Bird watching from my house in Bangalore!

Bangalore is becoming its usual self again. It is July and the monsoon rains are as per schedule, thanks to the absence of El Nino phenomenon. This summer was unbearable with temperatures climbing to 39.2 degree Celsius in April and May also was unusually hot. 

In the 1940s and 50s Bangalore was known as Pensioner’s paradise. Then by the 1980s it became the IT (Information Technology) capitol of India. What with people coming from not just all over India but from abroad also! With the result flats, cars, international schools, population, supporting services around IT industry and so on and so forth multiplied and almost changed the face of Bangalore.

It was no longer the peaceful and quiet place with mist hanging around on almost nine months of the year, an air-conditioned city, with salubrious weather conditions all around the year. Ironically this weather was what attracted IT company and its paraphernalia to the place! It also killed Bangalore’s charm.

                                                                               

Having said that, I must also ruminate that Bangalore has not completely lost its charm! It may never revert back to being a pensioner’s paradise, but won’t become a burning oven either. It still boasts of a mild weather and especially this year with good rains, the famous drizzle of Bangalore has returned.

   

                                                                  Green wall on my terrace, Ahoka Polyalthia

It is very nice to get up each morning with a smile on your face and a song on your lips, listening to the early morning twitter of the birds around the house in our colony. This colony is mercifully tucked away from the main Hundred feet road and is an oasis within the traffic chaos of the area. The place is full of garden plants with flowers and fruits that it is also a favorite haunt of many different species of birds.

                        

Garden around my house

 There are many Bird-watching groups in Bangalore who assemble at Lal Bagh garden or places like that and go on trek to enjoy bird-watching. But I sit in my house and watch birds! At least 25 species of birds come and flop around my house and garden. When birds come to see you in your place where is the need to go in search of these in the wilderness?

My garden abounds with Crow-pheasant or Coucal, walking sometimes on the compound wall; Asian Koel, with its pink eyes and beautiful call announcing the monsoon, pecking at the papaya fruits in the garden; the pearly female koel is a beauty to behold. Not to mention the crows and the rock pigeons and the mynas.

 Koel feasting on papaya fruit

Shaggy Green Barbet on Ashoka Polyalthia tree

Green Barbets nest there and bring up their chicks! They flit from tree to tree with their loud calls in the season. The beautiful sing song call of red cheeked Bulbul early in the spring is not a thing to miss! They roost and teach their young to fly right under your nose!

Then there are black-naped Oriole, in pretty yellow and its kin golden Oriole in their golden yellow plumage adding  color to the garden. Spotted doves coo about. Nothing to beat the tiny sun birds, especially the maroon breasted sun bird, with metallic green and purple sheen twittering along with its mate. Then there is the purple-rumped Sun bird, with crimson and bluish purple above and green and purple and yellow below. 

Common myna and jungle myna make for a noisy neighborhood. Rose-ringed parakeet come to eat the long pods of the flowering tree in the front. Tailor birds are peculiar in that their long tail is upturned and they tweet from bush to bush in search of an insect or two. 

                                                                            Asian Paradise Flycatcher 

Nothing to beat my winter visitor, the Asian Paradise Flycatcher, who promptly returns every year to my tree by October middle and visits me twice or thrice each day through out its stay in my neighborhood. Come summer in its peak in mid April he flies away, to the cooler north, until for another season. Once I was able to see the young juvenile raised by him and his mate, so lean and swanky it was!

Asian Paradise Flycatcher on my balcony 

As if this is not enough very close to our place there is the Madivala lake where many water birds come to feast on the fish and the Cormorants and Night Herons use our colony to nest and go over to the lake to bring in the fresh fish to feed its young.  

    Cormorants in Madivala lake

White-throated King fishers and Paddy birds and the long necked Grey Herons which majestically strut their necks about are often spotted in the lake. Spot-billed Pelicans nest in the island in the middle of the lake and skillfully glide over the waters. 

Spot-billed Pelican in Madivala lake

One October I saw hundreds of them, floating gracefully in the waters of the lake, a sight truly to behold. Some times, in the early mornings they swim around the fishing coracles, to catch the unwanted fish and mollusks the men throw about. 

In the evening times, hundreds of white egrets fly around tree tops in our colony like a cloud burst, before they decide which tree to settle down. They do not select a tree to settle down and sleep so easily, but fly in crowds many times before they finally settle down and go to sleep. 

What a wonder it is this nature and its inhabitants including trees, birds and fish and even human beings! What a grand creation by God, who was able to appreciate such beauty that He created it all in His creative Spirit and for all of us to enjoy! Bible in many places says, God created the heavens and the earth and all that there is in. 

As I look around and enjoy the beauty of the nature, the trees and the birds and the lakes and the waters, my heart swells with gratitude and a song rises in my heart, 

           

              "Bless the Lord oh my soul, oh, oh my soul,

               worship His Holy name;

               sing like never before, oh my soul,

               worship His holy name, 

               worship His holy name,

               worship His holy name!"