I visited Palampur, my home town a few weeks before. We have a beautiful garden with variety of fruits and flowers... starting from Peaches, plum, litchi, apricot, mangoes, guava, pomegranate, papaya, strawberries... Roses, poppy, lily, Pansy, camellia and many more.... you name it and we have it all in our garden. And the garden is frequented by a great variety of birds and butterflies. This time I could actually see the birds in action as it is their breeding season. Various birds like robin and Barbet were busy making the nests for their young ones in our garden... Bulbuls singing and jumping around at times on litchi tree and at times on green grass... fruit trees either having fruits or bloom... sweet fragrance of flowers all around... chirping birds playing around... I could feel the romance in the air. It was no less than living in a paradise for a week.
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| Papa busy maintaining the garden |
My day would start with a sweet call of a small blue bird. I would take a deep breath and head towards the garden to exercise on soft green grass breathing fresh mountain breeze... a look around and mind, body and soul would refresh. By this time even papa would get free from his day to day gardening tasks. We would together read newspaper, discuss subjects worth a discussion and then have healthy breakfast.
Observing these birds through the day playing and singing and building their homes with such an effort strengthens my wish to be a bird. Male would diligently collect hay to build the nest and the female would observe lovingly. Then the pair would spend time flying around in the garden... on the trees... branches... playfully. How I wish I were a bird too...!
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| Watering the plants is fun |
Evenings would be full of action. That's when maximum birds would be out. After watering the plants we would together start the bird chase. Papa on one side of the garden, Payal, my sis, on the other and me at the backyard. All busy chasing birds and discovering new additions. The ones for whom our garden was home were Bulbul, Robin and Black browed Barbet. The other guests who visited our garden while I was there were Oriental white eye, Purple Sun bird, a pair of Spotted Doves, Maina, Woodpecker and many more whose names I still don't know. That black and white little bird who would usually come around sunset and sit on the top of arocaria almost everyday, the blue bird who would wake me up with its sweet voice, that smallest yellowish brown bird who would never sit at one place as if teasing me and not wanting me to click it... They all became a part of my days there.
Robin pair busy preparing their nest in our garage, between a pole and tin roof. What papa's worried about was the young ones of birds will not be able to stand the heat when sun will warm up the tin. So the solution he thought is that he will put a damp piece of cloth over tin so as to avoid direct sun.
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| Robin |
Black browed Barbet these days was busy digging up her nest in a trunk of an old tree. The process of digging it is very similar to how a woodpecker construct his nest. A hole with unbelievable perfectness.
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| Black browed Barbet |
Himalayan Bulbul I found them the most romantic of all. They would keep playing and singing around almost the whole day around their home and surroundings.
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| Himalayan Bulbul |
Chasing and clicking these sweet little birds is what I did the whole week and thoroughly enjoyed.
Now I am waiting for the Barbet to lay eggs. I really wanna see how cute li'l ones look and the sight of them being fed by mother bird is worth a visit to Palampur again.
