No Blues This Morning Please

If the first day of a year is an indication of what the roll out would be, then it is birds for sure.

It was silent enough on new year's night at Random Rubble to hear a lizard drop (with a soft splat, if you need to know the details) and I woke up to the new year to the lovely musical notes of the puff throated babbler, described in the bird app as a 'melodic warble' which makes me want to rename it the warbler babbler and have the rest of civilized society after my blood ("Warbler babbler" ends in birder murder - ToI). 

I just love this sketch....(not mine though)

The puff throated babbler is a lovely bird too, and keeping it company with nervous energy is the lovelier fan-tailed flycatcher (now called the spot-breasted fantail and soon to be called something else by someone who was denied second prize in Moral Science). As I clamber outside to take a look, it hops on the branch first this way, then that, with frenetic urgency, never still for a second, which, of course, reminds me of a lot of some people I know……The fantail unfolds with a flourish often and then folds up in an instant.  In a moment of heightened joblessness, I once tried counting this to tabulate the per-minute frequency and realised that life could be better utilized in washing dishes. 

The bird-life gets into top gear when, to my astonishment, two blue-bearded bee eaters show up on the low branch of the tree by the building.  Even as I move in slow motion towards my camera, one of them perches on the tip of the roof and, half upside-down, inserts its long, curved beak into a tiny cavity.  What on earth is going on here? This is a bird that is a recluse-and-a-half and generally in the higher canopy, with a low opinion of Civil Society below.  As I get closer, inch by inch, to see more, both of them get wind of the human in the vicinity and are gone.  The mystery reveals itself: the buzz of a hundred stingless bees that hover around the cavity tells the tale of a morning attempt at breakfast, some unhappy (and some dead and digested) bees and a human who will write a blogpost on the outcome.  If you haven’t seen this utterly gorgeous bird, do see the lovely image in this excellent article on the bee eaters of India: https://www.natureinfocus.in/animals/the-bee-eaters-of-india.

And then, later in the morning, as I watch the regulars – a drongo, bulbuls, sunbirds, a white-eye, a tailor bird - a movement in the lime trees and the blue-faced malkoha surfaces.  Now, I will happily endorse a name change (and protest till I am blue, but not quite in Malkoha league).  It finds something green – a grasshopper, me thinks – and makes a quick meal, which answers the second question this morning: why would a malkoha hang out in a thorny inhospitable lime bush?  

A movement above gets my attention: it’s a grey hornbill, with that occasional wing-beat and talkative cackle flying past.  This one, and its mate, generally hangs around Random Rubble, perched high up on a  tree, often hidden in the canopy but cackling away to deliberately stress out budding photographers on the ground.  Yes, I have a bone to pick with the Grey (and the idiom could not have been more inappropriate). 

Later in the day, an Oriental Honey Buzzard flies overhead and by then I have seen the shikra and black-winged kite, so we are housefull on raptors.

But then there is always space in the sky……