(Wild)life in the City

I was quite blind to creatures around me as a child. Except for crows, sparrows and pigeons or dogs and cats (okay, puppies and kittens), nothing quite registered. There was the occasional howl when a tiny green worm crawled out when shelling peas or a cockroach decided to go flying like a helicopter, perhaps wanting a better view but terrifying the rest of us. The amount of screaming that happened then convinced me that cockroaches are deaf due to the years of screams they’ve had had to endure.

So, when I read Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals it was as if between one blink and the next, the world had turned all new. Besides being a hilarious adventure about the naturalist’s childhood, the book got me interested in all creatures great and small. The worms and insects that had me leaping mile-high, now held me fascinated. The way their tiny legs pumped up and down pebbles and their vibrant colours… I was hooked.

If I could not spend hours like a young Durrell observing these tiny creatures, I could be amused by the way an earthworm went on and on, till it hit a wall and decided to let its tail become the head. :P From the ground, my gaze travelled up. I started looking for a rustle in the branches and then looked closer. This is when I discovered a variety of creatures living, fluttering, hopping and chattering merrily high above my head. The scolding, chittering squirrels, the noisy parakeets and mynahs, the sweet bulbuls and the soaring black kites.

I was once delighted to trace the melodious calls I heard in the early morning to one of the most aggressive birds I have come across—the white-spotted fantail flycatchers. I often find pairs chasing and irritating crows, which are about four times their size!

On my walks (yes, the ones where I have my head in the clouds of green), a binocular is a usual companion. Thus, I have tracked down the whistling calls of a drongo and cuckoos cooing themselves hoarse. I have spotted the pretty green bee-eaters, magpie-robins and purple-rumped sunbirds, the cute coppersmith barbets, kingfishers, majestic coucals, entire parties of chestnut-tailed starlings and even the winter-visiting golden orioles. A visit to a nearby waterbody is always a sure bet on sighting cattle egrets, cormorants and if one is lucky, flamingoes. (In fact, a white-breasted waterhen came visiting my building compound during the total lockdown, perhaps wondering—where are all the humans?)

One unexpected sighting happened because the bird in concern literally tapped me on the head. I had just entered my building, around 7 or 8 in the evening, when I felt the tap. Irritated, because I thought I had been shat on by a crow or pigeon with loose motions, I looked up and stopped stunned. It was an owl, all white, gliding over my head, once, twice, then a third time, till it decided to settle over a window to watch me. I was only too willing to be watched and watch back in return. But the owl must not have found me interesting enough for it soon glided away, and I could only let out a sigh of pure wonder.

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Tip: When I sight an unfamiliar bird, I usually do a search on the net based on common birds found in the region to figure out which bird it could possibly be. 

If one is patient, one can go through the listings on ebird.org. It has various filters for sightings, regions and so on. Clicking on the name of a bird yields a wealth of details from photographs and calls to more specific information.