Balcony birds

This page is a direct result of the pandemic lock down, I hope you enjoy it while looking at all these pretty birds.

I have always enjoyed travelling to take pictures, it always makes for a nice narrative. You choose the location due to some motivation, it could be that you wanted to go see the Neelakurinji blooming in Munnar , something that only happens once in 12 years, it could be that you want to go see the majestic mountains.

(Due to unfortunate circumstances I never actually went to see the Neelakurinji blooming)

Mount Everest and a few surrounding peaks

Maybe, it's a much simpler endeavor, you just want to get away and stretch your legs, clear your mind, cleanse your soul, empty your bowels or whatever.

Maybe it's something more glamorous like going Goa to just spend money and get super drunk.

Whatever the motivation may be, it forms the beginning of a story.

As the story goes along, the motivation turns into plans and you begin an adventure, on the way to your destination, you encounter hardships like the airport security, you face disappointment when the hotel room turns out to be crappy. Then there is a montage of all the fun you have and all the things that happen as you ride the high of being a careless traveler. You capture everything around you, as it is, in that momentous and glorious instant, recording all the features of this brief but new life that you are hurtling through. Then your adventure nears its end, a tired and dreary end, as everyone realizes that the itinerary runs dry and now you have to go through airport security all over again.

In this manner, every trip you take is a nice little story that exists in a period of time and captured in your memories and photographs. Everyone wants to collect more of these by travelling all over the world and sampling everything. I want to do this too, but this lock down has forced me to see that this is an incomplete way of exploration. Don't get me wrong, the spectacle of visiting a brand new place is exhilarating but this thrill need not be limited to the spatial dimensions, exploring temporally can be just as rewarding although admittedly less exhilarating.

It is lock down 2020, the world is a weird place, but sitting in the confines of my house and interacting only with my family it is to forget about it and want your normal life back. I wanted to get back to taking pictures. Soon, I found my subjects, it turned out that somehow, in the middle of an industrial part of Delhi the area around my house had a surprising amount of avian diversity. So, I took to the balcony and started clicking. This was at the end of March, some trees in front of my house were still bald, so any bird that found perch in them was placed perfectly for a picture. There were the most common birds, pigeons ( I have spared you from looking at pigeons ), Black Kites, Tailor Birds, Purple Sunbird and the common Mynah.

Common Mynah

Purple Sunbird

Tailor Bird

The Bulbuls ( named, Gille and Sterling Rochester, collectively called the Rochesters because I can’t really differentiate between the male and the female) come around every 2-3 days.

Bulbul ( The Rochesters )

There are Parakeets that show up every once in a while, the Koels are always cooing but they hide very well in the foliage.

Ring necked Parakeet

Koel

I also know that the Coppersmith Barbet and the Brown Headed Barbet live nearby but I only see them once every one or two weeks.

Brown Headed Barbet

Coppersmith Barbet

There are so many others which are infrequent visitors.

Rufous Treepie

White Throated Kingfisher

Peahen

Flameback Woodpecker

Murmuration

Some prefer the evenings while the murmuration of the Rosy Starlings can only be seen very early in the morning. These Starlings come to India all the way from Central Asia to spend the winters, so you won’t be able to see them during summer.

Rosy Starlings

Oriental White Eye

Initially there were sparrows, tiny energetic little things, flitting from branch to branch. Sadly as the days have become hotter, the sparrows have disappeared. Oriental white eyes and the loud singing of the Magpie have met the same fate.

On the other hand, a group of Jungle Babblers has appeared and are substituting for the loud singing of the Magpie, these are fun little birds, they fight with the squirrels for food and the squirrels fight back. It might be a heated rivalry for them but it looks very cute to me.

Jungle Babbler

House Sparrow

Magpie Robin

During this time, the tree in front of my house has become dense and lush, the birds that perch in it are now protected from the gaze of my camera and the fury of the midsummer Delhi Sun. Flowers have bloomed, the rain has sprouted mushrooms on the old tree stump. Sunsets have changed time and color, for a little while the Sun almost disappeared in the middle of the day.

In these past few weeks I have explored the surroundings of my house with a different kind of interest and I have seen so many things that I did not notice in the 13 years that I spent here as a kid. I was tied to one vantage point, but I explored through the passage of time. We feel that we have seen so much when we travel to a new place, but as evidenced by these 4 months that I spent at my own home, we barely scratch the surface. Different time scales would probably give different perspectives, over a few months I have identified some behaviours and catalogued all that I encountered, a few years might show how these behaviours are changing as conditions change and things are added or subtracted from this constantly changing urban environment. Unfortunately time is a commodity that no one has a lot of, but it would be so wonderful to not just go to a place and come back, but to go there and live there for a while, a few months maybe a few years to explore the place through time.

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