A sunny winter day

 

A sunny winter day and many an old bone wringing their hands in glee for being thawed by gently warm sunrays. There is some noisy, hardline rhetoric in the clump of trees. Sparrows, babblers, tailorbirds, pied starlings and the rufous treepie couple all raising very serious objections about someone. Dousing hours are shaken awake.

A cat is looking for breakfast, aptly following the trail of passion and pain in the natural scheme of mother existence. The visitor treepies have a dominating freewheeling chikr-chikr-chikr verbal pot-shots. All the local birds raise a hot rhetoric and defeat the transgressor. Cobwebs on its face, it comes back with a beaten expression. It then pauses near the latest occupant of the fragile dove nest. She has the patience to wait till the bird of peace is done with laying her eggs. As I have already said many times, the doves are extremely lazy. How do they even survive as a species on the crafty and tumultuous stage of life? It’s an incisively dug big question in my mind.

I have a self-styled bird-feed vessel. It’s a discarded clay pitcher’s mouth-ring. Put it on the wall and it turns a nice little basin to hold millets and grains for the birds. Little groups of sparrows are busy in it through the day. One sparrow loves picking little grains. But she loves scaring others even more. Let a fellow sparrow come near and she would jump and give an angry peck at its fur. When she is around, the rest of them wear a hassled look. Even a balding big male sparrow had to retreat under her chirpy attack. Then there was some noise and all of them scurried away including the quarrelsome one. Why fight with your own pals, especially when there are bigger dangers around?

One of the peacocks has a small plumage having shed its burden. It allows him surplus energy to see more of life beyond the routine obsession about impressing the peahens. It’s a free wayfarer now and takes off from one roof to the other in style. Its take off is preceded by a single, steel-straight, short and loud burst using all the vocal chords in its beautiful neck. As it flies to its destination, it goes sailing with shrieking notes of ayeoo ko-ko-ko-ko. It’s this sound that has scared away the sparrows.

Even with their unassuming dull brown color, the rockchats look at you very intelligently. The rockchat couple is really feeling at home in and around my house. They are a very comforting company for a bachelor struggling writer. Their presence is very unobtrusive. Their dull color won’t draw your attention. And despite their chatty name, they are usually very silent as they hop around the yard, garden and the verandah taking little picks of insects from the open platter of mother nature. Driven by curiosity, they give me company inside the rooms as well, as they sit on the ceiling fan and ponder over some strange things. Theirs is indeed a very friendly presence.