo, an occasional straggler in the area, comes to your ears, floating in the breeze.

A troupe of Torque Monkeys in a tree are peacefully feeding on the tender leaves, and you notice that some of them are expectant mothers, while a few already cuddling new-born babies. How bountiful the world can be and how benevolent is Nature to provide feasts as these to the tired eyes and disturbed mentality!, you begin to imagine.

Position

Presently, you take up a position under a spreading Ehela tree, ablaze with clusters of golden-yellow flowers, and revel in the solitude and the comfort of the carpet of grass under you. A pair of Red-wattled Lapwings which showed much excitement the moment you arrived, now settles down to a quiet family life, realizing that you mean no harm.

In a mixed feeding flock rowing through the forest canopy above you observe Little Minivets, pairs of Orange Minivets and Small White-Eyes, a Wood Shrike, a solitary Grey Tit, and Common Ioras with Small Flowerpeckers in attendance.

You suddenly realise that the sun is high up in the heavens and think of your belated breakfast, and make for the road by a shortcut across a grazing ground,

 

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