Oriental Magpie Robin

26 May, 1600 hrs:

I am trying to read on scheduling, and yet, however hard I try, I still can't gather myself well enough to concentrate om this topic. There are just too many audio interrupts snatching my attention away and all from the musical clan of magpie robins.

Magpie robins (or Oriental magpie robins, as they call them) have been all over our place, and my mind, this spring. Through all the times from early mornings to hot afternoons to late evenings (and even during the night time on one discrete occasion) and through all places around me from our colony to right till Harantekdi and Indrayani, it has been one wonderful concert this summer from one beautiful ensemble of this bird.

Magpie robin is a wonderful bird; a worthy passerine(birds considered as songbirds) with its extensive vocal skills. It has a rich repository of melodious tunes and various ways of rendering them. Even the conspicuous calls of cuckoo have faded in my opinion in comparison with the spirited and varied calls of the magpie robin. I have loved hearing to them, indulging myself in their talks once in a while. I even once tried chasing one on my bike only taking its calls as the cue. It sure was a blind chase, since it was nearing dark, but by no means was it a chase in silence! Although the advent of barbets in the nearby trees has been a really welcome news this summer, magpie robins have hogged all the attention due to their relentless riyaz in their vocals. It is of course their breeding season. I realized, after some reading, that the calls aren't just meant to win over a mate during the breeding season. They are more to stake a claim to a certain territory as their own and to ward off any potential competitor from entering the protected area. That explains the observation of the peculiar stance of the birds in fixed areas around the house. I have seldom seen them in large flocks, but only in small units of a family. A male magpie robin claims its territory and in a solitary exercise defends it all through the breeding season and the initial few days of bringing up of the offspring which is taken care of by the female. The male's calling poise shows aggression, excitement and also some real determination. As a visual signal, it also uses its tail to communicate its intent through jerks, flicks and by spreading it sometimes while it sings. Besides, there are other subtler, musical calls, perhaps meant for other specific communication or signals. So much so that one feels that the magpie robin is actually having a detailed conversation and the tone, loudness, pitch, tempo, tune all seem to depict at different times, various feelings like love, understanding, concern, happiness, jubilation, pleading, inquiry, aggression, imitation and maybe some more. I once tried to converse with a magpie robin with my own bird-like chirping, just out of curiosity. It was successful to an extent as we exchanged a few calls before the robin must have realized that I wasn't making any sense after all and just flew away to a farther branch. Or on second thoughts, did I impose my authority over my territory, forcing it to budge away! [:p]

Here are some pictures of this bird.

The last one which looks evidently different from the rest is a female whereas all others are male magpie robins.

There is another relative of this bird, called the Indian robin, which is widely observed. I have always seen this bird only in open spaces, near shrubs and trees, somewhat away from human settlements. Here's a picture, albeit not a very clear one.

May

Mango my mouth, Mohur my mind, Magic my MAY!

Blue spillage!

I still feel like going berserk again, like we did day before yesterday, to scream and jump with joy with no one and nothing to stop us! So satisfying has been the coveted win that the mind refuses to stop smiling with gratitude and happiness. And so everything around feels so jubilant and colourful and wonderful and everything to feel happy about!

Add to that the festive occasion of the new-year, home-made sweets, festival feast and the start of spring, and one surely has a treasure trove of fun and happiness. In such a joyous mood, I picked up an 'unused from 1988' pack of oil-colour tubes and decided to paint anything that came to my mind. Since it was the first time I was using oil as the medium, I didn't know (and still don't know) the technicalities/techniques involved and decided to do it just with my fingers. I certainly felt a kid-like joy doing this painting :D

Splash all the hues! And Bring on the Blue!

-Vindy

कल का बादल

कल का बादल पागल था ॥

जो राह फिसलकर फैला था

वो, कल का बादल, पागल था ॥

न पछिम दिसा का था वो छेहरा,

न रंग था भूरा, नीला गहरा ।

छाया था हलके पंख पसारे,

उतरा था जिनपर रंग सुनहरा ।

फिर जाने क्या सोचकर बरसा था!

कल का बादल पागल था ॥

कलियाँ शाखोँ पर रुकी हैं सारी,

मदन बसंत की राह निहारी ।

यह आम्रतरु पर पुष्प देख री,

लाल और पीले, हरित, केसरी ।

इनमें नन्हे नवस्वप्न संजोए,

हैं बीज धरे, पर अभी न बोए ।

और कल का बादल अंजान बावरा,

जगा गया, जो अभी थे सोए ।

क्या दिन हैं, और क्या मौसम है, क्या उसको ये मालूम न था?

कल का बादल पागल था ॥

छाँव में घास पे हम थे लेटे,

मध्यान्ह की मंदी, सुस्ती को लपेटे ।

बार्बेट की खूंटि दूर निरंतर,

बिल्ली थी सोई खुद को समेटे ।

डोरी पर कपड़े बस सूखे ही थे,

हल से खुले बैल बस बैठे ही थे ।

बाज़ार में वार के, लेने तरकारी,

भैया भी, बस यूँ, निकले ही थे ।

तब आया बादल बिना बताकर,

धो गया वो सबको लड़ी लुटाकर ।

न चमका था, न गरजा था, बस बूँदोँ में वो टपका था

कल का बादल पागल था ॥

अब बरसा है, तब भूलेगा,

जून की मास में मन तोलेगा ।

'अब आएगा? कब आएगा?'

नभ में अटका दिल बोलेगा ।

फिर आएगा वो, जल से मन हरने,

इन खेतोँ पर कुछ मास ठहरने ।

सच पूछो तो, मृद्गंध उठाता, कल का बादल भी भाया था

एक प्रीतलहर बरसाता यूँ ही, कल का बादल पागल था ॥

कल का बादल पागल था ॥

- विन्डी

The Grey Tit

Next, I would like to discuss about the Grey Tit (Parus major cinereus). This bird struck me as a rather industrious one, consumed in its own activites and almost overtly oblivious to its surroundings. Perhaps, I always happened to see it when it was in such a mood. Busily foraging and gathering its food from one branch to the other, it seemed to be going about its business with some purposeful intent. It is not that the other birds aren't so, but this bird never seemed to waste even a glance on unnecessary details and events happening around it. Even now when I see this bird, like the one I saw this morning with sleepy eyes, it looks consistently busy, checking and picking things on and between the branches and twigs with its short, straight and pointed beak. It has a neat beak, something like what a small kid would draw in his drawing book for a bird's beak. With this beak the Grey tit normally feeds on insects and their eggs as also on small seeds and nut kernels. The strong short beak helps it to crack hard nuts and seeds. It is around the size of a sparrow, in fact slightly larger, I felt. This bird is coloured in patterns of black and white on grey and it is from this that the bird also derives its common name, the Grey tit.

When I tried to read some on this bird, I realised that this bird has been extensively studied since a long time. There is a more popular variant of this tit, known as the Great tit, which occurs all across Europe. The Great tit shows very good adaptability to the human presence, and also great adaptability in general, and has therefore apparently led to and aided a lot of research.

The grey tits, on the other hand, predominantly occur in Asia. They are believed to forage mostly in pairs through the winters and then summer is their normal breeding season. They communicate in pleasant twitters (yes, I know...it occured to me too).

And now to the photographing part of it. Grey tits, despite their busy continuous bustling, have given me some good frames to capture. They keep frequenting the branches near my house. I have also photographed one (the third one below) at the chowk near the Akurdi-Nigdi Pradhikaran dumping grounds, where I used to wait for my morning office bus. It sure makes for a lovely subject to capture in a photograph.




-Vindy

Scaly breasted munia

Scaly breasted munia was one of the birds that caught my attention when I came to Talegaon. It was monsoon and in the open space that my window overlooked, tall grass and weeds had grown aplenty. Amidst the swinging greens, I saw two brownish specks busily pecking away at things. I wasn't familiar to that kind of birds. I clicked a few snaps and sat down to correlate what I had seen with one of the bird illustrations in a book. The scaly pattern over their breast and the finch like beak were prominent pointers, apart from their colour.They were munias. And how apt their entire name was, Scaly breasted munia!

For a bird, their existence near the ground for prolonged periods appeared surprising to me. From some literature, I came to know that they feed on the grass seeds and insects near the ground and prefer building nests in low bushes. That explained their behaviour. When they weren't busy eating near the grass, they would fly up to the branches and perch calmly. Their sound to me felt like a milder version of the sparrow's sound and also less regular. When in the winter, the grass all dried up and later cleared away, the munias weren't there to be seen near our house for a long time. The monsoon came and the grass grew back and there they were again with their clan! While I wasn't satisfied with their photos captured during the first monsoon, they came out slightly better in the second season. Here are a couple of them.

Although munia appeared more like a finch to me, I saw that it doesn't belong to the conventional family of finches. The baya weaver, the sparrow and the munia, all belong to the same family, Ploceidae.

-Vindy