A rainbow on the wings

The tiny tailorbird is always in earnest, noisy and imperturbable. It keeps on letting out monitorial tweets about anything and everything. It sounds sharp and forbidding, a kind of sword-in-hand-fighter. The green guy with tautly drawn tail seems livid about the way things are managed in the world. On sultry monsoon noons its cheeup-cheeup-cheeup ruckus has alerted me many times about a reptilian encroachment in the yard. It is such a small bird but the wondrous hardihood of raillery and persuasive eloquence might force you to bow down to it and say, ‘Hailed be thy cause Your Greatness!’

Oriental magpie robin is a very happy looking black and white bird. It has an exciting cavalcade of notes and sounds. A look at it gives you a feeling that it’s a very cheerful bird. It’s quite magisterial in looks; the prominent black and white gives the impression of a lawyer’s attire. I have never heard it sad and sullen. During the monsoons its freely cantering verses of love are a treat to listen. Its positive spirit is wholeheartedly revealing, so much so that you feel good after listening to its songs.

The only other guy who can beat the magpie robin in lyrical positivity is the white-browed fantail flycatcher. The birdie chap resonates with fun with his mesmerizing dips and dives to catch fleas. He seems very free; beyond fear and its consequential rigidities. He flip-flops artistically and sings with voluminous range of notes. I have never felt him to be desperate; his is a relaxed foray, almost a play with the fleas even though they have to pay with their lives if they lose in the game. A fun-loving guy basically, he spreads his white-edged fantail while he modulates and varies his notes. The notes sound lovely. His best signature note is ee-ee-oo-oo-aa-aa, a distinct composition for love, which is basically a lively whistle of six notes. Well, sometimes he modifies it to make it of eight notes.

The peacocks look beautiful but their hoot is too candid and much acerbic. It pierces one’s ears a bit ruefully. It’s meticulously ebullient with high-pitched notes capable of dislodging the ball of wax in one’s ears. They are the national bird so giving them more share of fame I would say their peee-hooo siren call sounds boldly virtuous shout of a rigorist.

The sparrows have chirpy effervescence. It carries the pleasant hustle and bustle of the birdie world. Their chorus is pretty coherent. It can raise one’s spirit on a bleak dawn.

The crow has vivid but confounding notes for human ears—as if the guy is busy in sharpening his cleverness and use it against the humans. Many times his cawing almost scoffs at the listener.

The babblers hurl their twein-twein-twein domineeringly. They are always miffed at something and protest vociferously. If the koel is classical, they are plainly massical. They launch their te-te-te as if in pursuance of a long unsettled dispute.

The doves are mostly silence-wreathed but when they speak—except the laughing dove which seems to laugh even while she is crying—they carry distant or blurred notes of pain and suffering. They are for relaxing and complacency; don’t carry the zipping enthusiasm usually seen among the birds.

I don’t have the mesmerizing and bewitching whistling thrush around me. But the coucal, almost at the opposite end of the spectrum in tone and melody, sometimes comes from the farmside and gives a factory hooter kind of echoing call. It sounds an exuberant denial of the humans’ sole right to shout.

Oriental white eyes raise barely audible little trills of anklet bells—an elegant softly jingling rhetoric if you care to listen to the complaints of such a little bird.

The red-vented bulbul’s notes carry lots of emotive significance. Their name sounds lyrical and poetic but they are always mired in competing concerns with fellow birds of all species. When angry they become awfully confounding even to a human watching the show.

The wire-tail swallows let out finely crafted chip-chip sounds as they swiftly dart in airy spaciousness, picking up midges midair and even chipping a lice from your head if you dare to come near their mud nest.

There are genuine echoes of mother nature in their—the birds—calls. In a world cluttered with controversies, I listen to their calls. Their chattering is a treat during the peaceful, intimate pre-dawn air. Wherever or whoever you are, mentally bruised, homeless, dissident or outcast, listen to the call of birds. Even if your world is crumbling, listen to the birds. No words, no advice, no preaching—just the sound of mother nature. They are the threads to the silence of trees. The trees are the threads to stones. And the voiceless threads of mute stones are the passage to the womb of nothingness. But to begin with listen to the birds.