The welcome trills of the birds

by K.G.H. Munidasa

Though more rain is likely by way of the monsoon, for the time being there aren't any signs of further evening showers. So once again the skies are cloudless and blue, with cool breeze blowing most of the day. The birds which stopped all their activities, including singing, during the stormy spell are out again, trilling merrily to welcome the return to fine weather. Many birds have commenced their courtship formalities, while some are already looking for nesting sites.

A pair of Small White-Eyes has nested in a young Rambuttan tree, not far from our backyard. The nest is concealed among the cluster of matured leaves, about ten feet from the ground, cunningly anchored to leaf-stalks. The clutch of two eggs-16mm x 11.5 mm in size and pale blue-reposed in the cup-shaped nest, 1 ½ inches deep. The first egg hatched around noon and the other in the evening the same day.

Eggs

On the fourth day, the eggs were missing, but the nest remained intact. A scrutiny of the ground under the tree disclosed pieces of tell-tale egg shells strewn all over. I could point my finger only at the Common Coucal or Southern Crow-Pheasant, as a possible predator.

In the backyard of the house is an old lavatory pit, where house-sweepings and kitchen refuse are dumped everyday. The other day when I walked up to the pit to throw in some sweepings, I found a pair of Three-toed Kingfishers sitting on the end of a tree root jutting out from the side of the pit.

Turn by turn they dived on the insects on the opposite side or in the garbage, two feet below their perch. Soon a stray dog passed nearby disturbing their peaceful meal and both birds flew away, uttering a shrill piping note.

An Indian roller, often miscalled “Blue-Jay” passed high overhead towards the hills one morning, giving vent to its harsh k'yow k'yow call.

In the mid-month, the much louder calls of Brown-headed and the Yellow-fronted Barbets together in the same tree-tops, morning and evening, are a common feature in my home garden.

The smaller ones of the tribe Crimson-breasted Barbet and the Ceylon Small Barbet may at once be distinguished separately by the slow wonk..wonk..wonk of the first and pop op op op op op of the other.

The sisterhood of the Common Ceylon Babbler are the first to visit the bird bath under the Cycas palm (“Madu”) on the side of the front compound, for their customary dip around 9.45 am. They spend a long time at the bath, often a number of them wallowing in the water together. The Red-vented and the White-browed Bulbuls stay in their perchs in abeyance until the babblers leave and begin to preen their wet feathers on branches nearby or on the electricity service cable, running parallel to the Cycas palm.

Injury

A pair of Common Mynahs come up, one of them limping obviously due to some injury on one leg. The moment the mynahs jump on to the rim of the bathing tub (old lid of a household bathroom cistern) all the others leave.

The Tailor-bird is seen to be very vociferous of late and many males may be heard calling in unison from adjacent trees. Starting with a monotonous tiwer, tiwer, tiwer which soon speeds up to twick, twick, twick, followed by a louder twicke, twicke, twicke they go on non-stop. This year, I am yet to come across a nest of it, normally formed by stitching together a couple of leaves of a low bush.

The pair of Purple-rumped Sunbirds, whose nest with two eggs was destroyed in January by a Torque Monkey, are now looking for a fresh nesting site in the same budded Rambuttan tree in front of the verandah.

Umbrella

The pair of common Drongo is carrying nesting material to an umbrella tree where they nested last year and successfully raised to maturity two young, who are still with the parents.

For the first time a pair of Crimson-Backed Woodpeckers were feeding a brood of nestling in a cavity of a tree in the garden. The nest hole was on the underside of a dead branch 25-30 feet up. In the same tree Brown-headed Barbets were busy excavating a nest hole in a dead branch five inches in girth, further down. After several months a party of Velvet-fronted Blue Nuthatches visited the garden along with a solitary Grew Tit, pair of flycatcher-Shrikes and the Orange Minivets.

Brown-capped Babbler (perhaps the Wet Zone race) started its whistling prit-tee dear in the early morning from a thicket near the hill-slope. Soon afterwards, a Chloropsis, may be the Jerdon's race, started its far-reaching song from the top of a tall tree.

A male Ceylon Paradise Flycatcher sporting tail streamers about ten inches long, flew up and settled in an orange tree 10-12 from my office window, as I sat at the table at 10 am. I peeped through the partly opened window and found the bird on a tender branch uttering its usual chreech call, at the same time wagging the hind quarters from side to side. The previous morning I had observed two females in the same tree.

The Ceylon Banded Bay-Cuckoo started calling around three in the afternoon on the hill slope. It repeated its kee-kio, kee-kio, kee-kio note occasionally interrupted by a slower cruuu cruuu cruuu note.

While the Ceylon Lorikeet sped calling through the garden at all hours of day, Blossom-headed and the Rose-ringed Parakeets visited the Champac tree “Gini-Sapu” at the edge of the compound where Phopadour Green, Orange Breasted Green pigeons assembled morning and afternoon to feast on the ripened berries, and also larger Green Imperial Pigeons.Among the regular winter visitors, which usually leave for their breeding haunts about March or April, the Brown Flycatcher, Brown Shrike, Indian Pita, Green Tree Warbler and Blue-Tailed.

Bee-Eater, Common Swallow and the Wagtails (observed flying over at sunset to their roosting places) are still here.