It really must be among the most relaxing ways to bird: swinging gently back and forth in a rocking chair, binoculars (and beer) by your side, overlooking a turquoise swimming pool and wondering if the white-throated kingfisher you saw, taking a dip here in Goa five years ago, still does so, or has passed on the custom to any of its children. To your huge delight, it does turn up, perching first on the water tank on the terrace and then skimming down and sluicing itself in the water. So, it’s either the same bird or has passed on the tradition. There are other birds of course, requiring your attention. Sleek, polished black drongoes skate blithely across the sky in pairs, calling “chrr-chrr-chrr” (don’t be fooled, they are master mimics) as they flit across to perch at the top of the enormous mango tree at the far end of the compound. You also wonder if the black-rumped flamebacks (nee golden-backed woodpeckers) that used to frequent the tall coconut tree at the end of the garden still does so – as you’ve heard the ringing laugh of the bird from the surrounding foliage. Again, it and its partner oblige, clamping themselves on to the trunk and corkscrewing around it, a beady enquiring eye on you, just in case. The local crow Mafiosi do not approve and drive them away every time, taking panga for no good reason at all, but then that’s crows for you. The echoing, “coup-coup-coup” call of the hulking crow-pheasant (or coucal) puts you on alert and you just catch a glimpse of it humping its way into thick foliage at the far side of the pool. Its cousin, the sometimes harsh, sometimes mellifluous rufous tree-pie has also marked its presence. Even over a span of just a week, you notice that some birds at least have fairly fixed routines. Every morning a sole little cormorant would wing its way across southwards, perhaps, heading towards the fishing boats on Baga beach nearby, and then again, in the opposite direction during the evenings. There are sporadic crossings by little egrets too, but they don’t seem to be on a timetable. The resplendent purple-rumped sunbirds most certainly are. In the mornings, a couple would turn up to breakfast on the hibiscus and heliconia. The gentleman scintillates in iridescent crimson, emerald and purple, set off by a sunshine yellow breast, his wife alas is dowdy, but the pair was always together. They had found a way to shortchange the heliconia by poking at the base of the flowers to get the nectar they wanted instead of probing the bloom in the regular way, through the front door so to speak, so the plant could bless them by anointing their foreheads with pollen – to be taken to the next bloom, for pollination. They’d probe the blooms thoroughly (at least twice a day) before zooming off. Among the other tiny-tots there were, of course, the ubiquitous tailor-birds, a (suspected) greenish warbler and a pair of lovely little scaly-breasted munias, their deep chocolate-brown plumage velvety. After the first couple of days, I began worrying about the fate of the brahminy kites, as I hadn’t seen any as yet, though the black kites were wheeling around as usual, and even the shikra had given me a demo of how to circle high up in the heavens like a drone, before speeding off. But then at last a pair of brahminy kites turned up, classy as always in russet with white heads, necks and breasts and their slightly heavy manner of flying. And, then, you catch just the briefest glimpse of another heavy wing-beater, in black and white, and with a distinctive profile, which could only belong to the Malabar pied hornbill. Sadly, it vanishes into the foliage before you can home in on it, but the silhouette was unmistakable and its flight pattern different to that of the flutter-glide of the grey hornbill – which you spot quite regularly. The barbets here are extremely shy – they call incessantly but refuse to reveal themselves as they duck into the thick foliage of the trees. Of course, you have to get off your butt from time to time – and find yourself on a beach, you are in Goa after all. So, inspired by Sejal Mehta’s gem of a book, “Superpowers on the Shore” (Penguin Viking; 2022), I decided to give birds a break and focus instead on the little critters that scurried around on the shoreline of the beach. The sea had other ideas, because the tide was galloping in like a cavalry charge and there was not a tide-pool in sight. Grimly, head down, I focused on the sand and noticed what looked like thousands of tiny white pinkie-fingernail sized shells all over the place. As the waves came in and then withdrew, schools of tiny fish slipped sinuously through the shallows, looking exactly like children running away after making mischief. On our visit here, six years ago, the tide had gone out, and left behind crabs and starfish on the gleaming wet sand. Now, we walked towards the northern end of the beach, where six years ago, on a tree at the edge of the beach I had seen a magnificent white-bellied sea-eagle. I was just mentioning this to my sister and looked up to point at the tree, when there, right in front of us, near a couple of fishing boats on the sand, this enormous white-bellied sea-eagle does a demo of a diving pickup and take-off, soaring up into the blue with powerful wing-beats, a fish (probably from the fishing nets set out to dry, near the boats) in its talons, pursued by a crow and leaving me completely at sixes and sevens as whether to look up or down!
