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Journalism of Courage
To my mind, there are two kinds of birders. One, the zippy, frantic kind who rush pell-mell from one location to another rapidly ticking off species, rather like dizzy socialites flitting from one cocktail party to another, breathlessly saying ‘hello!’ and ‘catch you later!’ in the same breath to everyone they come across. And the other, who stay put in one place all day and watch the birds come and go in the normal course of the day. These are the ‘lazybirders’, the kind that strikes up personal relationships with the birds they meet every day and begin to worry when there are absentees. So, how does one become a lazybirder and what are the advantages of being one?
Well, firstly it is minimalistic: All you really need is a comfortable armchair on a veranda or balcony which is open to a large expanse of sky, some trees and bushes and if you’re lucky a swimming pool or even a bird bath because water attracts birds like nothing else. A pair of binoculars in your lap, a cup of tea or a beer at your elbow and perhaps a bird book by your side. You can even read while lazybirding, provided you look up from time to time and keep your ears pricked.
I do a lot of it in Goa, and think I’ve learned more about birds (common ones albeit) than I would have, had I been rushing around frantically, ticking off species. The best part is that very often, the birds come to you, instead of you having to tramp after (and disturbing) them. Reclining in a lounger on the veranda in Goa, a friend noticed a lovely alabaster and mushroom barn owl meditating in a window recess in the neighbouring block. To our delight, it meditated there like a yogi in a cave for two days before, like a proper yogi again, vanishing. The resident white-throated kingfisher would take a quick dip in the pool every morning, and my old magpie robin friend would be perched up there on the water tank — singing or just calling — depending on the season and its mood. The pair of laughing black-rumped flamebacks (née golden-backed woodpeckers), also old timers here, would clamp themselves on the lighthouse-like coconut palm at the end of the garden every day, corkscrewing up and down it and peering around the trunk at you. I’m just waiting for the day when they wave out at me, cackling, “Oh god, you back here again?!”
The birds will even rouse you out of bed. Before dawn, through the bedroom window you hear the soft calls of what I suspect are a pair of very secretive scops owls, in the copse behind the block, and then of course the ringing ‘kill-lill-lill’ of the white-throated kingfisher as it arrives for its pool dip. As you settle in the balcony, you’ll be treated to a display by black drongos, who toss themselves around like notes of music: you have to keep an eye and ear out for these guys; they are ustad scammers and often imitate the calls of birds like the shikra, though exactly why they do so I wonder. Perhaps it’s to shoo off any genuine shikra nearby in search of breakfast: drongos are called ‘kotwal’ in Hindi which means policeman.
Perhaps it’s good that they are around: a pair of scaly-breasted munias fly in and out of an adjacent balcony as if they have a nest in a potted plant there. And then, one morning, a shikra materialises on the balcony railing, and looks around haughtily, and you wonder if it has caught on and where the kotwal is!
Every afternoon, at around four or five, a posse of exuberant plum-headed parakeets alights on the top of the mango tree at the edge of the garden, whistling joyously. There are four or five ladies in the flock (they have grey heads), and one — presumably very, chuffed — gentleman (plum-coloured head). Within minutes they rocket off. And as the sky turns to peach, echelons of egrets weave past going back to their roosts.
The harsh ‘chrr’ of the paradise flycatcher puts you on a red alert, and after giving you the slip on a couple of occasions, you finally glimpse it: first the rufous female on the creeper just outside the kitchen window and then the snow-white male, whose flickering white tail ribbons gives it away as it disappears amid the foliage. They too enjoy the occasional pool dip.
Of course, you can’t loll in an armchair all day, so there are trips to the beach and even here, the birds can surprise you pleasantly. On one occasion, while scanning the sand for hermit crabs and the like, you just look up and see this magnificent pearl-grey and white, white-bellied sea eagle rise up in front of you, not 50 m away. It had dived down on nets spread out to pick up a fish and was climbing up into the sky again, its huge wings whooshing. You’ve seen this bird perched on treetops at the edge of this beach before and now never fail to check out if it’s around. On the rocks, there are sand plovers, dumpy and grave and the reef heron fastidiously picking its way over, as well as pond herons, eyeing you like commandos outside the PM’s house do.
And then, while waiting outside a clinic, in a gallery overlooking the Panjim riverfront, you notice a pair of coppersmiths busy with nest excavation in a tree not 10 m away. Which, is what I meant by saying that birds come to lazybirders!
