My bird journey...

It was a holiday that day, as I sat in the balcony of my second floor house in Bannergatta Road, Bangalore. The balcony overlooks a huge garden that the residents of the ground floor house have developed. It has a lush green, well maintained lawn, and flowering bushes and creepers of various shapes and sizes all around. These bushes have leaves and flowers of different colors and sizes.

The garden has a small wooden seat too for people to come and relax. One corner of the garden has a huge mango tree whose leaves come up to the window of our house.

All this means I get full top view of a beautiful garden and the activities in it. Sometimes there are children playing , sometimes some cats chasing its little ones, and sometimes the lady of the house is sitting there doing her tasks. On the bushes are cute little squirrels running from one branch to another, nibbling at the blossomed flowers, squabbling and chasing each other.

And then there are beautifully colored butterflies who would hop from one twig to another and by the time, I would get my camera to click them, would hide into the branches. Black, yellow, red, green - you name it - they are there in all the rainbow colours.

One day as I was watching the various activities on the bushes below, I got to see something magical. I got to see these -

Beautiful, tiny and very active the Green Warblers. I would love to see the yellow breast of these birds. I was( notice the “was” :- ) ) not a bird watcher or a bird lover for that matter. But then spotting birds of this size – in my very own garden - that was very fascinating! There after I would wait on my balcony to watch these birds. After endless and countless hours of waiting, I realized that these birds are visible most either early morning, or around eleven. Also I realized I don’t have to wait to spot these birds. These birds are very vocal – so if I keep my ears open – I would hear their chirps whenever they were around – and then I could rush to the balcony to spot them.

As I would wait on the warblers, I started noticing the 'Bulbuls'. These birds are generally spotted in pairs. Loved to see their orange cheeks and orange tail ends and was fascinated to see their spiked horn on their head.

Just today, I got to see these - Purple Rumped Sunbirds. Shiny blue green head, yellow breast and less than 3 inches. Wow !

And there are times when I get to see the tiny kingfishers. Beautiful small and shiny blue. Something like this -

On a lucky day, you will get see the regular parrots too.. :)

But the icing on the cake came a week back when I spotted a cuckoo perched happily on one of the top most branches of the mango tree - can you believe that ! It had rained out of season that morning - and in Bangalore, everytime it rains the cuckoos come out. No matter where you are in Bangalore, you will get to hear a cuckoo cooing during rains. Coming back to the cuckoo that I saw at such a close quarter - I noticed that the bird has deep red eyes.. Unbelievable ! Beautiful !

Friends - I know for sure, my quest for birds and their sounds has started .

Now whereever I go I look out for birds and try to find out more about it. And must tell you - Bangalore is a bliss for these birds. !

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note : All the pictures on this site are from various sites on the web. Some of these sites are

http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/23157/size/big

http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?Bird_ID=1829&Bird_Image_ID=42417&Bird_Family_ID&p=5

http://www.birdsisaw.com/Photo.aspx?q=5179

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Bangalore

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21815205@N00/154228243/in/set-72057594137182184/